“Not really.”
“Should we?”
“Probably.”
“You know, Destiny, one day you need to start heeding your own advice.”
“I was heeding my own advice. I was boarding the train to Fun Town when you called and pulled me away.”
“My mistake. It will never happen again,” Fabio promised with a grin.
“Liar.”
“What will never happen again?” Stella asked as she appeared from the herd of people surrounding the clubhouse patio, three longnecks in her hand.
“Nothing, Momma.” Fabio kissed her on the cheek. “Those for us?”
Stella handed them each a beer. “Thought you might need one.”
“How do you always know?”
“It’s something about being a mom. Third sense about when my kids show up.”
“And the beers?” Destiny inquired.
“That’s the fourth sense, courtesy of this club.” Stella handed Destiny a beer. “Coroner is to release Leto any time now. They are taking him to the funeral parlor over on Fifth and Oak. They have arranged for the visitation to be held tomorrow night. Leto’s blood family is devastated—they are bringing his momma in from San Antonio sometime this evening. Your father wants to see you, Stephan. He’s round back.”
Stephan nodded and took off in search of his dad. “How are you holding up, baby girl?”
“Well as can be expected. Better actually. Somehow these keep getting, I don’t know, almost easier? I expect this sort of thing; even now in the peaceful times I expect it. The calls, they aren’t shockers. They don’t make me tremble, they don’t make me weak like they used to. Is that bad?”
“Not at all bad, sad maybe. I know what you mean.” Stella paused a moment. “Destiny darling, did I ever tell you my story about the club? Why I am here? Why Stephan is here?”
18
Destiny just shook her head. Everyone had their own story but for the most part, the pieces that pushed them to the club that was secretive. “Come.” Stella took Destiny’s hand and led her down the road toward the small park just past the clubhouse. For several long moments as they walked together they were silent. Just the feel of the hot Texas sun beating down.
“I understand your pain, Destiny. It’s just the wall you build around yourself. To protect your heart from all that hurt. Stephan wasn’t supposed to have been an only child and I never intended to be ‘Til’ Death.’ We had wanted to wait till he was a few years older before trying for a second baby. Eric was still pretty new to the club. Both of us still pulling down nine to five wage and I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay and raise a family in this mess. I thought about taking Stephan and running and now, looking back, I still wonder what my life would have been like had I done it. It was a stupid thought. Eric would have stayed, he was so devout to your father and Alec already and our son—so much like his father; he would have run right back to him and the patch the second he got free of me.
“Then the dark times came at the start of the war with the Pride. That’s when I really started to feel lost. I didn’t want this life anymore. I was so attracted to the club when Eric prospected. We were newly engaged and I fantasized about being with a bad boy. But after we married and had Stephan, I wanted to back away. And honestly I was scared. Terrified. I didn’t want to lose my husband to death or prison or God only knows what else.
“Your mother helped me pack my bags and gave me the money to go once. She didn’t blame me, she hoped Eric would follow me. But I came back, after just one day. I’m not even sure Eric knew I left. Then things quieted down for a while and things were good again. We talked for a moment or two about having another baby; Breanna, Kristy and I had gotten so close and Breanna was pregnant with you so we wanted to wait. No need to have two infants running around. Then the war started again....”
Stella fell silent. Destiny saw tears bubble in her eyes. “Eric wasn’t a high enough rank back then. Not enough that getting to me would be a devastating blow on the club. I have recounted it a million times and tried thinking it over, the reasons. This club is a tight family—attacking anyone would be cause for serious retaliation—you have lived that enough to know it. It wasn’t me they wanted. It wasn’t me…”
Stella pulled away from Destiny, tears streaming down her face, and stumbled to a park bench. Her head down to hide the tears, to hide her shame and pain.
“It’s OK, Aunt Stella.” Destiny brushed her aunt’s hair out of her face.
“No, I should have told you years ago. I should have told you after they did it to you too.”
Stella sat taller and wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. “I never wanted anyone to know what they did. How I was so weak and helpless. To know what this club took from me, but this club doesn’t keep secrets very successfully amongst themselves and now, well, here we are.
“I was leaving my job as a bank teller down at the old Texas America Bank downtown. We hadn’t yet bought into the store and your Uncle Eric was on the verge of losing his job as a construction worker for a big contractor company that was housed not far from where the Stomping Grounds now stands. The war was cutting into his work life a little too much. I was on my way to Alec and Kristy’s to pick up Stephan. I don’t think they followed me from work. I just think they were looking for the car—and due to the alternator in mine finally giving out that morning, I was in Brianna’s.
“Every time something in me hurts to that point that I wish it was your mom driving that day, I take it all back. Because if they had managed to get to Brianna—you wouldn’t be here. But of course, Brianna built this club, she was as strong as any man, pregnant or not. In that Chevy Suburban especially, they probably would never been able to ambush your mom. I wasn’t keeping an eye out. I never paid attention. I wasn’t expecting it. It was quick. I don’t even remember most of it. A dark SUV and three bikes herded me off the main road. Had I more strength at the time, and common sense, I would have ran the damn bikers over and tried my luck with their guns. It wasn’t very far till the heavily populated area. I crashed your mom’s Suburban into a guardrail and then a ditch. And woke up in a shed outside the town. Pride markings everywhere.
“They wanted the Bastard Queen, not just a subject to the throne. Wes was reluctant to do anything but retaliation fights. He didn’t want territory of the Pride’s. He didn’t want trouble, he just wanted peace. Wanted them to stop dealing and pressuring the kids. Wanted his protection of his town to be enough. When the Sherriff couldn’t get something done, WE did. This patch. I watched this charter and others clean up streets where the Pride and other gangs sold to middle school kids. I watched the news when wanted rapists went missing and I knew in my heart where he went. Goddamn Robin Hood on a Harley. Least that was how it was back then....
“The Pride wanted total war and Wes wasn’t ready for that. He didn’t want the blood to flow so freely from us or to stain our hands. The Pride wanted us wiped off the map. For the most part, family was kept heavily guarded. Ex-wives, mothers, children. All had the watchful eyes of friends on them. But none of them was worth a strike if something was to go wrong. They needed to bet on a winning horse. Brianna was that horse.
“When the attack was launched, they took me in her place. They knew who I was. Knew Eric already and they thought they could use me to get to the Queen. Destiny, do you really think Wes is where you get your hot head? When you knew him, he wasn’t the same as he was at that time. Brianna had been the one to put fire in the hearts and bellies of our men. She called for retaliations and fights before Wes would. Brianna didn’t believe in being weak. The Mexicans teased her so relentlessly for having such a white girl name and then marrying the whitest man they knew. So her hardened backbone had come naturally. At the beginning of the club, when the more questionable times started, they tell me that there was more than one time that other patches and gangs tried to make quick work of the mother charter and their founding fathers. Your mom was just twenty and shacked up w
ith your dad three years her senior. While he was the youngest of the founding patches, they were just kids building something so huge and lethal. Kristy and Alec were together and they said in the beginning they never thought Wes would become what he was to this club. Story has it, the four of them and two prospects were pinned down off a side stretch on the way to a new chapter out east. I don’t know by who. Your mom couldn’t even legally drink a beer yet. It was so early on then—the way Kristy tells it, a prospect took a bad hit and it wasn’t looking good. They had the guns and ammo but not enough of it raining in the right direction. They had taken cover behind a few trees and were about to be surrounded when the prospect fell. Kristy was trying to stop the bleeding when Brianna took his gun.
“Kristy says by the time Alec got a CB call out to the nearest members, it was looking like they were their last hope of survival. But by the time the rest of the club got there, they were doing clean up on five bodies. Your mom had more notches on her gun belt than any other old lady. She protected her family and this club was her family. It’s what put Wes in power... and that’s why the Pride wanted her dead.”
Stella fumbled with a cigarette and took several hasty drags. “I was missing for almost two days. In my mind during those long hours I never thought of revenge. I didn’t want this blood on my husband’s hands. I didn’t want Brianna to give birth to you amidst total war. I became what they were trying to kill. With every breath I fought back but instead of breaking me—breaking my attachment to this club—it just forged a stronger bind. In my mind it wasn’t the club’s fault this happened to me. Although that was the most logical explanation.
“Those men. What they did to me. It was too natural. They were monsters. Not because they were gang bangers, not because they were of color, they just were. They enjoyed what they did to me. The club was built just of tough and rough motorcycle enthusiasts but they didn’t want to see these kind of men take over. It was those men who dragged my husband and our family down that road. And I would do everything I could to support this club. But I didn’t want to be the cause of more blood spill. I wouldn’t let that affect me.
“The club had launched an all-out search for me alongside local PD when they found Brianna’s SUV, totaled and riddled with bullets and me nowhere to be found. I don’t know if they wanted to leave me alive as to not have a dead body for the PD or if they wanted me alive so that my torture would be passed on to the club. Either way I lived. They dumped me outside the twenty-four-hour grocery, a bloody beaten mess. I don’t remember much about the next few days and probably what I do remember aren’t my memories but just what they told me. I didn’t want to tell Eric what happened to me but the doctors had informed him long before I was conscious. I spent a week in the hospital blocking it all out. Brianna delivered you before the last of my stitches were removed and amidst the beginning of the war. The war that would rage more hot than cold for the next four years.
“That’s why I stayed, Destiny. That’s why I became ‘‘Til Death’. It’s why there was never another baby, why I understand such a confusing devotion to this club. I blocked so much hurt out for so many years. Brianna’s death should have crippled me but as much as I wanted it to, it just didn’t. Sure, there were tears and pain but it wasn’t what I expected. Not what it should have been. When we lost your father and everyone in-between. It wasn’t until after we lost Austin that I broke. I started seeing a therapist. Me, a ‘Duchess,’ as Kristy likes to call us, the Devil’s Bastard royalty, seeing a therapist. One of the Nomads’ wives, praise Jesus, that way I don’t have to filter what I say.”
“I don’t know what to say, Aunt Stella. I knew none of this.”
Stella chuckled. “Neither does your brother or Stephan. Most likely everyone else that was alive to see those days has forgotten it as well. So long ago and so many other black marks on our history since then. Dallas darling, I didn’t tell you this to make me feel better. To tell you that so that you feel my pain or anything of that sort. I’m telling you this so you understand that I know what it’s like to question the club. I questioned it many times since then but not like I had before. Never did I try to leave after that. This club has been without a true queen since Brianna was killed. You have to take your rightful place and lead it back down the path to good. Take it to the light, Destiny, not the darkness. Whatever fight you have with Alec—whatever is going on—you need to be careful.
“Although we need to stand ready for a war, ready to take to our arms when needed, we don’t need another war. It’s peace we need. It’s the just and the goodness we need to remember. My Stephan will follow you to the ends of the earth, same as he did your brothers. He will fight, he will kill, and if needed he will die for you, my Dallas. Houston is Houston. He reminds me of Wes in the dark years. You can’t be that. You have to be the calm at the end of the storm. Kill if you must but let it be the last resort because when we spill blood it’s only a matter of time until we lose our men. And in war, we don’t always get to bury our men with such honor and dignity. I don’t want to recall how many brothers whose bodies we lost to the enemy or who we were forced to disgrace for our own protection. I will support whatever you have to do, Destiny. But I won’t support another war.”
19
An hour and a half later Destiny sat at the bar debating on whether or not she was getting three sheets to the wind. As much as she wanted to after the way this day panned out, she wondered if she should think better of it. Fabio hadn’t returned from seeing his father as of yet and she hadn’t seen her Uncle Alec or Houston either.
Not like she was looking for them. After her talk with Stella she preferred the silence of her own company. She managed to block out the noise of all the others in the clubhouse with ease but she hadn’t had enough whiskey to silence the voices in her head.
The prospect from Sweetwater brought her another beer and lingered until she looked up at him. “What?” she growled.
“Sorry but Fabio called in. Says you ain’t answering your phone,” the prospect said nervously and Destiny almost felt bad for him. In his no-name patch and his tattoos and scruffy hair and beard. Cute like a stray dog, that’s probably why Kristy called him ‘Pup.’ Destiny didn’t even know his real name.
“So what’s it to you?”
“Fabio wants to make sure you are taken to your apartment here. Says it’s still yours—he had Ray N.’s wife bring over the spare key for me to assure that you get, er, tucked in.” The Pup would have to learn to drown out any signs of nervousness if he was to follow this career choice. Damned Fabio, she didn’t need a babysitter.
“You and what army?”
“Fabio said to tell you that you either let me make sure you’re in bed or else he will come and contend with you himself.”
Destiny pulled herself from her barstool and walked around the side of the bar. She eyed Pup as he walked backwards, retreating because even if he thought he had a chance at taking her, it wasn’t worth the risk as she was sure he knew more of her reputation than she did of his.
She grabbed a bottle of whiskey and popped the top. She was going nowhere to see action tonight. Wherever the crew had gone, she was left behind for a reason. She assumed it was so Fabio could keep her fury pent up before she did something stupid. No reason to stay sober now.
“Call Fabio, tell him if he wants to tell the Double D what to do, he can come and get me!”
***
It didn’t take Fabio very long to get to her. So he must not have been very far away.
She watched him saunter through the door in her drunken haze. Now five shots of whiskey in, or was it six? Her brother and a few other patches followed. Great, she was tonight’s entertainment. Everyone loved a good Callaghan tussle.
She stood from her barstool and removed her patch to get to the gun holster she wore underneath. She stripped it and set it on the bar, followed by her two knives and her “little pretty” single shot in her boot.
Fabio didn’t move forward s
o she sat back at the bar and poured another whiskey. She heard him move closer to her but he wasn’t ready to fight yet. Unfortunately, she was. But the fuzzy in her mind told her that they had all had a shitty day today, not just her. And that starting an unprovoked, intoxicated fight might not make her be looked fondly upon by her patch elders. A few more shots and she wouldn’t give a damn, though.
Fabio sat on the barstool next to her and took the bottle of whiskey from in front of her and forwent the glass, letting the warm liquid flow straight from the bottle to his mouth.
Destiny heard the light thud of the bottle sitting on the wood bar. Followed by the familiar clinks of guns and knives being added to her pile. Fabio was technically unarmed now. Technically. Fabio was as good a fighter as any of them and a far cry better than most. Like her, he was lethal all on his own.
And a sight more sober too.
Damn him.
“Well, Destiny, Momma says you had a hard day and to tuck your sorry ass into bed before you get too stupid.” Fabio’s voice was gruff as he poured her another shot.
“We both know your mom didn’t use those words.”
“No, she’s nicer than I am. But it’s still the gist of things. And she has the right idea.”
“Maybe, but she didn’t put the chore into very capable hands. And you put it into even less.” She gave a nod to the Pup who was eying her warily.
Fabio sighed. “Do you take such pleasure in tormenting people? In being the crazy bitch? The one everyone in here is watching?”
Destiny glared at him.
“Stupid question. Of course you do.”
“It’s my birthright.”
“And I suppose that means it’s my birthright to clean up your mess?”
“I wouldn’t call it a birthright but you do seem to enjoy doing it.” Destiny tossed back the shot Fabio had put in front of her.
“So are we doing this the easy way or the hard way?” Fabio asked. Again, no reply came from Destiny.
The Devils Bastards MC: Destiny Dallas Callaghan Page 13