Hound

by KJ Dahlen

  “What?” Derick asked.

  Hound looked up at him. “Yes, we’re married.”

  Derick looked stunned and did show emotion now. “Fuck no!” he shouted. “I mean if you were just together that’s bad enough!”

  Raine and Hound glared at him.

  Hound stood up and walked over to him. “You act like we’re poisonous or some kind of trash.”

  Derick laughed. “If my father is any indication of a Moore then yes, you must be both.”

  Sara gasped. “Derick! They are a decent family. I don’t know what you mean by Moore... what do you mean?”

  “Yeah, what the fuck do you mean?” Gambler strode in.

  “We heard that shit,” Judge growled. “Just who the fuck do you think you are?”

  Gator walked in too and stepped to Deke’s side, looking really confused.

  Derick looked around at them all. “I’m a Moore.” He laughed under his breath like it was some kind of awful joke but he didn’t sound amused.

  “What?” all the men shouted.

  “The fuck you say!” Judge shouted.

  Hound didn’t join in on the shouts, he had figured that part out already. “Look into his eyes brothers. Just take a look.”

  They swiveled their angry gazes over to Hound.

  “What the fuck are you talking about Hound?” Raine asked.

  “God dammit, are you all blind! Look at his dark blue eyes!”

  They all looked over.

  Gambler shook his head. “So? Lots of people...” His voice slowed.

  “What the fuck?” Judge asked as he stepped closer to the man.

  “Harry Moore,” Derick stated.

  The men in the room gasped. ALL of them even Deke, Gator and Bones.

  “Who is that?” Sara asked. “Would someone tell me what is going on?”

  Hound sat down hard on the bed. He’d guessed but he never...

  A crash came from the doorway.

  They all stopped talking and looked over.

  Reva stood there white as a sheet, with a tray of scattered dishes and glasses at her feet. “No... you did not just say...”

  Gator moved over to her. “Come on Rev. We don‘t know yet that—”

  “Yes, we do,” Derick spoke up. “Bulldog Moore is my biological father, and my grandfather tried to tell me. But I didn’t believe it and when I caught up with him, we were both in the same damn cell in Tijuana!”

  They all turned to stare at him.

  “Can you imagine it? He was right there and he never knew who I was...” Derick pulled in a breath. “And I never fucking told him either. This man was demented, insane. He...” Halting he stared at a very shocked Sara. “He killed our parents all those years ago.”

  “What?” All the air t left Sara’s lungs.

  “No, no. Tell me he’s dead!” Reva shouted. “Tell me that he isn’t...”

  Derick stared at her and a saddened look came over his face. He looked upset. “You’re... Reva?”

  She nodded her expression looking desperate.

  “I-I’m sorry...I would have never. He told me everything when we were in that prison. He gloated about...” Derick clenched his hands into fists. “Fuck!” he shouted.

  “H-he’s alive?” Reva backed out of the doorway and she stumbled. “I-is he here?”

  They all looked over at Derick.

  He sighed as he nodded. “He was just outside this very compound thirty minutes ago.” His voice was flat with no feeling at all.

  Reva screamed and her eyes rolled up as she collapsed.

  Gator caught her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Twenty one years ago, Bangor Maine

  The sound of the bike roared through the yard in the compound. The engine was loud but it didn’t cover the screams.

  The brothers of Satan’s Bastards all came filing out of the clubhouse. What they saw didn’t even seem to be real.

  The woman screaming was tied with a rope around her wrists and the rope stretched to the back of the motorcycle. The man riding it revved his engine and moved forward again.

  The poor woman gasped and fell to her knees. By the look of her body with its cuts and abrasions, it wasn’t the first time she’d been tugged to the ground by the powerful bike.

  All the MC members stood there stunned.

  “What the hell Bulldog?” The club’s president shouted.

  Bulldog, on the bike ignored him as he got off his ride and grabbed the woman up by her hair. “You’ll pay for trying to skip out on me, bitch!” He slapped her hard and she flew back.

  Still stunned, most of the men stared. They didn’t seem to be able to fathom what they were seeing. One of their members was breaking a solemn law...beating on a woman and his Old Lady, no less.

  Gambler ran forward and jumped on Bulldog’s back.

  Bulldog threw him off and hit the woman again and again. His eyes nearly bulging out of his face as he beat her bloody.

  “Dammit!” Black Jack jumped on his back again....And again, he was thrown back to the ground.

  Bulldog was wild eyed and crazed looking. His fists were bloody and his face was reddened by rage.

  The woman still lying prone in the dirt was weeping and blood covered her face as she tucked herself into a fetal position.

  Bulldog then stepped closer to her and kicked her in the ribs then grabbed her up by her hair to continue with the beating. It was obvious to all except him that the bloody woman had passed out or was dead.

  Black Jack grabbed a two by four and slammed it onto Bulldog’s back.

  Bulldog just roared as he turned around and raised his fist.

  A shot rang out.

  Bulldog was hit in the shoulder and didn’t even pause as he glared at the man holding the gun. He advanced toward the shooter as if he didn’t feel a damn thing.

  The shooter cocked his gun and shot him again.

  Bulldog was knocked back, but he got up almost instantly. “I’ll get you for this Gator!” he shouted his eyes crazed and dilated. “What? You want my woman for yoursel—?” He never finished his sentence as another two by four hit him on top of the head.

  Gambler stood over him and huffed out air as he still held onto the piece of wood in his hand. “What the fuck?” He looked stunned and surprised.

  Bulldog went down into the dirt and lay there huffing and puffing as blood poured from his wounds. His eyes narrowed as across the way behind his bike on the ground lay the center of his wrath. “Reva...” he whispered with hatred as he finally blacked out.....

  Reva sat with Gator as she cried silent tears and looked up at Gambler, then Raine and then at Derick.

  She looked a little less pale now and she seemed to have gotten better as the minutes ticked by. “People were yelling at him to stop but he never heard them. His father tried to stop him but he hit the man over and over again. His brothers all tried to stop him too, but it didn’t do any good. No one could have stopped him that night.”

  The room grew silent then Gator spoke, “Reva, you don’t have to relive all this. Dammit, woman it was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but it must have been just yesterday as he is here again!” She sniffled and went on like she just had to get it all out, “Then Gator pulled his gun and put a bullet in him. That was the only thing that got his attention. He turned away from me and went after Gator. Gator got a second bullet into Bulldog and his brother hit him with a piece of lumber and that’s when he finally went down.” Reva shook her head. “By the time the cops showed up, they had Bulldog tied up. He was still out of it but no one wanted to take any chances. I didn’t know any of this at the time. I was hurt really bad. By the time I got to the hospital, I’d lost the baby and was so torn up inside I’d never have another child. I was in a coma for three weeks while I healed. And by then, Bulldog was in jail awaiting trial.”

  “And we all made sure that he went away for a long time,” Gambler whispered.

  Derick looked over at him.
>
  “When they presented all the medical evidence in court, the judge threw the book at him. He got seventeen years for the aggravated murder of the baby and the battery he did on me and his dad,” Reva finished.

  Sara wept, she couldn’t listen to any more of it. How could a man be so violent?

  “It was the drugs mostly,” Judge spoke up, answering her silent question. “We knew he was into things he shouldn’t be, but we never knew he was beating Reva. He hid that well and she was too fearful of him to tell us.”

  “Then he got out,” Raine spoke up now. “He wouldn’t give Reva a divorce, he held out on that. Then he came looking for her. We all knew he would.”

  “We did too,” Gator added. “We were here in Troy, waiting for him.”

  “The thing is,” Reva spoke up. “He had left something with me other than broken bones and scars. He left something that never belonged to him.”

  “The diamonds that belonged to the cartel,” Derick added.

  They all stared at him.

  “He told me all of it, I think?” Derick sighed. “It was all he could talk about for the 12 months we were there. How you all betrayed him. The day he was released from prison.”

  Bangor Maine...

  Everyone was seventeen years older as Bulldog walked out of the prison gates and over to his family. He held out his hand. When no one grasped it, he raised an eyebrow at their lack of greeting. “What the fuck?” he called out. “What is this? Aren’t you happy to see me free of that fucking place?”

  “We would be if you hadn’t earned what put you in there,” Gambler told him.

  Bulldog snapped his head to stare at his brother. Very slowly, he turned and saw the expressions on his father and other brother’s face. “Is that what you guys truly believe? That I earned those seventeen years in prison?”

  “Yes son,” Black Jack told him quietly. “You did earn them. You did the deed that put you here. No one else did.”

  Bulldog’s hands tightened on the duffle bag he gripped. “If my wife hadn’t pressed charges, I wouldn’t have been here at all. She put me in this place.”

  “No son, she didn’t.” Black Jack shook his head.

  “Yes old man, she did,” Bulldog insisted.

  “She wasn’t the one who pressed charges against you,” Judge told him.

  “What are you talking about?” Bulldog frowned. “She had to be the one.”

  “But she wasn’t,” Black Jack insisted. “She was in a coma for the first three weeks after the assault, fighting for her life.” He glanced over at his other two sons and then he stared back at Bulldog. “Your mother and I pressed charges against you.”

  “Along with me, Gambler, and Raine,” Judge informed him. “Us and everyone who was there that night. After what you did, we thought you’d be safer in custody than out on the streets.” He paused then added, “The fact you were found guilty seemed right when everything came out in court.”

  “Well, fuck you all then!” Bulldog’s monumental temper flashed into rage. He turned to his father and asked, “Is that why Mom never answered any of my letters all this time? Is that why she isn’t here now?”

  Black Jack nodded. “We tried to bring you boys up to respect the MC and the laws. You betrayed that and she couldn’t take it. You brought shame to our family and dragged our name through the mud. And you did it knowingly. She felt you turned your back on us long before we did you.” He paused to glare into his son’s eyes. “When we became aware of everything you had done over the years, she hung her head in shame. In all the years I’ve known that woman I’ve never seen her look so defeated, but that day in court, she was broken and I blame you for that.”

  “But you taught us all our lives that family stood together no matter what,” Bulldog spat out.

  “You crossed the line and never once thought about the consequences, did you?” Black Jack asked. “You broke the family bond, not just once but several times and you didn’t even care. You lied to us time and time again and thought we’d never find out. Well, we did find out. We found out about every time you used and abused your young wife. But we didn’t hear it from her, we found the hospital records. In the seven years you were married, you sent her to the hospital twenty seven times. And she never said a word.” Black Jack stepped closer to his son. “I taught you boys better than that. I taught you to never strike a woman, never take your anger out on your wife because that made you a monster. I also taught you boys to never take drugs and by the time I found out you were an addict, it was too dammed late to stop you from killing your son. You did all that, YOU Harry, no one else. That’s on you.” He stepped back. “Maybe I didn’t want to think my son could do something as horrible as what happened and that’s on me. I’ll take the blame for that, but know this Harry, if you want back in this family that’s something you have to earn back. You have to show us that we matter to you as much as you matter to us.”

  “What are you saying?” Bulldog stared back at him.

  “I’m saying that unless you can prove this is truly behind you and you want to start over with a clean slate, you aren’t welcome to come home.” His father glared at him.

  Bulldog looked stunned. He glanced at his two brothers and they wore the same expression as their dad did. “Does that go for you two as well?”

  Gambler and Judge nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Bulldog snorted. “Well, I don’t give a shit.”

  “That’s been your problem all along hasn’t it?” Judge asked. “If it doesn’t involve you, you just don’t give a shit.”

  Bulldog glared at his brother. “Fuck you.”

  Judge turned and walked back over to the truck his brother, father and himself came in. He got in and slammed the door shut.

  Without saying another word, Black Jack and Gambler joined him.

  Bulldog watched as the truck tore out of the parking lot....

  .....Derick finished telling them the way Bulldog told him the story when they were in that Mexican jail. “Then, he bragged on his many secrets. All the shit he got away with for all those years. That’s how I heard about...You Reva.” Derick looked over at her. “He never got how wrong it was, not even a bit. He thought we would both die in that shithole and so he talked all the time. Then one night, he told me a story about his first girl.” He paused and looked over at Sara. “Rosie Bell, he called her.”

  Sara gasped.

  Hound put his arm around her.

  “He and our mom, when she was sixteen. Then he dropped her as he had better things to do at the time, so he said.” Derik snorted. “Then when she got married and our dad gave me his name. He went berserk and planned it out. His revenge as he called it. How dare they give his kid someone else’s name? He ran them off the road and made sure their car pitched over that cliff. He bragged that no one was the wiser. He’d gotten away clean.”

  Sara was openly weeping now. “No, it can’t be true!”

  Hound glared at her brother. “That’s enough.”

  Derick stood up and tossed his hands out. “Is it? Is it enough?”

  “Why didn’t you carve him up in jail, kid?” Gambler asked.

  Derick looked around at them all. “You think I want to be like him? Kill my own father even if he is an insane mean bastard?” he paused. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I thought about it night after fucking night. I wanted to. He robbed me and Sara of our parents. He took them away from us when we were just kids. But mostly, I wanted out. I intended to come back here and start over.”

  “What about the carved R’s?” Hound asked.

  “The...” Derick shook his head. “I did that to one man. He raped and killed a ten year old girl. He had it coming. The rest?” He shrugged. “The cartel used it to scare everyone. I’m afraid my reputation is not that infamous.”

  “So you said you’ve been tracking him?” Hound asked.

  “Yeah, he talked a bunch of shit and he said he was coming here when he got enough money and collected all t
he firepower he needed.”

  “For what?” Bones asked.

  “To kill all the Moores and anyone that got in his way. I was watching Sara because I couldn’t locate Bulldog, but I knew he was here when I saw you all at the hospital. So I kept an eye on Sara’s... our grandparent’s house and saw that bastard Black harassing her. Then I followed him and saw him meeting with some guy on the bad side of town. I then followed the man he’d met with and I knew he was dangerous for her. Then her bakery burned down and I knew he’d done it. I went back and found the guy he met with and after a little persuasion, he told me everything. He was the man who helped Corey Black find that crew to tear up our house, then to set the bakery on fire.”

  They all listened and stared at him.

  “Yeah, I went after that piece of crap. He deserved worse.”

  “I agree,” Hound said.

  “Well, I don’t,” Sara finally spoke up.

  The men all looked over at her.

  “All this violence. Knives Derick? You carved a word into his chest! Why?”

  “I thought it was apt. S-o-r-r-y. It was perfect,” Bones stated.

  None of the men argued with him.

  Derick shrugged. “Sis... I’ve lived a life that was just that... violent I had to become part of it. I knew that MC would lead me to the cartel and to him. I did what I had to in order to find him and find the truth. Of course, when I found him and saw his eyes? They matched my own. I finally knew Gramps was telling the truth that night.”

  “So, you don’t know where he is?” Deke asked. “That’s all we care about. Finding him and stopping him.”

  Zipper rushed in through the door. “Prez?”

  Deke turned to face the door.

  “You gotta see this!” Zipper exclaimed breathlessly.

  Deke, Gator and Sam left the room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hound stood up. He then looked over at Derick.

  “I’ll stay with her.” Reva stood from her chair. “Lock the door, we should be safe.”

  Sara shook her head. “No, both of you stay!”