My stupidity didn’t stop there though. The cop that handled the case knew in his gut this wasn’t me and I had to give the guy credit…he did everything he could to convince me to point the finger at my dad and his club. I wouldn’t do it though. There was the problem that although I had suspected my father dealt in drugs, I had never really seen any hard evidence of it.
I was actually even working under the delusion that my dad was going to step up at some point and try to save me. Maybe at the last minute but I just knew he would step up, especially if this had anything to do with him. He wouldn’t let me go to prison for something I didn’t do. He wouldn’t leave me there to rot if it was for something he was ultimately responsible for. There was nothing in my history with him to back up any of those delusions, but I was still hopeful…right up until the night they loaded me on that bus and gave me my brand new blue denim shirt and jeans that said CDC in bold yellow letters across the back and down the side.
Later on, as I sat in my brand new cell, I tried to convince myself that the drugs were put there by a rival club. Maybe my dad moved in on someone else’s territory and they were looking to get him back. But that made no sense. Even if they set up the stop, they lost a lot of money in drugs and my dad wasn’t the one who got arrested. He wasn’t even there.
Trying to shake it all off I set about putting the bike back together and getting ready for the ride. I would be sure to check my bags this time. I would never be made a scapegoat again, that’s for damn sure. It would be good for me to get out on the open road for a bit and get some fresh air. It had been too long.
About an hour later, my dad, a guy named Johnny that everyone calls “Johnny Red” because of his ruddy complexion, another guy called “Bo,” —I had no idea what the rest of his name was if he had one— and Terrance’s dad, Blake, came out of the clubhouse which was out behind the bar. There were two other guys that were always hanging around, wanting to be part of the club waiting outside. There was a garage attached to the clubhouse where they kept their bikes and worked on them. The equipment in the garage far outweighed the worth of the bar it was attached to. Eventually, my dad would have to put some of that money into the bar or his front would fall right down around him.
The business conducted in the clubhouse is the business that I had spent my life trying to stay out of. My mother would never come right out and tell me what it was my father did there, but she got her point across that I needed to stay far away from it.
Terrance and I used to sneak around and listen sometimes when they had their meetings. A lot of it we didn’t understand, but we heard enough to know that my mother was right. It was a shady business. I also knew the old man rarely went on just a ride with the entire club. When he went for a ride to clear his head, he took the bike up to the foothills and spent the day unaccompanied.
They were working on something or setting something up. A morbid sense of curiosity and an intense sense of boredom pressed me forward anyways. I put on my skull cap and my helmet and straddled the bike. It felt good; it had been a hell of a long time since I had rode, close to three years when you counted all the jail and trial time leading up to my two year stint. I was praying the old adage about it being like riding a bike applied to Harleys as well. Eating the pavement my first time out might be more than embarrassing.
I waited until the other guys were on their bikes and then I fired her up. She purred like she was happy to see me and as I eased her out of the garage and into the open road I realized that at least one thing still felt normal. I hadn’t forgotten how to ride, it was like second nature. I loved the feeling of the wind against my face and just the simple freedom being on a bike gave me. I guessed it was in my blood, even though I should have hated to admit that.
We rode along the highway for a while and through the foothills far out of town. We rode until we came to an old warehouse with a couple of nondescript cars parked out front and some unfriendly looking guys sitting in them. A wave of PTSD hit me and I started sweating, thinking they were undercover cops and I was about to be arrested again.
What the fuck was I doing there? How stupid was I? Really. I had talked to my parole officer in the morning. She was going to come by the house this week. Being at the warehouse was probably enough to put me back inside if something bad happened.
We parked the bikes along the side of the warehouse and everyone got off and some of us went inside. I guessed that the two prospects and Bo who had been beside me were outside to make sure the guys in the cars stayed there. Whatever was going down, it was much heavier than a few baggies of heroin in my saddlebags. I hadn’t met her yet, but I was convinced that my parole officer would definitely not approve.
There were wooden crates stacked up all over and I was pretty damn sure that I didn’t want to know what was inside them. Some of them were long and flat. Guns? Maybe. Some of them were more rectangular.
I stood back with the other guys and watched as my dad and Blake approached a couple of guys on the other side of the warehouse. They were looking into one of the crates and there was a large green duffle bag opened at one of their feet. One of the guys was dressed similar to us in blue jeans, T-shirt and leather vest. The other looked like he would be overly dressed for the Emmys in a suit that had to cost three or four grand. He was a tall, muscular guy with dark hair and gray at the temples and he wore a thin framed classy looking pair of glasses. He reminded me of the Grey Poupon guy from the old commercials and I wondered if he spoke with an accent.
I couldn’t hear anything that was being said, especially since Johnny Red was expounding about some red-haired girl he had picked up the last time he was in Vegas. He said she had called him the night before and wanted to come out and visit. I looked at Johnny and wondered how ugly or desperate she must have been if she needed to come all the way from another state to be with him. Johnny may not have been a bad-looking guy when he was…no, let’s face it; guys like Johnny were born ugly. He was about five-five and that was in his boots. His waist had to be about a forty-four wide and he had a gray beard that lay against his chest that looked like a heavily used Brillo pad. His hair was long and greasy and he was missing one of his eye teeth. But the worst thing about Johnny was how he smelled. I had spent almost a year in county jail and then two in prison and I still hadn’t come across anything that smelled like Johnny. I didn’t know what it was, but it’s just indescribable.
I looked back at Blake and my dad. They were shaking hands with the suit guy. The other one didn’t look like a guy who liked to be touched.
They strolled back over and Blake said, “All right, all taken care of.”
“Everything’s all set?” Johnny asked.
“Set up and good to go,” Blake told him.
“Let’s go have a cold one,” my dad said. It was ten a.m. I guess in MC time it was five o’clock somewhere.
I rode back to the bar, following the Smokin’ Jokers patch on my dad’s back and wondering what the hell I was a part of, but most importantly, after all I had been through I had to wonder why I was putting myself in this kind of situation at all.
CHAPTER 4
OLIVIA
I got up in the morning with good intentions. I had a lot of cleaning and laundry to do around the house and after I finished, I planned to look into whether or not I could get back into some of the classes I had dropped. I felt the sudden need to start cleaning up my life.
I got dressed and grabbed my purse. It felt light and I remembered that I had moved my wallet into my other purse when Terrance and I had gone out to dinner and then the bar. I didn’t find it at home anywhere so I called Terrance and asked him to look in the saddle bags. He said that it wasn’t on the bike anywhere. He was gone again on a parts run for his dad and was not expected back until late.
I was hoping I could find it at home because I really didn’t want to go into the bar alone. I needed to find it though. It was either that or cancel my credit card. I wished I would have noticed it missing
sooner but I had been frazzled since we ran into Dax. I only had one credit card and it had a three thousand dollar limit, but even that would kill me if someone charged it up.
I went to the restaurant where we had dinner first and they were nice and checked their lost and found. I’d asked a few waitresses and waiters if they had seen it. They hadn’t, so I finally had to suck it up and go out to The Smoke Joint.
When I walked in, Bull and his crew were sitting around drinking…that was new, not. He looked up at me inquisitively like he wondered what I would be doing there without Terrance…a lamb in the lion pit…
“Hi, Bull,” I said, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. “Did anyone turn in a little black purse? I lost it the other night after we were here and I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, check with Cookie. He has a big old lost and found box back there.”
Cookie was the cook, both for the bar and the club. Dax said he had been around as long as he could remember. He did some bartending too, but mostly Bull left that to some of the girls who hung around, he said that gave them a way to earn their keep. Cookie was a tiny Mexican man with a handlebar mustache and a quick smile. He didn’t fit in there, he was too nice. He didn’t speak much English so Bull’s guys often made him the butt of their jokes too.
“Yeah, but if it matched any of his shoes he’s probably already taken it home,” one of the guys was saying and they all laughed. I laughed too, but mine was a nervous one.
I started around the counter toward the kitchen to see if I could find the box full of lost treasures. I could only imagine the stuff that place must have raked in. Just as I had about made it around the corner I heard a familiar voice that stopped me dead in my tracks.
“I got the hog all shined up.”
Well, the voice and the fact that the rest of the room went dead silent. I guessed the guys were interested to find out how Dax was taking the news that I was dating his former best friend. This place was great like that, no one had any business that was strictly their own.
“Good, now get a beer,” Bull said.
Dax acted like he didn’t notice anything was going on. He reached behind the bar and grabbed a beer out of the ice trough they kept there. I willed myself to keep walking and just go out the back, but part of me also wanted to just get this over with. Dax and I were likely to be seeing a lot of each other. It had to get easier and maybe if I explained things to him and even gave him a chance to explain things to me…
“Hi, Dax,” I said softly. It seemed that my voice was as hesitant as I was. Either that or I was hoping he wouldn’t hear me and he had walked away. It would give me an out and I could still say I tried.
He heard me though. He looked up at me and took a swig from the bottle in his hand. He seemed to be swigging a lot of beer lately. That was new, for him. I looked at the clock and I saw the corners of his lips twitch. He knew what I was thinking.
“Hey, Olivia,” he said finally, like he had just noticed me.
He turned around and began to walk away. I guess that was it. I heard myself call after him and wondered if I was a glutton for punishment.
“Dax!” My stupid voice cracked.
He turned slowly toward me and I found myself wishing that he wasn’t so fine to look at. His green eyes and full lips and this new and improved body were almost too much for my heart to take.
“Yeah?” he said nonchalantly.
“Can we talk for a minute?” I asked him.
He couldn’t control his facial expression any longer. It was suddenly obvious that he had no desire to talk to me whatsoever. I felt a pang in my chest, although I knew I deserved it. Everyone was still looking at us and I wondered if he would just keep walking to save face with the guys.
“Just for a minute?” I asked him, trying not to sound like I was begging in front of our audience.
“Okay,” he reluctantly agreed. We went over to one of the booths and as we sat he said, “You want a beer?”
I rolled my eyes before I caught myself. It wasn’t even eleven a.m.
“Um, no thanks,” I told him.
Dax was only nineteen when he went to prison, but his dad would have had no problem letting him drink all he wanted then. He usually chose not to, unless it was a party or a special occasion. It was just one more thing that had changed.
“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked.
God, he was so good-looking I could melt under his gaze.
Pulling up all of my courage I said, “Don’t you think we should talk about the past couple of years and what’s going on now? I mean, it seems like we’re going to be bumping into each other a lot and that’s going to get awkward.”
He laughed. It was a sarcastic laugh. “More awkward than watching my ex-girlfriend and my ex-best friend walk into the bar as a couple the very day I get released from prison?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry about that,” I said.
I could feel the heat coloring my face. I wanted to tell him he had no right to be angry. I was his ex-girlfriend, but I knew Terrance was right when he said there was an unwritten rule amongst friends.
“I imagine it sucks pretty badly to see your ex with your best friend. I wish we would have written to you or something and warned you.”
“My ex-best friend,” he said, emphasizing the ex. “He was what I called a best friend a few years back. I was gone for over two years. I didn’t see him. I didn’t get a letter or a care package once. What kind of best friend is that?” He laughed again, but there was no humor in it and he said, “I guess the kind that snatches up your ex-girlfriend as soon as she dumps you, huh? I’ll bet he was waiting outside the courthouse for them to load me on the bus and then he was too busy playing house with you to come and visit me.”
“Dax, listen. I understand that you’re angry and you have a right to be. But I was your ex for good reason. I was angry too and hurt. You never let on to me that you had anything to do with drugs. You let me believe you and I had a future together.”
“And me getting arrested messed up that plan for you. You couldn’t wait two years and stand by your man?”
“I didn’t want to, Dax. I don’t want to be part of that kind of life.”
This time when he laughed he really seemed amused. “First of all, I told you that I had no idea those drugs were there. You chose not to believe me. I’m the injured party here, Liv, not you. My mother was the only one who believed me and stood by me. And then there is the fact that you protest the lifestyle so strongly yet look around you, Olivia. I’ve been out for two days and I’ve seen you here twice already. You’re dating the vice president of the Smokin’ Jokers’ son. What do you think your boyfriend is going to be when he grows up?”
“Terrance doesn’t do anything illegal. He just runs parts back and forth, things like that.”
“What about the rest of these guys?” He lowered his voice as he said it, but no one was paying attention to us any longer anyways. When I didn’t answer he said, “Tell me this, Olivia, what do you do these days for a living?”
“I work two days a week for my uncle and I help out here a little, cleanup, sometimes I bartend.”
“And my dad pays you for that? Between him and your uncle you make enough to pay your bills?”
“I make enough to help a little. Mostly Terrance pays the bills,” I admitted, a little ashamed. Dax was not where he expected to be at twenty-one I’m sure and neither was I.
“Terrance makes good money, does he?” Dax said with a smug smile.
“Pretty good,” I said. I knew where he was taking this conversation. I wasn’t going to let him convince me Terrance was doing anything illegal. Terrance took me with him on his runs a lot of times. Nothing ever changed hands but parts and sometimes money. Never bags full of drugs.
“Olivia, I know that you’re not stupid. Naïve, maybe. Think about it, look at this run-down place and the run-down people that come in here every night and ask yours
elf, ‘Where does all the money to pay all these guys and customize all these bikes come from?’ Bull doesn’t make enough off this place to pay the light bill. Do you ever see any of these losers paying for their beer?”
“You’re insinuating your own father is in the drug business. I’ve heard you insinuate that before, Dax. That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t mean any of these guys are doing anything wrong, much less Terrance.”
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m telling you that my father is in whatever business brings in the most money and you need to open your eyes a bit before your new boyfriend is doing time too. I wasn’t running anything for him and it happened to me. Olivia, none of these guys have a real job yet they drive fifty-thousand dollar bikes. Their wives drive SUVs and have their nails and hair done every other day. They have breast implants…those aren’t cheap. All of that alone should give you a clue. You’re like my mother, I think. You know very well what goes on here, you would just rather turn a blind eye to it. It’s too late for me, but I wish that you would get out before you get hurt again.”
It made me angry for him to talk about Terrance like that and that although he said he didn’t think I was stupid, he was talking to me like I was. He would have never talked to me like that in the past. Maybe he was just trying to convince me to leave Terrance, I didn’t know. I tried to tell myself that he had anger and resentment built up, with good reason I was sure, but he was displacing it on whoever was closest to him. Hopefully it would die down after a while and it would all get easier.
“Terrance doesn’t talk about the rest of the club to me. Kind of like you did in the old days. If they are doing things they shouldn’t be then that’s good, because I really don’t want to know. It’s not affecting me anymore. Not like it did when I found out that you were doing the very things you had held against your dad your entire life. Terrance knows better than anyone how badly that hurt me. He would never do that to me.”
Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1) Page 3