by K. J. Dahlen
“I’m fine, thank you,” Bruno replied, his voice deep, gruff and husky from years of smoking abuse. “How ‘bout you Jax?” He shook Jaxson’s hand with a crushingly firm grip.
“I’m fine,” Jaxson answered, warmly.
“Got a minute, Jax?” he asked.
Jaxson nodded and followed behind him. He wasn’t the only one to notice that Bruno had ignored Antonio and focused on Jaxson.
The pair made their way down the hall to the office. As they passed Antonio at the bar, Jaxson caught a glimpse of him.
The man looked enraged, one leg shaking with tension against the leg of his stool, one hand gripped firmly around his glass, his fingers tightened into a fist around it, both his eyes fixed on his rival, glaring like lasers into Jaxson.
Shit.
They stepped into the office to talk without being overheard. Inside, Bruno took a bottle of the states coveted whiskey out from the old mahogany cabinet that sat behind his desk. Jaxson sat at the opposite side of the desk to face from him.
“Big day coming up on Friday. How you feeling?” Bruno asked in his usual, direct fashion as he poured them both a shot.
“Ok.” Jaxson paused for a moment and took a breath. “I’m feeling ok,” he repeated.
Bruno narrowed his eyes at him. “Alright. What does that mean?”
Before Jaxson could respond, Bruno answered for him, “You’re nervous. Understandable.” Bruno took a sip of his whiskey and sat back in his chair.
Jaxson did the same—thinking he really should’ve put something in his stomach this morning.
“You know.” Bruno exhaled thoughtfully. “My whole life is this club. Everything I’ve built, it’s my whole legacy - my brother’s whole legacy. I need to know that the Black Devils will be safe.”
Jaxson gave a heavy sigh and ran a hand across the back of his neck with the weight of the imminent pressure bearing down on him. He never did see himself as a leader.
Bruno sensed he would need reassurance. “The youngest prospect I ever had. You gained your patch faster than any of them. Just shy of three months and you did it…pretty much unheard of in your position. You never once complained; never failed neither, didn’t matter what I threw at you.”
Jaxson stared up at his eyes, but didn’t say a word – he only nodded
Bruno got to his feet and stepped up close to the wall on his right. It was lined with square picture frames that made the office look more like a place of the past than one of the future. Inside the frames, his most beloved friends, and relations, all passed, of course. Bruno stared, motionless for a moment, at the picture a smiling woman in the frame closest to his desk. “My old lady always did have a soft-spot for you; like a lost boy she wanted to save.”
By coincidence, at the time when Bruno had taken Jaxson on, his wife had just had a second miscarriage, Bruno and she were heartbroken. When she lost her unborn baby, she gravitated toward Jaxson, and cared for him as her own. As a consequence, both Jaxson and the MC flourished.
“Fed you and washed your clothes till you got on your feet, you remember?”
Fucking great…he was bringing guilt into this?
Bruno continued, “Took you in, accepted you as our own, brought you into my own home to eat at my own table. Let you never forget!” he said, firmly. “God rest her soul.” With that, Bruno bowed his head.
“I’ll never forget,” Jaxson replied. He rested his head on his hand, his eyes dropped down to the desk, feeling numb as he remembered the woman whom he had loved like a mother. And she had loved him as a son – as her eldest son.
There was only one problem with that perfect and rosy picture – it was false! It hardly needed to be pointed out that Antonio loathed that affection; he felt Jaxson had taken his place in the family. Aware of his mistakes when he came to work for Bruno’s club, Antonio blamed his limitations on a lack of attention from his parents. He felt Jaxson had stolen that away from him in the early days of the club; it was all Jaxson’s fault that he was far less capable.
Who could blame him? After all, Bruno and his late wife both fanned the flames and basked in the glow of the club’s love affair with their new superstar –Jaxson. The result of this constant onslaught of affection was deep and bitter jealousy; the symptoms – Antonio’s violent outbursts and uncooperativeness. Then, adding fuel to the fire, he wasn’t even considered in the run-up to the election to be president of his own family’s club.
“Antonio sure is lucky that he’ll have you around when I’m gone. The kid never was the same since his mother died,” Bruno remarked.
Jaxson suppressed an eye roll. Kid? He was 25 years old – Jaxson was more of man as a 17-year-old prospect than Antonio was even today. Antonio didn’t want to live in the adult world; he was all about having a good time, and Jaxson hated that type of laziness.
The faint sound of muffled shouting came from the other room. It didn’t sound like shouting, but it had to be—to be heard all the way from the office. They didn’t have to guess who it was.
The pair peered through the gaps in the interior blinds.
Antonio had Kelsey’s arm gripped tightly between his fingers. He had that unnerving look of mad-man-like aggression on his face he would get right before he erupted explosively. Lunging over the bar, he yelled violently, pointing his finger at Marco - one of the clubs most loyal and original members.
Unfazed, Marco shook his head and buried his hand in his pocket, searching for his cigarette box, and walked outside for a smoke.
Such blow-ups happened often.
Antonio was a pit-bull terrier of a man that Jaxson was beginning to rightfully despise.
Bruno spoke with a stoic coldness, “As we’ve seen, Antonio makes mistakes; limited by his brains, experience, and lack of drive. And the price we have paid for these mistakes is steep. I know he felt pushed-aside when you joined my family ten years ago. I can see where his obsession with you comes from, and it’s easy enough to understand. You took his place in my heart, in my wife’s heart and now, in my MC. As bad as that is, the bottom line is that my club needs to survive. My family’s legacy needs to survive. And that, Jaxson, is worth more than a few hurt feelings on anyone’s part.”
Although he barely had a high school education, Bruno was a smart man who knew an awful lot about an awful lot. Early on, he’d gotten the sense that Antonio would never make the cut.
“I could never turn over the club to Antonio without destroying the MC I have worked so hard to build up. You have served my family just as faithfully as any son would, Jaxson.”
“How do you think Antonio will react if I become president?” Jaxson finally spoke. “I can’t sit here and bury my head in the sand, pretending I don’t think he’ll be out for me with a vengeance.” Jaxson felt sure that somewhere along the line – Antonio’s long-standing feud with him would come to blows and if anything were the perfect catalyst, it would be the election. Death may be an inevitable result.
Bruno paused, thoughtfully, knowing precisely what Jaxson was getting at. “Antonio knows just as well as the rest of us do that you’re the only one capable of taking my place. What possible satisfaction could he gain from having you injured, or worse? A dead president after all, is hardly going to provide a functioning MC - with the employment and protection on which he relies.” Bruno had implicit faith that his son would be forced to settle down and face reality soon enough.
“So how do we put a stop to this?” Jaxson signed heavily…they’d been here before.
“For now, keep him busy. When you’re working as president, he won’t have so much time at his disposal to cause trouble.”
“And if he can’t live with that, then what?”
Bruno took a breath. “If any club brother eliminates his president, he dies himself. Club law stands for us all. Like the rest of us, Antonio knows that.” On that sobering note, he took a large gulp of whiskey.
Jaxson didn’t doubt Bruno’s word
for a second. After Bruno’s wife had passed, his first love became his club. Bruno had been a great man to the guys; but he was a merciless leader, who’d hunted down and killed every last man who crossed his boundaries. The MC club worldview touched on matters of life and death—that’s just the way it was.
“Look, you’re a good man Jaxson, and you’ve have made me so proud. I need you to keep them in line while I’m not around. The boys like and respect you.”
Jaxson shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Fuck! What a monumental mistake that was.
De Luca gave him an icy stare in warning. His voice rose, “It’s your duty to your club.” He hit one hand on the desk; but with his strength, it unintentionally, made a loud slam. “It’s your duty to preserve the club that saved you; the club that raised you!” he ordered.
“Boss…” Jaxson interrupted, in a mild panic.
“I won’t be around forever. You are the one capable of taking my place…I won’t let nobody make a fucking mess of my club.”
Jaxson had rarely seen this man lose it. But hell, he was close. It started to get a little unnerving.
With his breathing deeply, his voice sounded shaky. “I need to know that my brother’s legacy will be safe.” Exhaling deeply in frustration, Bruno gazed up at the pictures on the office wall again. This time, he stared fondly at the largest frame in the center at the portrait of Charlie, his late brother. “If it weren’t for that man, guys like you wouldn’t have a home.”
Jaxson nodded; he knew Bruno was right.
Before Charlie’s death, the De Luca crime family never had an associated MC. It meant, there was no club to defend and protect their territory like their enemies had. Which put them at risk; as was made devastatingly evident on the night of 12th December 2008, at Charlie De Lucas’ cigarette operation, a warehouse which lay just outside the border of the San Bernardino, the territory of the Blood and Bones MC.
The warehouse, which stood on the meeting point of three crime family’s borders, was struck by an attack by the Blood and Bones from Tijuana who rolled into town and torched the place. It devastated the building, the operation, and the entire workforce of his staff. Charlie lost everything he had worked his life for. Then, at ten minutes to midnight on that date, Charlie suffered a catastrophic attack – assassinated – in his own home, by no less than the Blood and Bones club’s President.
Broken, but not weakened, Bruno had blood in his eyes ever since.
Bruno shook his head. “Played his game on the right side of the law his whole life and what did he get for it? Karma hit my family like a bitch.”
In the spring that followed that winter’s night, Bruno along with six other members of the crime family met and formed the Black Devils MC in his brother’s honor. Only four of those original patch members remained today. They vowed to defend the De Luca Family and the town in which they lived against such wholly unpredictable attacks. And they vowed revenge on the Blood and Bones MC. A colossal retaliation was plotted. When it came to Bruno, you could count on that.
Ten proud and prosperous years on, the notorious Black Devils MC had claimed stake over a much wider area. Bruno’s whiskey operation ran across 15 miles of docks and shipyards. It employed the brothers and hundreds of residents of the town indirectly. Bruno not only brought great wealth but great protection to himself and Coronado.
Changing the subject to something pleasant, Bruno asked, “You remember the day I found you?”
Jaxson nodded. “Like it was yesterday…two weeks after you formed the club.” He smiled.
Bruno sat back down; hands steepled as he cocked a brow at Jaxson and gave a rare smile. “That car you stole was totalled!” Bruno broke into laughter.
Jaxson bit his lower lip in embarrassment.
“Yep, I remember, kid, you raced into my compound –terrified – lights and sirens blaring behind you.”
Jaxson nodded. “I’d have got locked up inside if it weren’t for you and Marco that day. I was on my final strike with the cops. I’d have been facing the state pen if you hadn’t have been there.”
“You would have been out on your ears with your mom too. She was going to kick you out, you remember?” Bruno chuckled in his throat and leaned back in his chair as he felt himself start to relax. “Still remember the surprise on your face when I police officer let you off. ‘Mr. De Luca’, you called me from that day on. It took you three years for you to call me Bruno.” He stared at Jaxson thoughtfully. “And you sure were fearless even then. Carjacked that GM before you even knew how to drive. Knew on the spot your club name would be Jax. After that, I turned Jason Coltrane, the young rebel-without-a-cause, into the notorious Jaxson Coltrane of the Black Devils MC. You’re damn lucky I spotted your potential; don’t think you would have ever liked life on the straight and narrow,” Bruno added with a look of smug satisfaction on his face.
Jaxson nodded again. He had often wondered what his life would be like had he not joined; the life of the Black Devils was all he knew. His mother warned that he was ‘selling his soul to the devil’ but Jaxson had never regretted his decision.
Bruno continued, “Saw myself in you from day one. I’ve always had an eye for raw talent. I had only wished over time, my Antonio would emerge as something greater.” He paused and looked down at the desk for a moment. “Well, that apple fell a little further from the tree. It’s hard on my heart to say it but…” He took a deep breath. “What can I say? He’s my son, and I love him. And I wish there were another word.” He shrugged his shoulders, dismissively. “I can’t risk sacrificing everything I have built here.”
The truth was, Jaxson knew as well as any of the brothers that he and Bruno were uncannily alike. And, as president, Antonio would make too many errors for the club to function.
“Want another drink?” Bruno poured them both a double. He took another swig of whiskey. “I know you’re smarter than to throw away everything you have worked so hard to achieve. You’ve honored your commitment of loyalty you made to me ten years to this day, and now I am going to repay my debt to you, Jaxson Coltrane. My club will be your club come Friday, with a nice fat pay check I should add. And you sure could use a new bike to match your impressive new job title, courtesy of the company of course.”
Shit. This guy knew how to sweet-talk a person.
“When my boys vote you in, the first thing I’ll do is get you heading all local operations. You know the business forward and backward.”
“Sure, boss,” Jaxson agreed as he bowed his head slightly and stared down at his drink. “And, what about Antonio – you think he’ll be mad?” He picked up his whiskey and sipped it again.
Bruno exhaled hard and leaned forward toward Jaxson. “The club needs to be my priority, and it wouldn’t be safe in his hands. He’ll just have to live with that.”
“I understand.”
“You’ve done an excellent job for me, worked harder than anyone else to make this club something I’m proud of. Anyone else would be...” he paused. “…Unsatisfactory. The bottom line is that this club won’t survive without the likes of you and me. This is your time Jaxson,” Bruno stated with conviction.
Jaxson’s eyes fell to the desk again, for what felt like a brief moment.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.” Bruno opened the door and paused, then gave a quick glance back at him. “Make sure the guys know their jobs for Thursday.” His voice fell back to its usual emotionless and militant tone. “And keep them out of the pub on Wednesday night. I don’t want any mistakes because they’re still hung over.”
‘Of course,’ Jaxson responded.
On that order, Bruno turned and walked out.
Chapter Four
The whole situation was one fucked up mess.
Jaxson felt as if he would let Bruno and his brothers down if he didn’t take the role as president, which would put the future of the club at risk. The issue was… should he take the position, he knew
the consequences that followed might be even worse. All the things that would constitute warning signs had already occurred. Whether Antonio blew today, next week, or next month, he would be out to get him for sure. With Jaxson as president, Antonio would be a dangerous man with nothing to lose.
Jaxson stayed inside the office a few minutes longer to gather his thoughts and prepare for the interrogation Antonio would throw his way. He heard the steel latch clatter as the main door slammed shut behind Bruno.
After a few minutes, Jaxson emerged from the office into a room that felt unnervingly tense. The men sat in silence until the sound of Bruno’s engine had left the parking lot. As soon as Bruno rolled out of the lot, Antonio lit up a cigarette and sat on the arm of the couch where Jaxson had been – waiting. His dark eyes squared-down on Jaxson. His free hand clenched into a fist by his side, as he tried to resist the urge to fly at him in a fury.
Fuck.
Antonio was already dangerously worked up.
Dino and Jaxson exchanged a look. They knew they needed to leave before he got out of control.
Too fucking late.
He stormed up close to Jaxson. His clothes smelled strongly of motor oil and gasoline. Pissed as hell, he sneered through gritted teeth, “Guess you’re President now. Guess we don’t even have a say in this. Guess I don’t even have a say in this.”
His words caused everyone in the room to still.
Jaxson kept his voice level as he replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. None.” Jaxson turned his attention to the group, “We need to be ready for the shipment on Thursday. Whiskey is passing through and we’re going to have to be careful. No going out to the bar the night before or it’s my neck on the line, am I clear fellas?”
Everyone nodded.
Everyone except Antonito, he looked livid. “You heard damn well what I just said! What the hell did my father just say to you?” His voice a warning now.
Dino interjected, “You need to learn when to shut your fucking mouth,” he shouted, defending Jaxson.