ANGEL_Lords of Carnage MC

by Daphne Loveling

  “Yeah!” Connor crows. “Cool!”

  “Are you really teaching our children to fling food, Smiley?” Jenna chides from the doorway.

  “Mom! It’s the way ferfessionals do it!” Mariana exclaims importantly.

  “Is it now?” Jenna replies, suppressing a smile. “Well, I’m guessing professionals also have people to clean up for them after they’re done.”

  A commotion outside stops all conversation. Samantha pops her head into the kitchen. “The men are back! Smiley, they need you. At least one of them is hurt!”

  All talk of spaghetti is forgotten as we rush out into the main room. Women and children run to their men. Anxiously, I look for Angel, and grow almost dizzy with relief when I spot him in the middle, looking unharmed. I take a quick mental count. It looks like all of the Lords are there, thankfully. Some of them are covered in dirt or look like they’ve been in a fight. Thorn’s off to one side, with Isabel clinging to him. His T-shirt and forearms are covered in blood.

  “Everything’s good,” Angel announces, his voice cutting through the cries and murmurs. “The run’s over. I’m still keepin’ us on lockdown for the next two days, but after that, you all should be able to go home.”

  “Jesus, boy, what happened to you?” Smiley booms as he saunters over to Thorn.

  “Just a little bit of a cut across the back. The other guy got the worst of it,” Thorn grins.

  “I’d hate to see him, then.”

  “You would indeed,” Thorn nods. A couple of the Lords laugh. Smiley, Thorn, and Isabel go into the back room so Thorn can be patched up. On the way out, Thorn calls to me: “Set us up with a round of shots, would yeh, darlin’? I’ll be out in a minute!”

  “Shots all around!” Beast booms.

  And just like that, I’m back behind the bar and it’s almost like the Lords never left. The mood among the men is raucous, and spirits are high. Whatever they set out to do, it sounds like they did it well.

  For the next twenty minutes or so, I’m so busy making drinks for the men that I barely have time to think. Each of them greets me warmly, and their happiness is contagious. By the time I get them all served, I’m grinning along with all of them.

  Jude comes up to me at the bar, and I see he seems to have been infected with the general mood, as well.

  “I’ll have the same,” he smirks, nodding toward Tank’s drink.

  “The hell you will,” I shoot back, but I’m grinning.

  “It was worth a shot,” Jude shrugs. “You know I drink, right?”

  “I know. But I don’t have to contribute to your delinquency.” I grab him a Coke and set it on the counter. “So. Sorry, but it sounds like we’re gonna have to stay here a couple more days.”

  “I don’t mind.” He snorts, one corner of his mouth lifting. “I mean, yeah, it’s a little weird not bein’ able to go outside. But, it’s not too bad here. There’s enough shit to do, so…”

  “Thanks for being so good with the kids,” I say sincerely. “Noah in particular seems to really like having you around.”

  Jude shrugs again, looking a little embarrassed. “He’s a pretty good kid.”

  “He reminds me of you, actually. Of you when you were little.”

  I say the words without really thinking. But instantly, Jude’s expression turns suddenly hard.

  “How the fuck would you know what I was like at that age?” he shoots back. His eyes narrow, his features rearranging themselves into the sullen teenager I’ve come to expect him to be.

  “No, I mean…” Desperately, I try again. “I meant, when I first met him, he reminded me of you back when… Well…” I feel trapped, like anything I say will be exactly the wrong thing. It will just bring us right back to why Jude is so justifiably angry: I wasn’t there for him at Noah’s age.

  “Jude, I’m sorry,” I croak out. “I really am. I…”

  “Hey, Jewel. Jude.” Angel appears at the bar.

  My stomach does a back-flip to see him there. I’ve been trying not to think about him all day — trying not to think about what would happen when he came back with the men, but praying that he would come back. I give him a shy smile, and open my mouth to greet him, but he cuts me off before I can say a word.

  “Jewel, pass me a bottle of beer, will you?” Angel grunts, his tone distant and dismissive. “Jude, I wanna talk to you for a second. Come outside with me while I have a smoke.”

  Angel’s eyes barely meet mine as I mutely open a bottle and hand it to him.

  “Uh, sure,” Jude stammers, clearly surprised by Angel’s request. Angel turns on his heel and walks toward the door without a backward glance. Jude, still angry with me, flashes me a scowl and follows him outside.

  Bewildered and heartsick, I watch them go. I don’t know what just happened, but I just managed to ruin any slight headway I’d made with my brother in over a month. And apparently Angel’s going to pretend that last night never happened.

  Of all the reactions I worried about while I was waiting for Angel to come back, somehow this one never even occurred to me, even though it was the most likely one. I should have known it meant absolutely nothing to him. Of course it didn’t. What kind of idiot am I, that I ever hoped for one second that it did?

  I just had sex with my hot-as-hell boss, and ruined years of solid employment with the club with one incredibly stupid, stupid decision.

  Fuck my life.

  18

  Angel

  Jude follows me outside. At the entrance, the Lord guarding the front door turns, stiffening, but relaxes when he sees it’s me.

  “We’re good, Hale,” I tell him. “I’m just goin’ out for a smoke. Takin’ Jude with me.”

  Hale narrows his eyes at Jude and gives him a look I can’t quite read, but doesn’t address him. “Sounds good, prez,” he nods, stepping back to let us pass.

  The night is mostly silent, except for the sounds of cars driving by in the distance. I walk through a pool of light made by one of our motion detector lamps and move off into the shadows. Leaning against the building, I grab my smokes and shake a couple of them out.

  “You smoke?” I ask Jude, holding the pack toward him. He squints at me for a second, then dips his chin once. “Thanks,” he mutters as he takes one.

  I pull my lighter out of my pocket and light up, then hand it to him. Jude fumbles a little, but gets it lit. He takes a long, exaggerated drag and blows it out. I have to stop myself from chuckling.

  “So, what you want to talk to me about?” he says. His voice is hard, suspicious. But hell, there ain’t no reason for chit-chat, so I just lay it out.

  “What are you doing with Krow Klan?”

  I can feel him tense up next to me. “How do you know about that?” he mutters.

  “I know everything that goes on in this town.” I wait a couple seconds for him to answer, but he’s silent. “Well?”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothing,” he says sullenly. “Just hangin’ out.”

  “Those shit-for-brains aren’t worth the clothes on their fuckin’ backs,” I rasp. “You can do one hell of a lot better than them for friends.”

  “Oh yeah?” His chin juts. “Like who? What do you want me to join, the fuckin’ Boy Scouts?”

  “There’s a fuck of a lot of daylight between the Boy Scouts and a piece of shit cut rate Neo-Nazi gang,” I bark. “Why the fuck you wanna get involved in that shit, Jude?”

  “What shit?” he says defensively. “We gotta protect ourselves. We got a right to protect our own.”

  “Our own what?” I snort. “You think you’re on some sort of mission to defend something with those jackasses? They couldn’t defend their own assholes with an AR-15.”

  “You don’t get it,” he retorts. “You don’t get shit.”

  My fists clench, but I tamp down the anger rising inside me. I push off from the wall and turn to face him. “Son, I’m gonna let that remark go, but only because you’re Jewel’s brother. But rule number fuckin’ one in this c
lubhouse is, you don’t fuckin’ disrespect the president.” I lean forward, my eyes boring into his. I’ve got about six inches on him, so he has to look up, but to his credit he doesn’t look away. “You got me?”

  His lips compress into a thin line. “Yeah,” he mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Good.” I break his gaze and lean back against the wall. “So, tell me what the fuck you think you’re doin’ with those assholes.”

  “Just hangin’ out!” he insists. He waves an angry hand, the ember of his cigarette dancing in the darkness. “I mean, it ain’t like I got anything else to fuckin’ do around here.”

  “How’d you meet those guys?”

  “Just… around.” Jude shrugs. “I was just hangin’ around downtown. One of them, Max, he was hangin’ around, too. We got to talkin’, and he asked me if I wanted to get high.” Jude stumbles on the last word, his eyes flicking toward mine uncertainly. “That’s all. Anyway, he introduced me to some of the other guys. It ain’t what you think! They’re cool.”

  “If it ain’t what I think,” I challenge, “then what’s this ‘We gotta protect our own’ bullshit?”

  “Look. You don’t understand. You already got a crew. You don’t know what it’s like. Back in Indiana, I had one. We had to defend ourselves, you know?”

  I scoff. “From what?”

  “From the gangs!” Jude’s voice rises in anger. “My fuckin’ best friend was killed in Gary!” he yells. “A bunch of black kids jumped him. He wasn’t doin’ anything! Just mindin’ his own business! They said he was in their territory. And they fuckin’ beat him up!” Jude turns and slams his fist against the wall. “He died in the hospital, man! So my crew, we went after them. We was gonna kill them all, but we got caught by the cops.”

  “Hold up. You got hauled in?”

  Jude shakes his hand angrily against the pain. “Yeah. They put me in juvie, and when I got out, my parents told me I was kicked out of the house. They put me on the fuckin’ bus here the next day.”

  “Huh.” I take a drag of my smoke, considering.

  “My parents don’t give a shit,” Jude snarls. “They just don’t want me around. Neither does Jewel.”

  “Jewel just doesn’t know what the fuck to do with you, man. She doesn’t want you gettin’ in trouble.”

  Jude rolls his eyes. “She doesn’t want me to fuckin’ live. I know I’m in her place and everything, but fuck, she even gets pissed if I have friends over.”

  I ignore that. “So your solution is the fuckin’ Krow Klan?”

  “Like I told you, you don’t know them! They’re not that bad.”

  “Have you even met Kane?” I challenge him.

  “No,” Jude admits after a second. “Not yet.”

  “Kane is a stupid piece of shit who recruits young kids because he ain’t tough enough to play with the big boys,” I growl. “He puts together this army of petty thugs with chips on their shoulders. They look up to him because they don’t know any better. He’s a small time thug, Jude. A wannabe. A baby piranha trying to get noticed in a big fuckin’ ocean full of sharks.”

  “How do you know anything about it?” Jude retorts.

  I snort. “I know a hell of a lot more than you do. Kane’s one of those chicken-shit types who’s too scared to get his own hands dirty. But he’s smart enough to know how to find people to do it for him. He gets white boys all worked up, tellin’ them how everybody’s out to get them and they gotta defend themselves.” I shake my head and toss my cigarette down in disgust. “And then once they’re good and mad, he sends them out to do shit that has nothing to do with any of that. He’s just a petty thief with a crew of dumbasses behind him to do all his dirty work. You stay with him, you’re just gonna get caught again. With your priors, you’ll get jail time. And Kane will walk scot free, like he always does. There ain’t no loyalty there, Jude. There ain’t no crew. No family. Just a bunch of slaves to a fuckin’ coward who uses racist bullshit like a dog whistle. And if you come runnin’, you’re just as dumb as the rest of them.”

  “I’m not dumb,” Jude mutters.

  “Then prove it.”

  “So I’m just supposed to not have friends. Sit around all day and not do a fuckin’ thing.”

  “Those aren’t your only two choices, Jude.”

  “Yeah?” He turns and squares his shoulders. “Then what are the other ones?”

  “You’ll figure it out. If you’re as smart as you say you are.”

  I lift my chin toward the door and he wordlessly follows me back to the clubhouse. Inside, I watch as he lopes away, shoulders tense and head down.

  I’m not sure if he really listened to me or not. As stupid as he was to get involved with Krow Klan, I can sympathize. I remember what I was like at that age. In a way, I wasn’t so different from him. My dad was off politicking and bein’ mayor. And even when he wasn’t, we rarely saw eye to eye on anything. My mom was dead. And Jenna was still just a kid, really. I felt pretty fuckin’ isolated myself. I was lucky, though. The Lords of Carnage became my family. I found a brotherhood. Men I could trust with my life.

  The fuckin’ Krow Klan, though? If Jude stays mixed up with them, Kane will screw up that boy’s head bad. He’ll end up in prison, or worse. And he won’t realize until too late that he was never anything but a fuckin’ pawn. That his “clan” was just a bunch of assholes who will turn on him the second their boss tells them to.

  I roll my neck and shoulders to ease the tension as I make my way toward the bar. Jewel is standing behind it, her back to me as she works. I’ve been puttin’ off seeing her since we got back from the run, trying to get my head straight so I won’t be tempted to take her back to my bed tonight. I remind myself of my promise to end the night with a bottle of Jack instead. But I do want to talk to her about Jude. Tell her what I know, even though it probably ain’t gonna make her very happy.

  “Barkeep,” I murmur, trying for humor.

  At the sound of my voice, Jewel starts, her body going rigid. Slowly, she turns to me, her face pale. “Yes?”

  “Bottle of Jack.”

  Jewel blinks once, her expression unchanging. Almost robotically, she bends down behind the counter and pulls one out. The bottom slams loudly on the counter as she plunks it down in front of me. “That it?” she asks in a clipped voice.

  “Shot glass.”

  She plunks one down next to the bottle, then drops her arm and looks at me, like she’s awaiting orders.

  Fuck. She’s pissed. And I don’t blame her. But that’s probably a good thing, even though it kind of slices through my gut to see it.

  I reach for the bottle and open it tiredly. “Thanks,” I say as I pour myself a shot.

  “Is that all you need?” Jewel sets her jaw and starts to move away.

  “No. I need to talk to you.”

  Jewel freezes. Her glance darts to my face, but don’t get all the way to my eyes. “What is it?”

  “It’s about Jude.”

  She pauses a beat. “What about him?”

  “I just had a talk with him outside. About Krow Klan.”

  She takes in a breath, her lips parting. “Oh,” she murmurs, her voice warming very slightly. “What did he say?”

  “Well, for one thing, he told me why your parents kicked him out. I guess one of Jude’s friends got killed by a gang who beat him up.” I decide to leave out the race part. “Apparently, Jude got caught with a gang of kids who were gonna go after them and kill them in retaliation.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jewel breathes, her eyes growing wide.

  “Yeah. I guess Jude got locked up in juvie for a bit, and when he got out, your parents didn’t want anything more to do with him. So they sent him to you.”

  Jewel lets out a sigh. “Of course,” she says, shaking her head. “That sounds just like something they’d do.” She snorts, her lip curling. “So, I guess they’re done with both of us.”

  “So, Jude never told you any of that?”

 
; “No. He never really tells me anything.” Jewel looks down at the counter, growing silent. Her lower lip slides between her teeth as she begins to worry it.

  “Noah reminded me so much of Jude when I first met him,” she continues softly. “I used to love babysitting him for Jenna and Ghost when he was little. It made me miss my brother a little less,” she blows out a sad breath. “Now Jude’s here, but he’s even further away in some respects.” Jewel turns her face toward mine and looks at me, her eyes full of sorrow. “I’m just so tired, Angel,” Jewel whispers. “I don’t know what to do for my brother. I know he needs something. I just don’t know what to give him.”

  I watch her bite that fuckin’ lip of hers, her breathing making her chest rise and fall as she struggles not to cry. A million goddamn emotions boil to the surface, and I have to fight to keep them down. I want to pull her to me, to kiss her forehead and tell her it’s gonna be all right. I want to move behind the bar, slip that little skirt up over thighs, and slide my cock deep inside her.

  Back it down, Angel. You gotta leave this girl alone. Jewel doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

  “I’m sorry, Jewel,” I say sincerely. And I mean it. I’m sorry all this shit her brother has her so upset.

  But in my head I’m also apologizing for last night. Because that shit never should have happened.

  “It’s not your fault,” she murmurs.

  But it is. Last night is my fuckin’ fault.

  One of the other brothers comes up to the bar. Jewel flashes me a sad smile before moving off to see what he wants.

  I watch her go, and wait for my dick to calm the fuck down.

  I can’t let myself make the same mistake with Jewel again.

  But suddenly, I realize there is something I can do. Something that’s within my role as president of this club.

  I can help Jewel by helping Jude.

  And that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

  19

  Jewel