Nodding my understanding, I shot Saint a look and saw he was watching me. Jerking my chin at him, I beckoned him over.
“Can we go somewhere private without causing trouble?”
I whispered the words in her ear, because Black Sabbath suddenly roared through the speakers. I didn’t wince at the change of volume—I’d heard shit far louder than this, I’d been born rocking to this music, but Kenzie did. Kenzie’d been reared like me, and yet, this music had her flinching.
The hell?
What had the bastard done to my sister? My pain in the ass, sabe-lo-todo sister?
“Yeah, come with me,” she whispered back, and pushing her hand into mine in a move that made me wonder if she’d been taken over by a pod person, because Kenzie had never held my hand before, yet, here she was, dragging me through the dense crowd of partiers.
Surreal.
We passed a pool table that had clubwhores snorting blow as brothers fucked them from behind. Far as I could tell, the game was the bitches had to snort it faster than the guys could ram into them—and mess up their perfect lines.
Behind them, on a grimy wall, was a dart board that a cluster of brothers were throwing darts at. When we passed it, I saw Lucifer, Ama’s grandfather, studying us with narrowed eyes.
Because I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, and if I thought about it, I’d know it would be nothing good, I just tipped my chin at him and kept my face blank before I turned to my sister, pretending that she’d said something to me that I needed to listen to.
With Saint at my back, we headed out of the common room of the Knights’ clubhouse, and made it into a hall. There were all kinds of club paraphernalia lining it, and Kenzie didn’t stop dragging me down the corridor until she opened a door.
Half expecting this to be her place, I was surprised to see it was an empty bedroom—probably for high-ranking visitors. Prospects like myself, and Saint who, though a brother, was too newly patched to have any merit, would have to camp out in the common room for the night.
It was plain but clean, and that was pretty good from some of the horror stories my dad had told me when he was on runs up the East Coast and spent the night at friendly MC clubhouses.
“What the fuck, Kenzie?” Saint bellowed. I’d have told him to watch his tone, but I understood it. If ever there was a woman who you’d never think would allow herself to be beaten, it was Kenzie.
And I knew that made me sound like an outright bastard, but fuck, you had to know Kenzie to understand what I meant.
She was the kind who, in school, had sneered at girls if their boyfriends had hurt them. Had shouted loud and clear that she was a feminist, for fuck’s sake. Yet, here she was, beaten, pregnant, and cowed.
I wanted to fucking cry for her, truly I did, but instead, I had to fix this because if my dad found out about this shit? More than he already knew? Christ, he’d be serving a longer sentence for beating a fellow prisoner up just to burn off some of his wrath.
Kenzie whimpered at Saint’s bellow, and I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose at the sound my intrepid sister should have never had to make.
“P-Please, help me,” she whispered, her eyes too large in her pale face.
“I can’t believe he’s beating on you when you’re pregnant,” Saint rasped, his words like mine, his tone just as perplexed.
This life was hard, and not every brother treated his woman right, but fuck, when she was pregnant? That was a lack of respect just compounding a total and utter lack of respect.
If I could have beaten the fuck out of Hex without starting shit between our clubs, I would.
I fucking would.
But I couldn’t.
I was nothing, no one, in this world yet. The second I went to Hex and tried to start something, his brothers would be on me, and then mine would be on me too, hauling me back and away from the fight.
As Saint and Kenzie talked—Saint more than Kenzie who was monosyllabic which was crazy because she’d always been an outspoken pain in my butt—I figured out a play I could make.
It was a pussy move, but fuck, I had to do something, and this was the only way.
Reaching into my jeans pocket, I grabbed my cell. Leaning against the door, I kept an ear cocked for any movement in the hall as I sought Ama’s number.
“Keys? What’s wrong?”
The panic in her voice the second she answered had my jaw clenching. I knew she had to think something bad had happened to me or Saint or a brother, but it was nothing like that.
“Babe, it’s okay. We’re all good. I need a favor.”
“A favor?” That she sounded perplexed was a given.
“Yeah,” I rasped. “Kenzie’s at your granddaddy’s clubhouse.”
A sharp, indrawn hiss was her initial response. “What on earth? Why? I thought she ran away.”
“She did,” I said gruffly. “With a Satan’s Knight.”
“What?” she squeaked. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Only found out recently,” I admitted. “When I went and saw my pop.”
Her silence told me she was upset, and that was like a knife to my heart. Saint and I did our best to stop anything from hurting Ama, and here I was, hurting her by being secretive.
“I’m sorry, Ama, but my dad insisted it stay private.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew shit could hit the fan if your dads were involved.”
“I don’t understand.”
I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t have any explanations that would appease her, not when I’d kept things quiet for one of my usual reasons—to keep her free from worries—and I was dealing with a time sensitive issue so now wasn’t the best moment for an argument on my inability to share shit I thought would cause her concern.
“Kenzie’s pregnant, babe.” I sucked down a breath. “And he’s beating her. He’s beating her bad, Ama. She’s got bruises on top of bruises and she’s, what?” I turned to my sister. “Six months gone?” I’d been around enough pregnant females to know the signs.
Kenzie bit her lip before she nodded and bowed her head like she was ashamed.
Christ, she had nothing to be ashamed about.
She was young, we all were. We made mistakes, but hers had put her in danger at the hands of someone who should have protected her.
If anyone should feel shame, it was her fucker of an old man.
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Six months gone.”
“Oh, my,” Ama breathed. “How could he? I mean, how could he anyway, but still…”
“I know. Trust me. Same thought process. I’d want to ram a knife in his throat whether she was pregnant or not. But now? I want to ram it in, twist it, then make him eat it.” My nostrils flared with irritation, and when Kenzie began to weep behind me, I seriously felt like bashing my head into the door. Instead, I rubbed my eyes and mumbled, “I need you to help me, Ama.”
“Sure.”
Her lack of hesitation, the immediacy of her answer, had something inside me sighing. God, this woman…
“What can I do? Keys?” she prompted, when I remained silent.
“I need you to call your granddaddy and explain that I’ll be taking her home with me.”
She fell silent a second. “Is she an old lady?”
“Yeah.”
We both knew the ramifications of what I was asking, but she still murmured, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Ama.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Keys. If it were down to me, I’d just tell you to haul her out of that damn place, but—”
“It isn’t. I know. Just try to work your wiles on your grandfather, yeah?”
“I’ll do my best.”
And because it was Ama, I knew some people’s best were her ‘worst.’ For me, she’d go above and beyond thanks to a loyalty that had been forged when we were both kids.
“Thanks, babe,” I rasped into the receiver, and cut the call before I started to get fucking teary
-eyed. But Jesus, Kenzie’s tears? They were loaded with her desperation.
She needed my help, and it killed me that I might not be able to give it to her.
I wanted to ask myself what my dad would do, but I had a feeling I knew. There was a reason this wasn’t his first time in jail. He had a habit of getting charged for aggravated assault, but I didn’t intend to spend my first year as an adult in jail. Call me a pussy, but I just didn’t.
There had to be a rational way around this, and I was just praying that Ama would help me find it.
❖
Ink
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Ama peered at me from over the book she was reading. It was a health and safety docket that she’d have to study up on before she could even think about doing anything other than admin at the tattoo parlor.
There were certain legalities we always abided by, and health and good practices were it. You could eat your dinner off the floor in my parlor, that was how spotless it was.
Some people might think that because Black Ink was managed by the MC, that we cut corners. But that definitely was not the case. Not only because we had to be law-abiding citizens where it was concerned, but I actually gave a fuck about my work, about my clients, and about the ship I ran.
“Just had a weird call from Keys,” Ama mumbled, her frown puckering her brow with a severity that had me wanting to rub it away.
“What kind of weird call? He’s on a run, isn’t he?”
She nodded. “Kenzie’s at the Knights’ clubhouse.”
My eyes widened. “That’s his sister, right?”
“Yeah. She’s one of the brothers’ old ladies. He’s beating her.”
“Jesus.” I had a particular hatred for wife beaters. My own father had beat on my ma when I was a kid, and the first time I was big enough to defend her without him beating me blue, I’d knocked him out and taken great pleasure in doing so.
Fuck, I’d wanted to do more. I’d have stabbed him if the sight of her old man on the ground hadn’t had my mother screaming at me like I was the one in the wrong.
A battered wife’s relationship with her abuser was beyond complicated. But in an MC? Especially when that shit went into another club? It was more than that.
I hated saying it, hated it with a passion because I knew what it was like to be reared in that environment, but I had to say it anyway. As a councilor, my hands were tied. “You need to leave it alone.”
Her eyes widened. “No!”
Rubbing my chin, I rasped, “Either that or you get your dad involved.”
She shook her head from side to side. “No. I can handle this. I just need to speak with granddaddy.”
Releasing a heavy sigh, I told her, “You know how it works.”
“I do, and it sucks,” she growled. “No way is it right that a brother can do whatever the fuck he wants to his old lady with no repercussions.”
I raised my hands. “You’re preaching to the converted here, Ama. My dad beat my mom, so you’re not going to hear me defending the fuckers who use their fists against a woman.”
“Your mom was beaten by your dad?” she breathed, her distress evident.
“Yeah. She was. I was beaten for a while too. Until I got big enough to stop him.” I cleared my throat, wishing it was that easy to rob myself of the memories. “I don’t think your granddaddy will be able to do much, Ama.”
“He has to. She’s pregnant.”
I shook my head. “He’s seen that. Will have seen the bruises. And he hasn’t done anything yet, has he?”
I hated to disillusion her, but what I was saying was the truth. It was a shitty truth, but it was a truth, nonetheless.
Her hand was shaking as she raised her fingers to her lips. When she covered her mouth, I knew she did that so I couldn’t see the tremor there.
Reaching over, I patted her knee. “Call him,” I urged, even though I knew it was futile. “See what he has to say. I could be wrong.”
Starkness puddled in her eyes. “We both know you’re not,” she mumbled from behind her hand. “I just—I can’t believe he’d turn a blind eye to something like that.”
Sadly, it wasn’t all that uncommon. Not that I rubbed salt in her wounds.
Kicking my feet apart, I slipped off my bed where I’d been laid out, reading a magazine with an article on the late, great Lyle Tuttle—a tattoo artist who’d been beyond epic. Getting to my feet, I crossed the room and sank into the sofa where she’d been sitting, her calves propped up on the armrest as she chilled with me.
These moments where we just hung out were some of the most restful of my life. They’d started when she was seventeen, and they’d always been innocent. I’d never have broken her or her fathers’ trust by doing anything so fucking vile as coming onto her like that. But I knew she found a strange sense of peace when she was with me.
This had all begun when Lucie had taken her to a shrink, and the shrink had suggested I come along. We’d been doing sessions together for a few years now, me only heading in with her a couple of times a year, but ever since, I’d seen, with my own eyes, how her behavior changed when I was around. So, though many would think it weird, I’d never discouraged her from hanging out with me.
Sure, it cramped my style to have a teenager hanging on to my cut, but this was Ama.
I’d never believed in that bullshit about falling in love at first sight. And in this instance, it was BS. I’d known her since she was five and her mom had traveled across Texas to bring her home to the clubhouse. But the first moment I’d recognized her as an adult?
Yeah, that was when I’d fallen.
And apparently, her fathers were in the know.
The second I was close enough, she raised her head and settled it on my lap. I began to play with her hair, stroking it back from her forehead as she tapped her phone, set it on speaker, then waited for her grandfather to answer.
“Had a feeling I’d be hearing from you or your momma tonight,” Lucifer grumbled—but we called him Martin around the MC. Mostly because it was confusing as fuck to have two Lucifers around.
“If you knew, then why didn’t you do something,” she growled, and there was silence on the phone, silence because I knew Martin wasn’t used to hearing that from his granddaughter.
Ama was a good girl.
The best.
She was soft-spoken, gentle. Delicate.
Until she wasn’t.
Few knew that side of her though. Few knew she had a temper, because it rarely came out to play. I’d seen it. A couple of times actually. Not just in therapy either.
Flame might not have been her biological father, but fuck, the fire that emanated from her was all him when she was in a rage.
“Hex is her old man. You know we can’t—”
“Can’t is bullshit, Granddad. You can’t let a woman be beaten by her old man just because we’re set in the fucking Stone Age—”
“Ama!” Martin sputtered, and if the situation hadn’t been so serious, I’d have laughed. As it was, I enjoyed the way she’d discombobulated her grandfather, all while I enjoyed her proximity and appreciated the silk of her hair against my fingers and palms. It actually calmed me, soothed my roiling mind as I thought about my mother, thought about Kenzie, and realized Ama was right.
Not that that came as a surprise. For one so young, she was incredibly mature. Most people just failed to spot that. Saw the stain of her past in a different light, treated it almost like they would a severe mental illness, when, instead, it made her more advanced than her years.
But in this, she was totally correct. Brothers were the opposite of perfect. We were in this lifestyle because we didn’t want to tread the path of goodness. We liked the dark too much. But I thought there was a special place in hell for the bastards who abused their old ladies.
“What? It’s true, Granddad. She’s being beaten, while she’s pregnant, and that’s just a level of degradation that is going to spiral even further. What ar
e you going to do when he accidentally hits her so hard it kills her? Feed her to the pigs? Use her as slurry for them when she’s the sister of my best friend?”
“How do you know about the pigs?” he ground out, and I was pretty much on board too, because I knew for a fact that her fathers tried to keep her out of the business as much as possible.
“Please,” she snarled. “I’ve watched Snatch, I know how these things work.”
“I highly doubt that, and I hope you don’t. This side of the life isn’t for you—”
“And I’m not meddling. Truly, I’m not. But this has nothing to do with business, and everything to do with one human being allowing another human being to be beaten. Grandfather, you have to stop him!”
There was such entreaty in her voice that I knew, point blank, Martin would find it impossible to deny her.
Ama wasn’t all good, even if that was the image she presented. Even in all the years I’d known her, I couldn’t say if even she knew the depths of her personality that Aaron Sanchez had plumbed out of her.
People thought she was good because she was quiet and she followed orders well. They mistook compliance for behaving appropriately. I even thought Ama believed that.
But being biddable because something made sense wasn’t the same thing as being good.
Ama had a streak of fire in her, a vein of independence that she’d probably learned at her mother’s breast. Lucie wouldn’t, couldn’t rear a child who was an angel. I didn’t give a fuck about Ama’s past, about how it had forged her—I knew, point blank, that there was more to Ama than met the eye.
And I couldn’t wait to meet every different facet of her.
Because, seeing her here, like this, fighting for a woman who—if memory served—hadn’t particularly liked Ama, made me inordinately grateful that I had her daddies’ permission to pursue this.
Rubbing a hand over my face to shake myself out of that line of thought, I tuned back into the conversation and instantly stiffened when she growled, “…do I need to come down there?”
Their Saint: Hell’s Rebel’s MC Part II Page 5