Cole

by Trent Jordan

  “And you think that instantly makes me evil?”

  I couldn’t believe I was about to defend my family name.

  “You think that just because I have the last name Sartor, I can’t be trusted?” I said. “My father has done many terrible things, but he didn’t raise me to be like him. If anything, he tried as hard as hell to raise me to be the opposite of him. He sheltered me and closed me off from the world to a fault. He’s not…”

  I could see Cole’s anger rising, and while he didn’t seem violent, I still had too many concerns warning me about the violent and sadistic tendencies—real or not—of the Black Reapers. I bit my lip and shut the hell up.

  “I am trying to be calm and rational here,” he said. “But your father, let’s see, killed my brother’s fiancée, our club chaplain, multiple others, incited action that led to the death of another Black Reapers officer, has been a malicious, evil thorn in the side of the Carters for years… With all respect to you, Lilly, you are presumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent.”

  “I know.”

  Cole recoiled, leaning his head back in surprise.

  “Why do you think I ran away? It wasn’t to run to you or anyone else in this town. It was to go somewhere where the name ‘Sartor’ didn’t elicit fear.”

  Cole folded his arms and drew a deep breath.

  “I guess it sucks to grow up in a household like that, huh? Where your own name…”

  There was something about Cole’s words, something in his face that told me there was more to this story than he was letting on.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Tell me about your father. Tell me what we don’t know. Maybe it’ll help all of us.”

  I nodded. Cole walked over and sat on the opposite end of the couch from me. I scooted back to make room, but there was definitely a part of me—the lustful side I’d never let free—that wanted to scoot forward and just see what happened. Fear prevented me from doing that, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some desire there.

  “Well, my father has always been doting and caring, but for the first, say, half of my life, my mother was around to balance him out,” I said. “Well, that’s a bit of a misnomer. Dad was controlling wherever he went, but he wasn’t around the house that often, so Mom got to take care of things. But it was so stressful whenever he was around. I always worried he would hit her or get into loud arguments with her. And then, ten years ago, Mom died.”

  Cole genuinely looked sad for me. It was kind of sweet. It didn’t erase that he’d gone through my stuff, but I could probably—probably—put aside the idea of him being a cold-blooded killer.

  “Once my Mom died, Dad became unpredictable. One moment, he would be affectionate and give me anything I wanted, no questions asked; the next, he could be cruel and say that I would never live up to the standards he had set. In such a weird way, I got everything I wanted and nothing I needed. I had a Tesla at the house, I had the opportunity to travel, but I never had the freedom to do things on my own. Even when I got away for a bit, it was with the understanding that... I was like a leashed dog, that I could wander out some, but I’d get yanked back if I got too far away.”

  I didn’t say this part out loud, but it was also true that I was so controlled and sheltered that I hadn’t even had this conversation with anyone before. I guess I just felt a sort of ease with Cole that was, frankly, completely unexpected.

  “I never even considered college. My father would try and justify it by saying I had all the money and care I ever needed, so why would I need college? But my father... I just wished he recognized that I needed some struggle and some challenges in my life.”

  Cole nodded, scratched his beard, and sighed. Something about the story seemed to have registered with him—but what?

  “Well, I appreciate you sharing that with me, and I’m sorry you had to go through that,” he said. “What else can you tell me about him? Anything at all.”

  I opened my mouth but paused.

  He wasn’t asking because he was concerned about me, at least not as his primary motive.

  He was asking so he could use that knowledge to kill my father.

  My father was not a good man. In fact, he probably deserved significant jail time for what he had done. But to be killed? In cold blood? That... something about that would never sit right with me. Even if it was proven that my father had murdered dozens or even hundreds of people... maybe I was too much of a pacifist for my own good, but I could not be OK with Cole murdering my father.

  “Why do you ask?” I said.

  Cole fidgeted on his side of the couch.

  “If you want the truth…”

  But he didn’t finish, not immediately. I got tired of this waiting game.

  “I’m not going to give you anything that you can use to kill my father.”

  “I understand,” Cole said. “But part of the deal with keeping you here and giving you a plane ticket to anywhere you want in the country is that you would tell us information. And…”

  Cole looked so pained having to speak like this. So why did he?

  “If you’re not going to tell me anything that I can use in our mission, then I can’t let you stay here. I can’t protect you.”

  I shook my head. Of course. I should have known. Maybe Cole did genuinely care for my well-being, but not at the cost of my father being murdered.

  “Please, Lilly,” he said. “I don’t want you going back out there. It’s dangerous.”

  Really. Really? Cole was going to talk to me like that?

  “You think I don’t know that?” I said. “You think I’m some damsel in distress who just came to mooch off of you? You’re out of your damn mind.”

  “No, I don’t,” Cole said, raising his hands. “You’re a grown woman, obviously. You know what you’re doing. But your father will be hunting for you. And you knew when you came with us that we were going to ask for information.”

  “And maybe I changed my mind,” I said, although I knew that was just petty. “Maybe I just don’t want to take part in this continued feud between your two clubs, since it has only resulted in more deaths.”

  “OK, look, let’s take a breath,” Cole said.

  He did just that. I watched him in silence. My anger was rising, and it was becoming more and more difficult to contain.

  “I asked you last night to tell me everything you know,” he said. “And in return, I would get you to wherever you wanted to go. I know you want to escape your father’s clutches. I know that you feel suffocated by him. I’ll make sure that you escape Southern California before anything happens. Before we so much as get within a mile of your father, you’ll be on a plane to Texas, Florida, New York, whatever. But I’m only going to do it if you tell me more about your father.”

  “So you can kill him.”

  Cole gulped but never took his eyes off of me.

  “Yes.”

  At least he finally admitted to it.

  “And you’re convinced there’s no other way you can take care of the problem?” I said. “You can’t throw him in jail? You can’t ‘escort him’ to Mexico or something?”

  “I don’t mean this in a mean way, but Lilly, you know the answer to that.”

  I did.

  But still…

  Killing my father? Maybe I wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger, but I’d be the one putting Cole in a spot to pull the trigger.

  “I’m not telling you anything else,” I said. “Fix my phone so I can leave.”

  Cole exhaled loudly, looked down at the ground, and then looked back at me, his eyes growing stronger by the minute.

  “I’ll tell you how to fix your phone when you leave,” he said. “In the meantime, I need you to pack up and get ready. You’ve got one hour to leave. If you need help—”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said. “I don’t need an hour. I need a minute.”

  I stood up and stormed over to my bag, hurriedly putting things back together. This was stupid, and I kne
w it. I’d left half my stuff at the entrance to the neighborhood when I got on Cole’s bike. I didn’t have a functioning phone. I didn’t have the money to get a plane ticket out of LAX or any other nearby airport.

  I’d literally be a homeless girl, having to rely either on truck drivers to hitchhike with or sheer dumb luck to get me out of Southern California. I wasn’t so much walking out of a bad situation as I was walking into the worst possible one.

  But at least I’d have agency. At least I’d have freedom. At least I’d have options.

  I got all my shit together and stopped at the front door.

  “It’s too bad, Cole,” I said. “You seemed like a nice guy.”

  Cole gritted his teeth and groaned.

  “You’ll need to make sure the chip clicks into place when you put it back. Will probably need some help reattaching the casing.”

  “Seriously? Asshole.”

  And with that, I stormed out of Cole’s place.

  I’d already left one overbearing man. I didn’t need another.

  Even if Cole seemed like he had a lot of attractive qualities to him.

  Cole

  Watching Lilly leave tore at me.

  I was letting her go out right into the wilderness, right into the teeth of the wolves, and all for what? Because I’d tried to be the tough guy?

  Or was I being too harsh on myself now, and I just had to live with the consequences of what was the right action?

  This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the guy who tried to talk a tough game. That was Butch’s job, or maybe Axle’s. Phoenix, even.

  On the other hand, though, what had being gentle and kind gotten me? Expulsion from the Black Reapers. A year of isolation as I tried to figure out what to do. An only recent reunion, a very tenuous one at that, with my brother.

  I needed to learn how to be a man, how to stand up for myself, and how to be assertive... but I had to learn how to do so without being an asshole.

  And, at this point, it sure seemed like the only thing I had accomplished with sending the daughter of Lucius out to the wild was that she was bound to get hurt one way or the other. And if that wasn’t being an asshole, nothing was.

  A few hours later, I pulled up to the clubhouse for the Gray Reapers in Ashton, a spot where Lane and the Black Reapers, in a show of solidarity, had agreed to have their next meeting at. I got inside first, taking my seat at the table, but only by about two minutes. The sound of a cadre of motorcycles filled the air, and many of the Gray Reapers there took notice, their hands going to their guns and their shoulders tensing.

  “All good,” Phoenix yelled from the front. “It’s the Black Reapers.”

  I couldn’t tell if those words actually softened any of my club members or not. Hands didn’t stay on guns, but nothing else about their body language or posture relaxed at all.

  Axle and Butch entered first, followed by Patriot and Lane. I rose, offered my hand, and Lane took it.

  “Thanks for hosting,” he said. “Thought we were going to meet you in your church?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  Lane looked at Patriot, one eyebrow arched, no subtlety in his face.

  “This is a joke, right?” he said. “You have your meetings out in the open like this? Where everyone can hear?”

  I shrugged. I felt a little attacked, but I just reminded myself, “Assertion without being an asshole.”

  “It’s a choice I consciously made to allow for more transparency when I founded the Gray Reapers,” I said. “May not be for everyone, but it has worked for us.”

  What I didn’t tell Lane was that I was starting to question the approach too, and not just because many of the officers had expressed annoyance. Practically, it was hard to carry on club business when people were milling about, having other conversations, or coming in and out of the building. Strategically, too, while it hadn’t happened yet, it would have been a lot easier for someone to spy on us.

  I hadn’t given it up yet out of a sense of pride, but if the day came when the clubs reunited, this was something I was not going to push for very hard.

  “OK then,” Lane said, very obviously biting his tongue. “Well, let’s take a seat and start discussing.”

  Lane and I stood side by side, much as we had at the Black Reapers’ clubhouse. But otherwise, the look just didn’t inspire unity like I’d hoped it would. Instead of a room full of a bunch of officers in close proximity, here, half the people were so far out as to be meandering around.

  Attention spans were short, distractions were plentiful, and eyes wandered regularly. I hated to say “Lane was right” even after all the peace we had made, but... well, his side had a point.

  “We’ll report on what happened on our end of things first,” Lane said. “We attacked their compound. Took out four Saints. We suffered one casualty, but the member, Carl, is expected to live. No sign of Lucius there. I would expect retaliation soon, unless you have some news on your end, Cole?”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Well, as you all know, Patriot, Phoenix, and I split off into our own unit to go and attack the Sartor house to try and end this war.”

  I still had given no thought beyond what we’d discussed when we picked up Lilly to what I would actually say.

  “Unfortunately, though, when we got there, Lucius was not there. In fact, no one, aside from a couple of Saints that Patriot and Phoenix managed to kill without trouble, was there. It was a missed opportunity, but I don’t know how we could have done any better. I think it’s an idea worth repeating.”

  “You don’t think Lucius will see his two guards killed and start to rev up his defenses?” Lane said.

  I had given no thought to this. My head was so far up my ass with this Lilly situation that I had paid hardly any attention to club business.

  “I mean, I’m sure that if you got attacked at your place, you’d be beefing up reinforcements,” I said. “When we found out about Red Raven…”

  I stopped myself. The last thing we needed was more internal strife, especially with everything coming to a head. I looked to Phoenix, who merely had bowed his head but done nothing more—probably because if he had, old tensions would have flared up.

  “In any case,” I said. “We managed to kill a couple of guards, but that’s it.”

  My eyes caught Patriot’s long enough to know he’d keep his mouth shut, but that wasn’t the issue.

  The issue was that Lane was staring at me, and I could not bring myself to look into his eyes. What did it say that at a time when the two of us needed to come together and be truthful with each other, I was continuing to lie?

  What did it say that I had arguably the most important civilian in this town for a full night... and I had gotten nothing noteworthy out of her?

  It would be the same old story. Cole, the failure. Cole, the little brother who needed Lane to take care of everything. Cole, the guy who had to resort to desperate measures to find a woman.

  Cole, the loser.

  I suppose my actions said I would rather lie than be seen as that loser.

  Some leader I was, huh?

  “Well, that sucks, but it is what it is,” Lane said.

  We spent a couple more minutes discussing what our next plans were before eventually deciding that we would take no further action for the moment, needing some time to think about our next strike. I banged the table to signal the end of the meeting.

  But when I tried to rise, Lane—quietly—asked me to remain behind. Never had I so wished that we had a private church where people wouldn’t overhear us.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said.

  Even that drew curious eyes. An open church worked great right up to the point where it affected me negatively. And then…

  I gotta stop doing this. Just because things with Lilly were odd and confusing and weird.

  We moved to the back of the clubhouse.

  “What really happened last night?” Lane said.

  I pursed my lips, s
hrugged, and looked up into my brother’s eyes.

  “I said what happened,” I said. “We got there, we took our two guards, and we saw nothing of Lucius.”

  Lane folded his arms and waited to see if I’d say anything more. I felt like my heart was going to beat so fast, it would just give out. The peace between us felt so tenuous, and for all that we’d been through, for all the lives we had lost... if we let it go to waste because I couldn’t admit the truth about a woman…

  Well, we’d be right back to where we started with this shit, wouldn’t we?

  “Cole,” Lane said, painfully trying to keep his voice calm. “I’m very happy to see you being more assertive. I think we can both say that we’ve done a lot of growing up in the past year and a half, and I think Dad would be proud of us.”

  He would have been. In Lane.

  “But I still know when you’re hiding something to avoid stirring the pot,” Lane said. “All three of you are alive and unharmed, so clearly it’s not that one of you died. That’s good. But I need to know what happened so we can plan accordingly. Can you please tell me everything? Even something that you may think is insignificant?”

  The problem was, “I took the daughter of our greatest enemy home and I think I’m attracted to her and I let her go without getting any information out of her,” was far from insignificant.

  Actually, it was pretty damn shitty on my part. It would have reflected a complete lack of growth.

  The number of reasons not to say anything—that Lilly was great, that I’d let Lilly go, that Lilly hadn’t actually provided any information for whatever reason, that I wasn’t sure Lilly even had any good information to provide—far, far, far outweighed the reasons to say anything.

  Plus... stupid to say, but I didn’t like the idea that Lane would forever be the one to check on me and lord over me. I wanted us to be equals, and in a lot of ways, we were, but this very conversation was undermining that. Why did I have to be the one answering to Lane all the time? Why couldn’t Lane answer to me for once?