by Trent Jordan
Lucius just shrugged.
“Would you rather have the devil you know, or take your chances with the one you don’t?”
Lane and I exchanged a look. Neither of us had the fucking slightest idea what he was speaking about. There were other clubs, yeah, but it wasn’t like Lucius was known to be in a network with others. Here, in Springsville at least, the world was very small, and even extending into Los Angeles, the Saints were like a lone island, a bunch of outlaws among outlaws, the bad boys who were too bad to be good of any kind.
“In any case, let us just say that it would behoove all of us if I lived,” he said. “But I recognize that you are all too shortsighted to recognize that you will not take the rational way out. So, instead, I have a simple proposal for you two. You Carters.”
He said the name with such venom, it might as well have been a slur. It was just as well. Our feeling for the name “Lucius” was equally contemptuous.
“I will fight you both to the death,” Lucius said. “If you two live, you can do whatever you want. The Saints are gone. I am not so fucking stupid as to hope otherwise. But if I live, I get to take Lilly far away from here. I get to escape from the devil I know. And she gets to live her life in peace.”
“And what makes you think we would agree to that?” Lane said. “We’ve got over a dozen men here who will shoot you dead in a heartbeat. You have no weapon, and even if you have one hidden from us, you’ll only get one or two wild shots off before you drop dead.”
Lucius shrugged.
“I have seen how you two operate,” Lucius said. “I know how much vengeance drives you. It’s what drives all MC feuds. Revenge. Envy. Contempt. You might be able to put a pretty face on for the cops and the DA’s office, but we are the only ones who are fully honest in who we are. You would not be content with one of your prospects shooting me.”
He smirked.
“And besides,” he said. “Would you like to know what it was like to see Shannon’s face lined up in my sniper scope? What it was like to witness her final expression as she thought you would rescue her?”
Lane was beginning to lose control. I would have held him back, but there was just one problem. I was losing my shit too.
“I know you want to kill me with your bare fists,” Lucius said. “It would be so satisfying, wouldn’t it? Just like how I knew the sacrifice of one girl would prove so satisfying in seeing you two explode into a civil war.”
My fists tensed. I sized up Lucius. He was an old man, but he was not elderly. He was probably in his mid-to-late fifties, with muscles of a man twenty years younger and with the scars of a veteran. He was a man who might have only had a few fights left in him, but they were not going to be lopsided fights.
This was going to be ugly. But it was going to be needed.
“I have failed to splinter you two apart, I can acknowledge as much,” he said. “But in the end, I always get what I want.”
“Blood and murder?”
Lucius smiled wickedly.
“Anarchy. Chaos. The end of the Carters. And, most importantly, the delightful deaths of their loved ones.”
I couldn’t tell who lost control first. It all felt like a whirlwind as Lane and I both charged at Lucius. He was right. We didn’t want to kill him so quickly, so unsatisfyingly with a bullet.
We wanted his blood on our knuckles. We wanted his face dented by our fists. We wanted him destroyed by our own brute strength.
In a flash, I landed a punch on Lucius’ jaw as he kicked back Lane with a strike to his sternum. The blow sent Lane sprawling back to the ground, wheezing and catching his breath. Lucius just craned his neck and looked my way.
“You should have learned to only fight people your own size, you fucking midget.”
He punched me right in the eye so hard that I fell to the ground, reeling as I struggled to regain my vision. I felt a sharp kick to the ribs, my chest on fire. I regained my senses just in time to see Lane driving at Lucius, tackling him and slamming him against a nearby wall. With Lucius temporarily stunned, Lane wound up a hard right fist and connected right with Lucius’ jaw, sending at least one tooth flying in the air.
I rose as Lucius blocked his second punch and delivered a knee to Lane, then threw him in my direction. I dodged my brother, but it was clear we were not just engaged in a street brawl. We were fighting someone who knew how to fucking fight and was willing to do so until he collapsed.
“You want order and peace in this town, but we are all destined to bring about violence and madness!” he growled. “It’s in our nature! Our fucking blood!”
I moved forward, this time more controlled than before. Lucius feigned a left punch, which I swerved to dodge, and then threw a right hook punch that just narrowly missed. I threw my own left hook that collided with the side of his head, bending him forward in pain. I grabbed his head, rammed it against my knee, and then slammed him against the wall. I pulled him back to do so again, but before I could, he chopped down hard on my forearm, dropping me. He rose, kicked me in the sternum, and sent me back.
“I can do this all fucking day!” he said, laughing, even as blood spilled down his chest. “All fucking day.”
Lane and I both rose, but we were getting our asses handed to us.
“Just shoot him,” I heard someone behind us say. “He’s got nothing—”
“No!” Lane said. “He’s fucking ours!”
I refused to say anything, but I had a worsening feeling this wasn’t going to end well for us. Lucius may have been a dead man, but he could just as easily drag us down with him.
But this time, instead of attack him individually, we went after him collectively. Lane took him on the left, I on the right. I barely dodged him trying to kick me from the side before I got to his back, yanking on his hair so I could get him in a headlock. Lucius screamed in pain as Lane, having grabbed his wrist, twisted him forward. A sickening crunching sound came as Lucius howled with his broken wrist.
“It’s fucking over,” I sneered into his ear. “This is the death you—”
And then Lucius roared with the kind of primal fury I’d never heard before. It was demonic. That was the only adjective I could think of.
He pushed his weight back such that we both fell. I bore the brunt of it, my back slamming into the ground, his added weight driving me harder into the floor. He kicked Lane aside and then turned to me. He landed multiple punches in a row to my jaw with his good hand, laughing all the while.
“Finally!” he screamed. “I’ll fucking kill a Carter with my bare fucking hands! I’ll go to hell having—”
“STOP!”
The distant female voice got everyone, even Lucius, to freeze. As if the monster had left his spirit, Lucius looked to his right with a softened expression. I followed his eyes and saw Lilly, still seated, awakening, her hand covering her wounded shoulder.
“Stop this, now!” she screamed. “All of you! What have you done but killed, killed, and killed?”
She started sobbing.
“You love me, Dad? You really love me? Then stop this at once!”
“But honey—”
“Don’t fucking honey me!” she said, tears gushing down her cheeks. “It’s no wonder you try and shield me from the world. All that your world has is death!”
Lucius put a hand on me, pressed down to lift himself up, and stood. But he was not letting me go—he placed one foot right on my neck, easily able to crush me if he so wished.
“Tell me, daughter,” he said. “For all that I have given you, for all that I have done for you... you run away for this man?”
“Yes!” Lilly screamed. “Because he’s a good man, Dad. And maybe if you stopped being so damn bloody, you would be too.”
She has to be bluffing. Has to be.
Or she really does care about her father…
“This man has blinded you, daughter,” he said. “In your immaturity, you ran off. You thought you found freedom, but you found the very thing I was t
rying to protect you from. You found the enemy. And look what he has done. He brought violence into your world. That very violence nearly killed—”
“I know enough about him to know that he is not an evil man,” Lilly said. “Let him go. I’ll ask them to let you leave here alive.”
I felt the foot of Lucius leave my neck.
I leaned forward.
And then I felt death approaching.
“I cannot let any Carter live.”
“No!”
A gunshot rang out.
And then I felt Lucius fall on top of me, knocking the wind out of me—but not the life out of me.
“That’s for killing Shannon, you fuck!”
I did not have the strength to move Lucius, but some of the nearby Reapers came by and rolled him over. He’d gotten shot right in the gut. Blood was not so much flowing out as spurting out, and I knew he would not have a minute more to live.
“Hah, you fools,” he said as Lane, holstering a gun, picked me up. “You think... you think this is the end?”
“He’s just taunting us,” Lane said.
But I knew though Lucius was an evil man, he was not a liar.
“All you have done…” he said, struggling for words, “is opened up your worst nightmare. You better... you better never leave…”
And then, just like that, he spoke no more.
It was done.
We had won.
At last.
At long last.
Lucius was dead.
Shannon’s death was avenged.
Red Raven’s death was avenged.
Father Marcellus’ death was avenged.
Anyone who had fallen under the watch of Lucius was avenged.
And it felt so…
Unsatisfying.
We’d killed our enemy. We’d eliminated the greatest threat known to Springsville. The death of our greatest foe.
But as Lilly, in tears, wounded, still favoring her shoulder,, crawled over to her father and held his head, I could not help but wonder at what cost. I wasn’t even thinking about Lucius’ final words; though I was sure there was a truth to them, I couldn’t even think beyond the present. I was in too much pain, both physically from Lucius’ attacks and emotionally from seeing Lilly so hurt.
The problem wasn’t that we had lost so many lives. It was that more than just men were lost. Fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, cousins, friends... more than just the men killed were affected. We’d driven so hard to eradicate evil…
This was necessary, of that I was certain. But to pretend that we could now throw a parade and celebrate with shots of vodka and dance like we’d won a world war was a fallacy. There was nothing glorious about having ended a decades-long strife with a lifetime foe. There was just fallout and aftermath, and then, maybe then, a quiet peace could be found.
“We’ve done what was needed,” Butch said.
It was only now, with the madness and the fog of war lifted, that I realized that many of the Reapers who had gone to the Saints’ clubhouse had come here.
“Let’s go home.”
Slowly, people shuffled out, the only sound still present being Lilly’s sobs. I think everyone had an understanding of what was going on, or at least a respect for it. Maybe when they got back to the clubhouse, people would be celebrating, but right now, I was just exhausted.
Exhausted of all of the tragedy and violence.
Exhausted of all of the heartache.
If someone had given me a clock that could rewind us all back to the night that father died, allowing me to prevent Shannon from dying, but in turn preventing me from ever getting to know Lilly and ever growing as I had, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t take that opportunity.
Lane put a hand on my shoulder, looked at me, and kept walking. He, like me, was too exhausted right now to even acknowledge me beyond touch, let alone to impart some words of wisdom or hope. He looked like shit, just like me.
How we looked had nothing on how we felt.
Eventually, it was just Lilly and me. I turned around and saw Phoenix and Patriot standing with guns ready outside the house, but they were out of earshot and not looking at us, only guarding the entrance. I slowly walked over to Lilly.
“Lilly,” I said softly. “I’m—”
“Don’t.”
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“I care about you, Cole,” she said. “But my father just died. Just because he was a terrible father didn’t mean he wasn’t my father. I…”
She lost her words. Selfish as it may have seemed, I hoped for a few seconds that she would turn to me, give me a face, give me some words to carry home. But I snapped out of it. It wasn’t about me right now. It was about Lilly having space.
“Let me treat your shoulder,” I said.
I looked around the room, desperate for anything.
“Turn the corner,” she said. “There’s a panic room.”
I did as she commanded, doing my best not to cry at her pained tears. I found the room in question, found a first-aid kit, and went to work on her wound. I knew the wound would probably need medical attention, but the bandage and the tourniquet, I hoped, would give her the time she needed to grieve.
“Lilly…”
She didn’t look at me. She just leaned forward, hovering over her father.
The room was deathly silent. Only her occasional sobs punctuated the quiet. There was no life to be had in this house; only death, blood, and sadness.
And I had no choice but to leave her.
If she was to come back to me, if her words were sincere about caring about me, it would have to be up to her. I would have to just... be.
I turned, walked out of the house, and hopped on my bike, unsure if I would ever see a Sartor ever again for the rest of my life.
Lilly
I closed my eyes as everyone left the home.
Not “my” home. Not “my father’s” home. This had never felt like my home, and now my father was dead. It was just a house that I happened to be in, and it was a house I did not want to stay in.
I could not stand the sight of what lay in front of me, no matter how much I knew I’d have to stare at it in tonight. I just had to remove at least the perpetrators of this scene; justified or not, it was still the greatest tragedy to know how much death had descended upon this house. It made no difference to me that many of these men had acted cruelly to me; death was a punishment from which there was no recovery from.
I knew Cole wanted to stay behind. Truth be told, a part of me wanted his arms. But most of me wanted space. I wanted the thing that I had never had my entire life, even in that week or so where I’d escaped my father.
Freedom.
I wanted an evening alone to process my emotions and the outcome of tonight. I wanted to sleep without knowing a man was a few rooms over, even if he wasn’t actively eavesdropping or watching me. I wanted…
No, I needed this. I needed privacy. I needed time to mourn.
Because, just as Cole had a year and a half ago, I had lost my father. And even if Lucius Sartor had committed many a heinous act, for as evil and terrible a person as he was, he had done one thing right, or at least done one thing with good intentions. He had raised me and made an effort to protect me from the darkest parts of the world.
When the last of the Reapers’ footsteps had left, when the sound of motorcycles roaring to life had faded into the distance, when the only sound that filled the air was the very distant chirping of crickets, I opened my eyes. I looked down at my father’s lifeless body, having drawn its last breath just minutes before. If there was an afterlife, it was too late to influence his fate one way or another; the least and the most I could do was to say some quick words for him.
“Father,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “I know we had our differences. I know that I ran from you. But after tonight, I realize now that you were sincere in wanting what was best for me. Perhaps I failed to recognize it. Perhaps I failed to even try to recogniz
e it. But…”
I thought I was going to cry, but then I realized something either profoundly fucked up or profoundly telling. I had no more tears left to shed. I had cried so much recently that I had used up all of my mourning. I had become an empty husk now, left without the capacity for tears.
“But I know that buried somewhere deep within you, past the violence, past the need for vengeance, past your feelings for your father, you wanted to do what was best for me. And though your actions may not have been right, your intentions were, at least with me. So, Dad…”
I sighed. It was the only type of genuine emotion I could muster.
“No matter what happens in the future, I forgive you. I love you, and... yeah. I’ll do my best to learn from you.”
The words sounded good as I said them out loud. But the truth was, they left me yearning.
I never would get to see my father learn how to be a good man. I never would get the type of relationship with him that two adults could have. I didn’t need a daddy-daughter relationship any longer; I only wanted to have a loving, genuine relationship with him. And that would never come.
I could not blame Cole and Lane for killing my father, but that didn’t mean that I would ever forget or sympathize with the moment. Perhaps my father’s sheltering had had one intended effect; I found any type of killing abhorrent, and for it to be my father…
“I love you, Dad.”
I leaned forward, kissed him on the forehead, and quickly closed his eyes, feeling grossed out by the whole scene. I stood, wobbled as I felt a bit lightheaded, and started looking around the house.
The place looked like something either out of a horror movie or a warzone. There was blood everywhere; I could not turn a single corner or look into a single room without having it look like the blood was paint, for there was so much of it everywhere. So, too, did bodies litter the entire place. Most of them had Fallen Saints clothing, but a couple wore Black or Gray Reapers clothing. Both sides had paid a deadly price for what had happened, but it was pretty obvious that my father’s side had met its end.
I wasn’t wrong, then, about what I suspected. My father had always meant to take me to Oregon and come with me to escape. He just had failed to do so in time. He knew that his club would get wiped out.