by Evelyn Glass
“What happened?”
“The clubs cleared the bar and Beast and the guy, I think his name was Wade, went at it right then and there. Beast killed him.”
Shayna felt sick to her stomach. “How?”
Rachel smiled evilly. “Cut his throat.”
“Is that how he got his scars?”
“I guess. The guys who actually saw it go down don’t talk about it much either. It must have been fucking awful. I know Beast earned a lot of respect that day. From the Reapers for putting it all on the line and for taking care of business, but from The Scarred, too, for giving their man a fighting chance even though he didn’t have to. From what I’ve picked up here and there, it was damn close and it could have gone either way. If you can believe the stories, there was blood everywhere.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Rachel shrugged. “Nothing to say. Beast did what he had to do. I know the fucking Scarred wouldn’t have done the same if the roles had been reversed. From what I understand, if it had been Bear in that room, nobody would have walked out and it would have been a full-scale war. Neither club would have likely survived.”
“What about Animal?”
Rachel shook her head. “Don’t know. He was trying to change the old ways, but he still had a lot of his father in him from what I understand. All I know is every man and woman in this club would lay down his or her life for Beast without a second thought. That’s how much respect he’s earned, and it started that day when he stepped up.”
“You like him.”
Rachel smiled. “Yeah, I do. He’s a stand up guy. He took a hell of a risk starting up DRS. A lot of the old timers bucked him pretty hard, but he pulled it off. Nobody questions him now. When he says, ‘Let’s do this, that or the other,’ everyone is pushing and shoving to get to the front of the line to help. He’s the one who changed the club bylaws to allow women to become full members if they wanted to, despite the protest of some of those stone-age fucks. He said that if we were doing the work, we should have a voice.” She paused then twittered out a laugh. “It doesn’t hurt that he makes my panties wet every time I’m around him…but you probably already know that.”
“Yes, well…” Shayna mumbled.
“What’s he like?”
“Like?”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “In the sack! Don’t tell me you’re not banging his brains out every chance you get. I would if given half a chance.”
Shayna flushed bright red. “I don’t know that’s…” she began, intending to tell the woman to mind her own business, but Rachel’s rapt attention and grin told her she was teasing. Rachel wasn’t unattractive with her long dark hair, full figure and blood red lips. “You don’t know?”
Rachel sighed wistfully. “That’s the only bad thing about working for DRS. It’s strictly hands-off. No office hanky-panky…damnit.”
“What about before, when you were a club girl or whatever?”
Rachel grinned. “Once. But I was so fucked up I can’t remember it, and he never came back for seconds. Just like my luck.”
Shayna snickered, but before she could follow up, she saw Rachel stiffen and touch the remote clipped to her shirt. “Right here, Beast. Okay. We’re in the clubhouse. I’ll bring her right over.” Rachel touched the remote to hang up then stood. “They’re done. But quick, before we get back, is he as good in bed as he looks?”
Shayna felt her face heat but she grinned, not wanting to let Rachel get one over on her. “Better,” she said with evil pleasure.
Rachel scrunched her face in comical disappointment and then grinned. “Damnit!” she snarled playfully.
***
“You ready?” Beast asked as Rachel and Shayna appeared. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine. I’m ready,” Shayna replied.
He could tell that something was bothering her. “We’ll take a car,” he told Hightower as he turned and led her to the garage, opening the front passenger door on the undamaged Merc, then sliding behind the wheel.
“Rachel gave you a tour?” he asked as he started the car.
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“Bigger operation than I thought.”
As he turned out on the road, he glanced at Shayna. All the life had seemed to go out of her. “Will you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she replied, looking out the side glass.
Beast sighed. “Okay. Would you like me to take you home?”
“Please.”
They drove in silence for several minutes. “Will I see you Monday at the tournament?”
“Of course.”
“Will I still get a rap on the table for luck?”
She smiled sadly as she looked at him. “Yes.” She paused, wanting to ask but afraid of knowing. “Does it bother you? Do you feel guilty for killing that man?”
“What man?”
“Wade?” She watched as his face hardened at the word.
“No. Thomas fucking Wade got everything he deserved. I gave him more of a chance than he gave my dad.”
“How many people have you killed?”
“Counting Wade? One.”
“Just one?”
Beast looked at her, his face hard. She might as well hear it all. She’s probably done with me anyway. “I was dad’s attack dog. When someone needed to have something explained to them, I was his go to guy. I would ride up, beat the shit out of them if required, and explain what would happen if they ever did, or didn’t do, whatever it was again. I was good at it. I know how to hurt someone, bad, but not kill them. I can fuck you up and put you in the hospital, but after a lot of time and a lot of pain, you’ll, mostly, recover. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“No.”
“That was my life. I’m not proud of it, but in an outlaw club, that’s how problems are handled. You can’t exactly sue someone for trying to scam you over a load of illegal weapons. Dad set me up to build my name, to make me the guy you didn’t want to fuck with.”
“Why?”
“Because it would go easier on me later, when I took over the club, if I already had the reputation of someone who could take care of business. The only way to get that respect is to earn it down in the dirt. When we were pulling out of the guns and going legit, people saw us as being weak, going soft. So when someone tried to fuck us, I was sent in to fuck them even harder.”
“What about now?”
“What about now?” he asked, not sure of what she was asking.
“How do you solve problems now?”
“Legally, of course. We’re a legitimate business now. My days of being an enforcer are behind me.”
She paused as thought. “Did you enjoy it? Breaking legs or whatever it was you did.”
“No, I didn’t fucking enjoy it!” he snarled. “It was a dirty, nasty, fucked up business! Why do you think we got out of it? Brothers going to prison. Brothers being killed. It was fucked up! It’s better now, but there’s too much history and I want out. It’s why I’m in this fucking tournament. I’m tired of people depending on me. I don’t want to be responsible for keeping brothers and clients safe anymore, or trying to make sure the Reapers have a future.” He paused, staring out the windshield as he drove. “I want to be responsible for only myself for once and not have to worry about anyone else. I’m tired, Shayna.”
He was hurting, she could see that. Beneath all that swagger and confidence was a man eating himself from the inside. “If you win, what will you do?”
He smiled wistfully. “The other man in the office today? That was Hightower Nethercott. Only he knows this, but if I win, I’m turning everything over to him. My last act as President will be to promote him to President then resign.”
“You’re pulling out of the Reapers?”
“I don’t know, maybe. But even if I stay, I’ll just be a member. No more DR Security, no more sitting at the head of the table. Maybe I’ll tend the bar.”
“But you
don’t know what you want to do with your life?”
“No. Maybe I’ll raise goats or something.”
She smiled. “You do have a way with animals. Look at Harley.”
“Yeah.”
“When we get home, will you wait?”
“Why?”
She smiled. “I need a change of clothes for tomorrow.”
“You’re coming back to the room?”
“If you’ll have me.”
He sniffed out a laugh. “I figured you’d drop me like a hot rock.”
She touched his leg. “A wounded animal will bite, but that doesn’t make it vicious.”
“Are you saying I’m an animal?”
“Only in bed, and only in the best ways. Besides, isn’t your name Beast?”
He snickered again. “I’ll wait.”
***
“You okay?” he asked as they rode the suite elevator up.
“Yes. I’m just having a hard time reconciling the Beast I know with the Beast you were.”
He nodded. “It’s just me. I would like to say I’m a different person now, but I did what I had to then to help Dad drag the Reapers out of the shadows, and I will do what I have to now to keep it that way.”
She was nodding as the doors opened. They walked in silence to his suite. “Tell me about the fight,” she said as they stepped into the room.
“You don’t want to hear that.”
“I do. I need to know who you are.”
He stared at her a moment then turned to the bar and poured himself a glass of liquid courage. “You want anything?” he asked, stalling for time as he composed himself.
“No.”
He returned with a tumbler of scotch over a single ice cube. “We were meeting at Lucky Seven, a dive that was right at the edge of our territories. We had made the introductions and The Scarred had picked up our last…client. Dad had been talking with Jack and Jack agreed that if Dad would recommend The Scarred to our client, he’d take that as a sign of good faith.
“Our clubs were exhausted, Shayna. We had been at each other’s throats for years. We ran guns and they muled drugs, but their train was drying up as the cartels moved farther and farther up the chain. They’d been trying for several years to slice off a piece of the gun trade from themselves. We were always scratching and biting for customers, knifing each other in the back at every opportunity.
“Dad finally had enough and started pulling us out of the guns. Our last client was our oldest, and largest. Once they were in The Scarred’s camp, we were done. Dad made the introductions and recommendation as agreed. This was to be the celebration.” He smiled, his eyes far away. “The burying of the hatchet, and not in each other’s head, so to speak.
“It was tense as shit, but Skellon and Dad were trying to make it work. Dad kicked me in the ass and told me to mingle with The Scarred. Gradually things began to chill. Our clubs would never be friendly, but not being rivals was enough to start. We could build from there.
“I was watching Dad’s back and I saw him go into the restroom. When he didn’t come out, I went in to see if he was okay. The blood was the tipoff and I found him in a stall. A knife in the kidney.” He saw her wince. “Yeah.
“I came out of there and I was going to kill every mother fucking Scarred in the place. We, the Reapers, were ready to go but Skellon stepped in. I didn’t know who had knifed Dad, but I knew it wasn’t Skellon because I had been keeping my eye on him. He got in my face, screaming how this was what Dad was trying to avoid. Then he turned on his brothers, and told them that every fucker in the place was dead unless the man who killed Dad either came forward or was pointed out.
“Finally Thomas Wade stepped forward. Skellon took his knife and pulled his colors. He gave me Wade’s knife and told me to do what had to be done. He nearly had a riot on his hands, and he’d have probably gone down except we were there, ready to back him up.
“Wade had to pay for what he did. There was no way that fucker was leaving there alive. But I also knew that if I killed him outright, everything Dad had worked for, what he’d given his life for, would be ruined. Skellon would probably be stripped and we would be at war with The Scarred.
“I threw his knife down and told him to pick it up, and I got Charlie’s knife. I told the Reapers, no matter what, it ended here. They didn’t like it, but Hightower backed me up. Then Charlie, one of Dad’s oldest friends, did the same. When the Reapers finally agreed, Skellon gave his word: it would end there, no matter what.”
Beast took a swallow from the tumbler. “They cleared the room and we danced. He got me good a couple of times,” he said as he drew a finger along the path of his scar. “We were both cut to shit, rolling around in our own blood, each of us trying to drive our knives into the other while preventing the same from being done to us. I guess it was the blood, but he slipped and I cut his wrist. I must have severed a tendon or something because he lost his knife.” Beast shrugged. “At that point it was all over.
“He tried to keep fighting, but he was a strong lefty and having to use his right hand, he wasn’t shit. I stuck him in the gut, got behind him, and shivved him in the back just like he did Dad. Then I pulled his head back and cut that fucker ear to ear before I dropped that sack of shit.”
Beast drained the last of the tumbler. “Skellon kept his word. Nobody touched us as we left. I was so fucked up I couldn’t even ride.” He snorted. “Three hundred sixty-three stitches to sew me up. I looked like the fucking Frankenstein monster.”
“Sweet Mary,” Shayna breathed. Beast’s story matched up pretty closely to Rachel’s, but hearing the pain and sorrow in his voice made it much more real. “And you kept your word? You never hit back at The Scarred?”
“Yes. That didn’t go over so well, but we’ve kept our bargain and The Scarred have kept theirs.”
“No wonder you want out.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m really sorry for you. I wish there was something I could do.”
He sat the tumbler aside and offered her a wisp of a smile. “You’ve already done it.”
“What?”
“You listened. I’ve never told anyone the whole story before. I know the club mostly knows, but I’ve never talked about it. Thank you for letting me tell you.” He gave her another ghost of a smile. “And thank you for not running away in terror. That would have hurt my feelings.”
She smiled, the heavy mood broken. “No, I think I understand. If someone were to kill my father in cold blood like that, I would want to kill them, too.”
“But would you do it?”
She thought about it. “No, probably not. But I would want to.”
He nodded. “That’s why I want out. Every time I put on my colors, I’m reminded of what I’ve lost, why, and what I did.”
She rose and settled into his lap, kissing him softly on the lips before laying her head against his. His arms went around her and he held her, neither speaking, for a long time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shayna rapped softly on the doorframe. “Mr. Wilks?”
“Come in, Shayna. What can I help you with?” Ted asked, waving her into his office.
“I’m both sorry and delighted to say I am turning in my two-week notice.”
He smiled. “So soon? You already have something lined up? That was fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So your last day will be next Friday?”
“Yes, sir.”
He stood and reached across the desk to shake her hand. “I hate to lose you, but congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir!”
“My pleasure, Shayna. Do you need me to find someone to replace you in the tournament?”