My mother.
“Sadie,” Chop said, dropping his already broken glass. It shattered on the floor, cutting through the momentary silence as Chop and I both glared at the woman in the doorway. “You evil fucking bitch.”
She rolled her eyes and waved Chop off dismissively. A curt smile on her once again red lips. “Here,” she said, tossing a pair of handcuffs on the floor and kicking them over to us. “Cuff yourselves together.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
Her voice was sweet and high, like she was practically singing when she said, “Cuff yourselves together or I will make a call right now that ends with your darling Thia being dumped off the causeway within ten minutes.”
“If you so much as fucking—” I started, taking a step toward her. Gus held out his gun and Sadie held up a phone.
“Save it, Abel. Cuffs. Now. Or the girl dies.”
I picked the cuffs up off the floor and did as she asked, cuffing my hand to my old man’s whose gaze was still fixed on Sadie.
“Can I kill him now?” Gus asked, shifting from foot to foot. “Is it playtime yet?”
“No, sweetheart,” Sadie said, like he was a toddler that needed to be taught a lesson. She sauntered over to Gus and planted a kiss on his lips. He closed his eyes while she kept hers open, tugging the gun from his hands. “You’ve been a very, very good boy to me all these years. You took very good care of me while I was that pig’s captive, and I thank you for that.” She patted him on the top of his head and raised the gun. Gus opened his eyes just long enough for the shock to register. “But I’ll take it from here, baby.” She pulled the trigger, firing off multiple rounds, sending Gus’s brains splattering against Chop’s old trophy case in a mist of pink and red.
* * *
“What the fuck?” I asked as Gus’s brains slid down the glass and fell on top of what was left of his forehead. Sadie pulled her own gun from a holster on her thigh and held one on each of us.
Sadie not only acted very different from the woman who visited me in County, she looked different too. She wore a high-waisted red skirt with a tight black blouse and shiny black pumps. Her long hair was now an auburn color, void of silver streaks. Instead of flowing down her back it had been cut short to her chin. She looked easily fifteen years younger than she did only months before.
“So what? You’re here to seek revenge?” Chop asked, and I wondered if she would really shoot if I took a run at her. I glanced down to Gus’s bloodied corpse and decided that it was highly likely she would.
“Something like that,” she purred, perching herself on the edge of the couch.
“You should be thanking me for not killing you,” Chop said flatly. He hadn’t once taken his eyes from her since she’d stepped into the room. Not even when she blew Gus’s head clean off. He barely even blinked.
She moved back a few inches, physically putting more distance between herself and Chops statement. “Thanking you? I should be thanking you?” she yelled, getting up from the couch and pointing the gun at Chop’s head. “You hunted me down and shot me!” Sadie screamed, pointing to the faded scar on the side of her forehead. “You left me on the side of the fucking road for hours before you came back for me, but only so you could keep me prisoner you sick, SICK FUCK!” Her hands visibly trembled. So did her lower lip. “The humane thing would have been to kill me! The only human interaction I’d had in decades was that piece of shit,” she said, pointing the toe of her heel at Gus, the pool of blood growing beneath his body. “And the wails of whoever else you decided to torture.”
The bigger picture was coming together, but not fast enough. “Why Gus? How?” I asked, and when I raised my hand, I raised Chop’s as well, reminding me that I was still cuffed to the cocksucker.
Chop spoke up. “Because he was the one who fed her,” he muttered. “I thought he was the only one I could trust with that type of thing. Given his…oddities and all.”
I looked at Sadie as it all fell into place. “Chop was right. It was you. You were the rat,” I said, pausing only to watch as Gus’s blood reached the toe of my boot. My eyes darted back to her. “Well, you and that fuck,” I said. “It was you all along.” Still not quite believing what I knew then to be true.
Sadie nodded and her hands stopped shaking as she switched her attentions from Chop to me. “Yes. I’ve spent every day of my long captivity, when I wasn’t being raped by your father, or beaten, or tortured,” she said, slowly emphasizing the word TORTURE. “I was trying my damnedest to bring this club down.” She smiled like she’d just remembered something funny, or at least, funny to her. “The cartel pulling out? That was me,” she said proudly. “The deal with the Miami mob falling through? That was me. The fucking ATF at your door? THAT. WAS. ME!” she screamed, jabbing her gun in the air at us. “And I regret none of it. I’ve been putting the two of you against one another since the first day I met Gus, and it looks like it worked.” She looked to me. “You thought Chop was the rat, and Chop…” she said, turning to my old man. “…thought it was you. It was brilliant, really.”
“If Gus was your little bitch boy then why didn’t you just have him kill Chop?” I asked. “Why go through all this trouble? Why try and kill me too?” I stared her down, daring her to answer my questions. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?” I wanted nothing more than to snap the neck of the tiny woman holding the big gun.
“Because,” Sadie said, her eyes glassy. “You were my little boy. My Abel. I couldn’t let you be just like him. I wouldn’t, and when Gus told me how much you really were like him, the things you did. I knew I had to end it.”
“So you would rather Isaac or Eli kill me?” I asked, feeling sick. “You wanted them to kill me so I wouldn’t end up like Chop? Do you even know what those sick fucks did to me?”
She didn’t answer. Stepping over Gus she briefly peered out the window to the soldiers below, oblivious that the person they really needed to kill was one floor above them and wearing a fucking skirt. “Yes. I failed you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late now. It’s all too late to change it now.”
A realization hit me. “You’re the reason Preppy’s dead. I should fucking end you right fucking now you fucking cunt!” I said, pushing the desk aside and almost knocking over Chop, who I was inadvertently dragging with me.
Sadie aimed her gun at my chest, and if I didn’t care about ever seeing Ti again, I would have ran right through a spray of bullets to rip my mothers head off. “See?” Sadie asked, pointing at me. “Just like him.” She sighed. “All I ever did was love you and try to give you a better life, and then he took it all from me!” Sadie paused, her eyes glassed over. “I loved you!” she cried, her hands again shaking. To my surprise she wasn’t looking at me when she said it this time. She was looking at Chop. “I love you and I gave you a son and you ruined it. You ruined everything! All I wanted was for you to leave the club, the life. I wanted us to be a family. To be together.”
“So that’s why you turned rat in the first place.”
Chop cleared his throat but didn’t say anything. I took Sadie’s temporary silence as an admission.
“I love you, too, you know,” she said, this time to me. “I—”
I cut her off. I’d already heard more than fucking enough. “YOU are NOTHING to me!” I roared, pulling at my own hair in frustration. “I don’t give a fuck where you’ve been or for how long or what the fuck Chop did to you. There’s only one fucking thing I care about right now.” I narrowed my eyes and gave her one last warning. “You better tell me where the fuck she is, and if you so much as laid one fucking finger on her—” The sound of bullets grew even louder, but I didn’t care. They could be sailing through the room and I still wouldn’t have taken my eyes off of the bitch who had my girl.
Sadie’s shoulders fell, but it was like I wasn’t in the room. The conversation she was having was entirely one sided. I didn’t know what I needed to do to get her so she could tell me where the fuck my girl was. “I came back
for you once, you know,” she said. “Escaped all on my own.” Chops eyes widened like he hadn’t known that. “I disguised myself. At first I was going to take you away with me, that time for good. You were sixteen at the time and when I finally found you, you were at some biker bar. Some whore was sitting on your lap. You were snorting that shit up your nose off of her legs. That’s the very moment I knew it was too late.” She searched my face, “You looked just like him sitting there. A spitting image. I knew then there was no saving you. I could have just left then. Disappeared. But I didn’t. I had to make sure that the two of you were put down and the best way to do that was from the inside. So I went back down into my hole before Chop even realized I was gone and I put up with his abuse every single day knowing that I wouldn’t stop until I took every last one of you leather-wearing psychopaths down.” She turned her nose up at us. “Especially the two of you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great speech. Now, where the fuck is my girl!”
Sadie laughed and stepped to the side of the door. “I’ll tell you. But you need to move, outside. NOW!” she ordered, and when neither of us budged she fired at the light fixture, sending glass raining down around us.
Chop moved first, and I followed. Sadie stayed out of arm’s reach, as we stepped through what was left of Gus and made our way out to the balcony of the second floor, which overlooked the courtyard where sporadic gunfire was being exchanged.
A monster of a man wearing overalls with no shirt underneath walked casually beside the pool on the floor below, holding a semi-automatic in each hand, and I could have sworn I heard him whistling, but when I looked down again, he was gone.
“On your knees,” Sadie ordered. I lowered myself to the ground but only because she still hadn’t answered my question about Ti, and Chop did the same, because we were cuffed and he didn’t have a fucking choice. “I’m on my fucking knees, bitch, now tell me where the fuck my girl is.”
Sadie clucked her tongue and moved to stand beside us. “Unfortunately for you, I needed the girl in order to get you here, and since Gus was so insistent on joining me here tonight, he hired outside help to do the sick shit he wanted to do her and tape it. I’d show you the tape, but something tells me you won’t be around long enough to watch it.”
“I’ll fucking kill you!” I shouted, rising off my knees. She fired, sending a bullet straight through my thigh and sending me crashing back down to the floor.
Chop remained silent, only watching as I flailed around on the floor, clenching my teeth together, warring against the agony tearing through my leg. “Where was this girl when I needed her?” Chop suddenly asked, drawing my attention away from the pain. I managed to sit up on my good knee and with my free hand I pushed against the wound to slow down the blood loss. “Where was this girl twenty-five years ago?” he asked. “Why, my Sadie girl? Why did you turn on me? You could have come to me. You could have told me what was going on. What you wanted to do. You had a choice, and you made the wrong fucking one. It’s your fault. You made me pull that fucking trigger!”
Sadie turned to him, her eyes rimmed with red like she was on the verge of tears. “I did what I thought could get us out from under your shit,” she spat.
“But don’t you see?” he asked. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you even when I should have after what you did. So I kept you. I kept you all to myself because you were mine.” Chop shook his head. His face reddened. “You were a rat who deserved to fucking die but I didn’t kill you!” he said, raising his voice to a scream. “You claimed to have loved your kid, but I can see right fucking through you. You never once asked to see him in all the years I had you. You didn’t love him, you were jealous of him. Of the club. Of anywhere else my attention was besides you, and you couldn’t fucking handle that, so you ran to the law with your tail between your fucking cunt like the bitch you are.”
“You still don’t get it do you Chop-Chop?” she asked. “None of that matters now.” Sadie stood behind me and pressed the gun to the back of my head. “I’ll kill your precious son first, so you can watch him die. Then it’s your turn, baby.” She blew him a kiss.
She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “I may not have had the chance to raise you up, baby boy, but I’m not going to pass up the chance now to put you down.”
“Let me do it,” Chop said. “Give me a gun. You can still kill me after. Just let me do this one thing right for you.”
“Fucking pussy,” I muttered.
Sadie was quiet and my head wasn’t blown off, but I couldn’t believe she was even considering what he was offering, and even after all the shit Chop had done, I was mad at myself for being surprised at the offer.
I couldn’t believe it even more when Chop raised up to his feet and was suddenly the one standing behind me with a gun, my arm that was cuffed to his was pulled backward at an awkward angle. “This is for you, baby,” Chop said with a sadness in his voice I’d never heard before.
Chop pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gun shot was fucking deafening.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Bear
The entire courtyard rattled like a cannon had been fired. So did the inside of my head. Wet and warm liquid poured thickly over my head and shoulders. The heaviness that was Chop’s lifeless body descended over me, forcing my face against the rusted railing.
I pushed Chop off of me, his body falling through the broken railing. If King hadn’t appeared and grabbed on to my legs I would have went over with him. “Thia, keep the gun on her,” King ordered, and at the mere mention of her name, I found the strength to hang on. King laid next to me on his stomach leaning out over the balcony under the railing as far as he could stretch. “Pull up as much as you can,” he said. I felt my arm separating from the joint. I pulled up as hard as I could, straining with everything I had in me until King could reach Chop. With a guttural roar he pulled his fat corpse back onto the balcony. My arm and shoulder felt instant relief.
King pulled a machete style knife from his boot and hacked away at Chop’s wrist, blood spurting into the air and all over his face and shirt, until it was severed, and King and I were so covered in blood it looked as if he just starred in a horror movie.
Our horror happened to be very real.
“Noooooooo!” Sadie screamed, and while she was momentarily distracted, I grabbed the gun Chop had dropped and turned it on her. Sadie’s mouth was wide open as she looked from the railing to the pink-haired girl holding the gun.
Ti.
“Thank fucking Christ,” I muttered.
“You bitch!” Sadie screamed at Ti, “What did you do?”
“Same thing I’m about to do to you if you don’t put that fucking gun down.”
I’d thought King had fired the bullet at Chop, but I’d been wrong. It was my girl who’d saved me.
“You leave her the fuck alone,” I said, standing between my mom and my girl. “Put your fucking gun down.”
“Abel,” she pleaded, taking a step toward me.
“Stop,” I warned. “Don’t fucking call me that. You don’t get to call me that.” Without turning my head away from Sadie I called out to Ti, “Are you okay? Did this bitch hurt you? Did Gus hurt you?”
“I’m fine, baby,” she said, her voice snaking it’s way inside of me, making me feel centered, grounded.
Complete.
Sadie looked down at Chop’s handless body. “He’s really gone?” Sadie cried, covering her mouth with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. A tear fell from her eye and ran down her cheek. “I mean, that’s what I wanted. Him. Gone. But now…he really is.”
“What the fuck did you think was going to happen?” I asked.
Sadie shook her head and took a step back. Her gaze went from me to Ti and then to King. “Don’t know what you were thinking,” I said. “But there ain’t no way you’re walking out of here,” I said, and I meant it.
Sadie wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Oh, my Abel.” she said,
sniffling. “I never planned on walking out of here.” She looked over to Ti. “Take good care of my boy,” she said before placing the gun in her mouth.
Then she did what Chop was too much of a coward to do all those years before, and she ended it all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Thia
Bear limped over his mother’s dead body and grabbed my face roughly in his hands. “Hey, Beautiful.” He turned my chin from side to side and looked me over like he was inspecting me for physical damage.
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” I reassured him. “Just scrapes and bruises.”
“Scrapes and bruises would be too much, but I call bullshit. Your cheeks are swollen and you just winced like I slapped you. What the fuck happened?” His nostrils flared.
I ignored his question, my teeth not seeming all that important. “Looks like I got off better than you,” I said, pointing to the bloody hole in his thigh.
“Just scrapes and bruises,” he said, repeating my lie. I rolled my eyes. “Now fucking tell me what happened to your mouth.”
“I lost a couple of teeth. Just in the back,” I added, like it would make Bear’s eyes turn any less murderous. I instantly regretted telling him.
“Who?” he demanded. “Who the fuck did Gus leave you with?” Bear asked, like he needed to know whose name he could add to his list of people to kill. “How the fuck you even get out?”
Both questions had the same answer. “Jake.” Bear’s eyes went wide. “But it’s okay,” I said, grabbing on to his arm. “He rescued me.” I left off the part about him being one of the people to pull those teeth.
“Fuck,” Bear said, pressing his forehead to mine, grabbing onto the back of my neck. “That could have gone either way.”
“But it didn’t,” I reassured him. “I’m fine. I swear.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I am so fucking sorry,” Bear said, pressing a kiss to my lips. He was covered in blood and from what I’d just witnessed I knew most of that blood wasn’t his.
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