by Nicole Fox
“Relax,” Big Loco says. “He’ll be here, one way or the other.”
“What the fuck does that mean? Will you put that brat down, for fuck’s sake?”
“Do you remember when we sat under the stars, Jackie? We promised each other we’d become leaders, not cowards. Please stop—just stop behaving in this way. You’re embarrassing me.”
Jackson draws down his cigarette to the butt and then flicks it out of the window. Then he scoops up a bottle of whisky from the counter and drinks it carelessly, taking big gulps.
“I don’t give a shit anymore,” he mutters. “I don’t give a damn, because you don’t know Jack, brother, not like I know him. You don’t know what he’s capable of, and … And this bitch, this bitch gave him a secret message. I fucking know she did!”
“You’re being paranoid,” Big Loco says.
I look as innocent and as scared as I can, leaning back in my chair and shaking with fear: not that I have to fake that part. But I have to appear as though I have no clue what he’s talking about, because otherwise they’ll kill me, and they’ll kill Jimmy. I regret doing it, even if it was a weak message, one I can’t even be sure he understood. Even so, if it means our deaths …
“Am I?” Jackson takes another dangerously large gulp and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “I don’t think so. I really don’t. Because he has that effect on cunts, Jack does; you should’ve seen them around the clubhouse, hanging around him like pigs in shit. All of them, competing. The sexiest little whores you’ve ever laid your eyes on, competing for his attention.”
Big Loco lays Jimmy down on the couch, and, perversely, I am grateful for the way he arranges him, pulls the blanket over him, tucks him in. He strolls over to Jackson. “Tell me your suspicions.”
“I just told you. She gave him a message!”
“But specifically.”
Jackson massages his forehead. “I can’t remember. I wasn’t exactly listening. But I know she did.”
“I remember,” Big Loco says. “She was rambling like all scared little birds will. Look at her. She’s terrified and she loves her son. She hasn’t got the guts to give him a secret message. She barely has the guts to breathe.”
“That’s what you think,” Jackson whispers. “She has you fooled. It’s because you care about her little brat. You’re letting that cloud your judgment.”
Big Loco’s fist catches him casually across the face. Jackson doesn’t try to fight back. He immediately crumples to the floor, and then gets up and dusts himself off quietly. The other men in the room avert their gazes. I feel like I’ve just witnessed a scene of domestic abuse.
“You’re jealous of Jack because he got to make love to this girl, is that it?” Big Loco asks.
Jackson prods the place where Big Loco hit, already turning red. “Yes,” he answers, sullen.
Big Loco waves a hand at the door, which leads to the bedroom. The bedroom into which Jack and I disappeared two long years ago. “Then take her, Jackie. Anything to stop this nonsense. Me and my men need to work, and you’ll be no help to us. Take her into the bedroom and distract yourself.”
“You mean it, brother?” Jack looks up at him with a smile: the smile of a kid on Christmas morning. “Really?”
Big Loco shrugs. “Just stop you’re whining.”
Jackson walks over to me, smiling from ear to ear. He dribbles whisky and spit out of the corner of his mouth and his breathing is labored. But even though he has the body of a skeleton, he unties me quickly and throws me over his shoulder. I think about fighting but the men will only shoot me, or Big Loco will only beat me or hurt Jimmy. I have no choice but to hold onto Jackson so I don’t fall, his bone-sharp shoulder jutting into my belly.
“This is it,” Jackson says, kicking the bedroom door open. “This is just what I need. I’m sick and tired of Jack getting all the prime cunt. Ever since that kid joined the club, it’s been the same. I get my pick of the ladies, don’t get me wrong, but I never get the kind of attention Jack gets. It’s not fair. A man starts a club, owns it, runs it for years … and some kid comes along and makes him look like a real fool.”
He tosses me onto the bed. I crawl to the opposite end and bring my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “He loves you,” I say, hoping this will stop, or at least pause, his madness. “You should hear the way he talks about you, like you’re God. He loves you more than anything, Jackson. All he ever wanted was to make you proud. All he ever wanted was for you to love him the same way he loves you. He thinks you’re a real hero.”
“And I was!” he snarls, thumping himself in the chest and standing up straighter. It’s like he’s posing for a picture when he stands like that. “What was I, if not a hero? I saved that kid from the worse hell imaginable. I saved that little fucker, and then I killed his parents for him!”
“You killed …”
“Yes!” he snaps. “And you’d think the little prick would be grateful, but no! Because he’s fucked in the head, he is, really fucked. After all they did to him, and part of him still cared about them! Imagine that! Imagine being tortured every day of your life and then still caring about the bastards that did it!”
“Just like you and your brother,” I mutter. “He hits you—and you seem to care about him.”
He picks up a carved, ornate glass and tosses it at the wall, where it explodes in a glittering shower. “Say that again,” he growls, stepping up to the foot of the bed. “Go on.” When he sees that I’m not going to say it, he yawns and stretches his arms out. But it’s a fake yawn, a yawn meant to make me see how at ease he is. “Now take off your clothes.”
“I …” My mouth goes dry, and everything begins to spin, because his entire demeanor has changed. Out there with Big Loco, he looked desperate and almost boyish. Now I’m reminded that he’s a dangerous man, just like the others.
“I …” He laughs. “You what? Take your clothes off right this second or there’s going to be trouble, slut.”
“What do you think Jack will do if you go through with this?”
“Do you think I care?” he snaps. “Let Jack do whatever he wants! I don’t give a damn anymore! I don’t care. I’m done with Jack. I wish I never saved him. I should’ve let him rot in that fucking house! I should’ve let those evil fucks have him! Why did I get involved? I try and remember sometimes, why I helped, but I just can’t. It seems like the behavior of a madman.”
“Because you cared,” I whisper. “You cared about him. And maybe you still do.”
“No.” He folds his arms. “And you better get undressed right this goddamn second before you make me angry—”
The gunfire drowns out his words. It comes from the direction of the living room. Four quick bullets, a pause, and then a rattling of it. Jackson grimaces and turns for the door. “Wait here,” he grunts.
But I can’t wait here. Jimmy is crying. I can hear him, wailing out for me. I wait until Jackson has left and then creep through the hallway, head low, hands over my ears as the gunfire tears the suite apart. Any one of those stray bullets could hit Jimmy, and it only takes one … Then I see him, standing at the end of the hallway with his thumb in his mouth, sobbing.
I run over to him and pick him up, and then instantly turn around and sprint back into the bedroom. I place him on the floor and try and pull the bed to the door, but it’s too heavy. I settle for some drawers, which I plant right in front of it, and then I carry Jimmy into the bathroom and lock the door behind us. The bullets don’t stop. Men roar out, something shatters, somebody screams like they’ve just been shot in the gut: a high-pitched wailing. I think they’re begging for their mother.
“Momma! Momma!” Jimmy clutches onto me like I’m going to float away. “Momma! Momma!”
“Hush now,” I whisper, close to his ear. “Everything’s going to be—” I have to cut off, because vomit tries to spew out of my mouth. I force it down. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I go on, choking back the sick. “Just relax, swe
etie. I promise, okay?” I kiss him on the cheek, nudging his face with my nose so that he’s staring up at me. I smile as widely as I can, thinking maybe that if I can just get him to smile, he’ll forget about the gunfire which shatters the world all around us. “Look. Doesn’t Mommy have a silly face? I know you think Mommy has a silly face! Look at how silly Mommy is!”
He doesn’t smile, just stares up at me with his head tilted. He’s no longer crying, though, so that’s something.
Then the door outside opens. I hear the drawers kicked aside, footsteps heading right at the bathroom door. I hurry, placing Jimmy on the floor in the shower and then scrambling for a weapon. There’s nothing but a razorblade, but it’s a safety razor. I turn in a circle. The door is beginning to buckle, the handle looking loose, like it might just fall away. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror … the mirror! I pull back my fist to punch, but then the door slams inward and Jackson, clutching his side and with his face bleeding, walks into the room holding a knife.
“Whore,” he whispers, stumbling toward me. “This is all your fault! All of this! If Jack never met you, if he never had that brat, everything—” He swipes at me with the blade. I just manage to duck, but I feel the knife over my head. It almost catches on my hair. “You’re nothing.” He swipes again and this time I see an opening. I charge forward, not letting myself think about what I’m doing, and grab the side of his torso which he’s clutching. The blood is warm, and there’s metal in the wound. I squeeze down. He lets out a cackling scream and makes to swipe at me again, and this time he’ll get me. I’m short of it.
But then Jack catches his wrist and squeezes, twists, so that the blade clatters to the floor. He drags Jackson back into the bedroom and tosses him out of my view, where he grunts and is hauled away, growling and swearing. I just manage to get to the toilet seat before collapsing, hands clutching my knees, breath coming way, way too fast.
Jack enters the room. He has some blood smeared on his jacket from where he grabbed Jackson but otherwise he’s unmarked. He walks over to me, placing his hands on mine.
“You’re safe,” he whispers, kissing my hands tenderly. A tenderness I never would’ve guessed at when I caught his eye in the hotel. “You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe. And I love you, Gloria. You’re safe and I love you.” There are tears in his eyes. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fury
“So this is it, is it, big man? You really think you’re something special? You have no idea who I am, no idea what I’ve done, no idea how I had to struggle to get here. You’re a worm, boy, and men like me don’t worry about worms.”
Big Loco is on his knees at the rear of the clubhouse, right next to Jackson, both of them with their hands tied behind their backs. All around me, Devil’s Kin stand, guns at the ready.
“Might be you wanna be careful about what you say,” I tell him. “Any one of these fellas’d gladly put a bullet in your head.”
Big Loco smiles. “This isn’t the end for me. Even if you kill me here, this isn’t the end.”
“That sounds very poetic’n all, but I reckon you’re wrong there. When I kill you, it is gonna be the end. So might be you wanna think up some better last words than that.”
He licks his lips, glancing at the men ranged around him as though seeing them for the first time. “You know I have a wife,” he mutters. “A wife who loves me. She has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t know who I am. What do you think she’ll do when she finds out I’m dead?”
I kneel down and grab him by the back of the neck, causing him to writhe in his bindings. “Maybe I’d sympathize with you if circumstances were different. Maybe I’d feel sorry for you and want to do somethin’ good. But the thing is, Big-fuckin’-Loco, you kidnapped my kid and then you kidnapped my girl and my kid, so to be honest I don’t give a fuck what your wife does.” I take out my pistol and place the barrel against the side of his head. “Now, do you have any last words or not?”
“Fuck your last words!” Big Loco snarls. “You really think this is the end for me? Are you really that fucking naïve—”
I pull the trigger. His head jolts to the side, blood sprays, and then the giant man collapses ungracefully, crumpling as though the bones have been sucked from his body. Jackson lets out a shuddering sob and tries to crawl over to his brother, but one of the brothers holds him back. He stares up at me. “You didn’t have to do that!” he wails. “Jack, you didn’t have to do that!”
“I’m afraid I did,” I counter. “Like I said, he was gonna take my kid.”
“What about me?” Jackson whispers. There are tears in his eyes, the bastard. Why does he have to cry? “Are you going to shoot me as well, Jack? Are you going to kill me just like you killed my brother?”
“You betrayed the club.” I kneel down next to him, placing my gun against his head just like I did with Big Loco. “You betrayed the club,” I repeat, stroking the trigger. Just pull it, I will myself. Just pull it and end this—end him—end it all. Just pull it and it’ll all be over. “You would’ve let Big Loco kill every single one of these men, sir.” I wince when I call him sir, but it just comes out. “Every single one of them,” I go on, “and for what? ’Cause you felt like you owed something to your sweet big fuckin’ brother. No, Jackson, I can’t let you get away with that.”
Jackson grimaces, nodding down at the gunshot wound in his side. “Does this look like getting away with anything to you?”
“You need to die,” I whisper, but I still just stroke the trigger. Big Loco’s head just snapped aside, blood sprayed, bones vanished; he fell. And now I’ve gotta do the same to Jackson. He betrayed me and he’s not the man I once thought he was. All of that is clear, and yet my finger won’t do what I will it. It just won’t. “You would’ve killed us all!” I roar in his face, trying to convince myself. “You would’ve fuckin’ killed us all!”
“Do you remember the first bike I gave you, kid?” His crying gets worse, sobs choking his voice. “Do you remember how happy you were? That was the best day of my life. That’s clear to me now. I’m not just saying this. Let these be my last words! The best day of my life was when I gave the kid who may as well’ve been my son his first motorcycle. And you rode, Jack, you rode for hours and hours and came back to me so stiff you could barely stand, and then we had a cigarette and a whisky and all was okay in the world, weren’t it? Just then, all was okay.”
“Maybe it was.” I stand up, taking my hand off the trigger, and then walk over to Butcher. “I don’t know,” I whisper.
“It’s hard,” he agrees. “But it’s your call, boss. Kill him or let him live.”
“The men won’t be happy.”
“As long as he ain’t leader anymore, what can they say?”
I return to Jackson, annoyed at myself, at my weakness. But knowing that I can’t kill him in cold blood the same way I did Big Loco. I grab him by the front of his bloody shirt and haul him to his feet. I speak loudly enough so that everybody can hear. “You’re banished from this fuckin’ state. You’re an outlaw now, Jackson, in the real sense of the word, ’cause you’re even outside our law. If one of my fellas finds you in California, he can do any damn thing he wants with you and you won’t have any protection. Hell, if one of these fellas,” and now I turn to them all, “wants to go out there and find you, I won’t stop him. So you better keep running!” I cut the zip-ties around his hands and kick him in the ass He scurries away, heading toward the highway at an almost dead sprint.
I watch him go, standing at the edge of the car park, until he is out of sight. And then the men begin to chant, quietly at first, but then louder and louder. “Boss! Boss! Boss! Boss!”
I turn slowly, looking into their faces, the Kid’s especially. They all look ready to follow me wherever I go, into the abyss, into hellfire, into the next war. But as I look at them, I don’t feel what I ought to feel. I don’t feel that aching loyalty, that burning desire to lead. All I
feel is numb, and like I want to be with Gloria and Jimmy.
I hold up my hand and they stop chanting. “No!” I call over them. “I’m not your boss, fellas, not me.” I walk over to Butcher, take off my jacket, and hand it to him. “This man’s the smartest, most loyal man in the club, and if anyone deserves it, it’s him.”
There’s a pause as Butcher looks me in the eye, silently asking me if this is what I really want, and then he sees that I’m not going to change my mind. He nods shortly and holds the jacket up. The men pause, watching us, and then they turn to Butcher and start chanting for him instead.
I go to my bike and just sit there a while, listening to my brothers, to my family, and then I kick the bike to life and coast away from the clubhouse. I’ve got a new family now.
***
“I’m glad you’re safe,” she mutters, smiling at me across the coffee table. Jimmy is in the other room. I know this because the baby monitor sits on the counter and every so often he mumbles quietly. “Of course I’m glad.” She’s wearing a bathrobe and nothing else, clutching a coffee with both hands like it’s the only thing keeping her alive. She looks impossibly vulnerable, and yet impossible strong. And impossibly beautiful. “I just …” She slams the coffee mug on the table. By the way she winces, I guess she didn’t mean to do it that hard. “How are we ever going to feel safe?” she asks. “I can’t live with the knowledge that any day now our son could be—”