WOLF - Prequel

by Jessie Cooke

  Her mother smiled. “What is he like?”

  “He reminds me a lot of Coyote. I see him in his eyes and his smile...but as rough around the edges as he is, I think he has a softer side than Coyote did. I saw it, when I told him what happened to me, and what was happening to you. I think there’s hope there, that someday he and I might be able to put together some kind of relationship, if not a traditional one. I’ve always wanted a big brother.”

  “If what Coyote always told me about MC life, you’ll end up with about fifty of them.”

  Sabrina thought about Bruf. She wondered if she could ever think of him like a brother. He had made it clear to her that he would never cross that other line with her...the one where she wanted to go so badly. “That might be fun,” she said. “I’ll clean up the dishes. Why don’t you go take a hot bubble bath or something?”

  “I can help you clean up...”

  “Nope. You’ve been to hell and back these past few days, Mom. Please, let me do something for you.” Her mother pulled her in for a hug and said:

  “You do everything for me, baby. You’re the reason I take my next breath, every single time.”

  It took some time, but a few hours after dinner, Sabrina finally got her mother to lie down and rest. Before that, she had talked her into calling her best friend, Susan, and they talked for over an hour. She heard her mother making plans for Susan and her daughter Reed to come over the following night for a “girls’ night.” Sabrina wasn’t a big fan of Reed. She was fake, and Sabrina hated fake people. But if hanging out with Reed for one night would make her mother happy so she could dish with her best friend and feel “normal” for a minute, Sabrina was willing to go along with it.

  After her mother got off the phone she seemed much more relaxed and within half an hour, she was asleep at last. Sabrina was exhausted herself, but at the point of being almost too exhausted to sleep. Once her mother seemed to be down for the night, she fixed herself a cup of tea and took out her laptop. Before the night she was raped again and made into a murderer, she had just finally started thinking about going back to school next semester. It was her dream to be a nurse someday, and she’d finished about sixty units of her general education that first semester before it all went bad. She thought she might do the rest of her GEs at the community college before she thought about transferring anywhere else. She would need some time to apply for assistance, grants, and loans and such, since she’d given up her scholarship when she quit after the frat party. She sat down on the couch with her tea and opened her laptop. She logged into her account with the community college and started searching for the classes she needed. While she was online, a window popped up, a message from a girl that she was acquaintances with at college, but not really friends. The girl had been one of the most supportive when the pictures and videos of Sabrina had surfaced online, and she’d shared with Sabrina that she had a history of rape herself. The message simply said, “Hi, Sabrina...are you okay?”

  “Hey, Lisa, yeah, I’m okay. How are you?”

  “I’m okay too. I heard about John Walker.” John Walker...that was a name that, even now that he was dead, Sabrina despised. It was the name of the man that she’d stabbed and killed only a week before. She shuddered and typed back:

  “What did you hear?”

  “There was a little article in the paper. It said that he was dead...your mom killed him. They said the 911 call said that he was raping you and she stabbed him.”

  Shit. Sabrina had been so focused on everything else that she hadn’t even considered that the papers would pick up that story. Her poor mother would come undone if she saw it. “Yeah, well...it’s been pretty awful.” She didn’t know what to say, just that the lawyer had told her not to talk to anyone about that night except him. She hoped that response was okay. She was new to this “criminal” lifestyle.

  “I’ll bet. I think he got what he deserved.”

  “Thanks,” Sabrina said.

  “And Okie Thomas too.” Okie Thomas was one of the other boys that Sabrina knew had been there that first night at the frat house. He’d been trying to rub all over her and flirting with her right in front of John...and the pig had been encouraging him. She didn’t know what his real name was, but they called him “Okie” because he was from Oklahoma.

  “What about Okie Thomas?”

  “I know you never told anyone who was on that video that night...but I recognized him. He raped me, Sabrina, two years ago when we were both freshmen.”

  “Oh my God! That was who you told me about? The guy who tied you up and kept you in a basement for two days?” These fuckers were crazier than she’d thought they were. “I thought you said you told the police you didn’t know who it was.”

  “I did tell them that. He said he’d kill me if I ever told anyone. But now that he’s dead...”

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah, you didn’t hear?”

  “No. What happened to him?”

  “Not just him. There were two other guys in the house when it caught fire.”

  Sabrina was confused. “The house? What house? What fire? I’m sorry, Lisa. I’ve been preoccupied. I haven’t seen or heard the news.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I just assumed you knew. Yesterday, late evening, there was an explosion in the frat house. It destroyed the whole thing. They’re saying today they think it was a gas leak and they just released the names of the three men that died inside. Okie was one of them.”

  With a knot in the pit of her stomach and the names Okie, Vincent, and Parker in her head Sabrina typed in... “Who else besides Okie?”

  “I didn’t know the other two. Let me look at the paper.” A few seconds later she typed in, “Parker Friant and Vincent Perez.”

  With shaking hands Sabrina typed, “Thanks for letting me know, Lisa. I have to go now. I’ll talk to you soon.” She closed the laptop without waiting for a reply. A house fire...an explosion...the only three people in the house were the men that raped her...the men she’d given her brother the names of only the day before. She felt sick, but at the same time...grateful...maybe? Relieved? She had no idea how she was supposed to feel.

  She reached for her phone and thought about calling Wolf. But if she’d learned anything about the club so far, it was that they didn’t talk about things like this...at least, not on the phone or in front of anyone else. Coyote told her that one of his brothers would rather go to jail, or die, before he’d betray another. She put the phone back down on the table and suddenly she realized that it was grateful and relieved she was feeling...and something else...loved and accepted. And she realized something else as well...she would also rather die or go to jail than betray her brother. She barely knew him...but in twenty-four hours he’d proven where his loyalties lay more completely than their father had in eighteen years. So, those loyalties had possibly led him to order the extermination of vermin that should have never been allowed to live in the first place. He did the world a favor and he’d earned her loyalty and respect in the process.

  14

  By the time Wolf got home on Friday night, Amara was asleep. That was good, because he needed time to figure out exactly what he wanted to do with the information he’d gotten at the Library. He sat up most of the night trying to digest it. The conclusion his mind wanted to come to was that just because his wife was sneaking out on Friday nights without him didn’t mean she was up to anything she shouldn’t be. But he was too smart for that. As he thought over the Fridays past, he began to remember all the lies she’d told him. Things were good with the club, so she had been able to come and go as she pleased. She told him one night that she was staying with her parents, another night she said a cousin was in town and they were going out...and shamefully, the rest of the nights that she’d gone out, he’d either been too busy or too distracted to pay attention to what she was doing.

  He had to ask himself, however, if she wasn’t doing anything wrong, or shady, then why the lies? Then he had to wonder why she’d lied
about knowing Jerry Brown...and what the hell her relationship was with him. Was she really fucking that skinny, ugly little man? Why? What was it she wasn’t getting at home? As far as Wolf was concerned, their sex life was amazing. He was always satisfied...and he’d thought she was too. Damn it! He refused to believe she wasn’t as happy as he was. And beyond that...that she would have anything at all to do with someone trying to kill him. But...he was raised in a culture where you didn’t trust anyone completely, so as much as he wanted to just say she had nothing to do with any of it and move on...he knew he wouldn’t be able to.

  He’d slipped into the bed next to her and panicked a little bit when he woke up in the morning and she was gone. He smelled bacon, though, and by the time he pulled on a pair of shorts and jeans and made it out to the kitchen, she was putting breakfast on the table. She greeted him with one of her beautiful, sunny smiles and said, “You have a big day planning for the party tonight. I thought you might need a big breakfast to start you out right.”

  He walked over and put his arms around her. She brought her full lips to his and gave him a long, sweet...hot...kiss. Every time he kissed his old lady a part of him melted inside, and this time was no different. A lump rose up in his throat again when he thought about what Marissa said the night before. Amara broke the kiss and pulled back to look up at his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, baby.”

  “You sure? I tasted worry on your kiss.” He loved that about her too...the way she said things, the way she knew him so well. But did he really know her at all? He smiled down at her, kissed the tip of her nose, and said:

  “I’m sure, baby. Just a lot on my mind getting ready for this meet and greet and all.” He let go of her, reluctantly, and sat down in his chair. She had made eggs, bacon, pancakes, and hash browns...all just the way he liked them. Amara poured them each a cup of coffee and sat down across from him with a steaming bowl of oatmeal. “That’s all you’re gonna eat? I can’t eat all this myself.”

  She smiled. “Yes, you can. Yours all turns to muscle. You don’t want me looking like one of those fat little club girls, do you?”

  He chuckled. The club girls were not fat...at least most of them. Amara didn’t like them, and they didn’t like her. The difference was that Amara could be as snide about them as she wanted to be, but they knew better than to say a word against her. She knew that before he met her, Wolf had sex with nearly all of them, many times, and she hated that. She hated that he let them live in trailers behind the clubhouse...so close to their little house. She hated that he let them stay on at the club. She said they were nothing but glorified whores, and in some cases, she was right. But for the most part Wolf thought they were good girls who just happened to be attracted to bad boys. They did their part and earned their keep. Most of them had jobs too and contributed to the club with things like furnishings, food and beverage. He had no complaints about them, and no desire for them either since he met his old lady. But Amara had never quite gotten comfortable with their way of life. He found himself wondering, as he ate his pancakes, if that was part of the reason why she hated him enough to cheat on him, and maybe try to kill him. By the time he started working on his eggs he was telling himself once again that he’d lost his mind. She would never cheat on him, and she definitely didn’t hate him. He looked across the table at her and she smiled at him again.

  “How is it, baby?”

  “Almost as delicious as you...but not quite.”

  Her smile brightened, and she said, “You want to know what my first thought was that first time I saw you?”

  He chuckled. “That I needed a shave and a haircut?”

  “No, silly. Your long hair and beard turn me on, you know that.” Unlike Jerry Brown’s smooth face and short hair, he thought. “My first thought was, I hope this big one that looks like a werewolf likes milk chocolate.”

  He smiled and felt that lump advance up into his throat again. “It’s my very favorite thing,” he said.

  “I know that now,” she said, confidently. “Lucky me.”

  Wolf finished eating his breakfast and got up to pour himself another cup of coffee. He brought the pot over and filled Amara’s cup and then he sat back down and said, “Can I ask you a question, baby?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’ve been going to the Library on Friday nights?”

  Amara was taking a sip of her coffee. She didn’t flinch. She took her sip, dabbed at her lips, sat the cup down, looked him in the eye, and said, “Because I didn’t think you would like it and I hate fighting with you.”

  He nodded. “I don’t like it, but not because you were going out, baby. I trust you. I don’t like it because you lied to me.”

  She sighed and tossed her napkin aside. “You’re right, of course, I shouldn’t have lied to you. I just get so bored here, baby, and you never have time for me.” That hit him in the gut, mostly because she was right. Since they got together, he’d been so damned busy, always with the club. Being president was a huge responsibility and Coyote hadn’t left them in the best condition, so he’d had to do a lot more than just keep them afloat. He had to clean up a lot of messes as well.

  “I’m sorry. The last thing I ever want to do is neglect you. You know how much I love you, right?”

  “Of course I do, as much as I love you. It wasn’t about our love. It was just about my sanity. May I ask how you found out? I haven’t been there in some time. You weren’t having me followed, were you?” He had promised her long ago that if he felt the need for her to have “escorts” that he would never put them on her without letting her know, and he’d kept that promise...possibly to his own detriment, he thought now.

  “Marissa Sweeney,” he said. Amara’s face did change then, immediately.

  “That bleached blonde bimbo was talking to you about me?”

  Wolf ignored the “bleached blonde bimbo” part and said, “I went to her, asking questions about Jerry Brown. He’s a regular there...on Friday nights...”

  “And I’ll just bet that skank told you that I was there at the same time as him? If she did, and I was, it wasn’t on purpose. I don’t know anyone by that name. I told you that already.”

  Before Wolf could stop himself, he said, “You told me a lot of things.” That was the switch. With Amara there was always that one line you crossed before her switch was flipped, and then it was on. She pushed back from the table, knocking over her coffee cup as she did. The brown liquid began to seep out across the table, but she ignored it. She had flames shooting out of her eyes as she looked at Wolf.

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Wolf calmly looked at his old lady and wondered how she was able to muster such righteous indignation when they’d established only minutes before that a liar was, in fact, what she had become. He hated that thought. He hated any negative thoughts about the love of his life. But Wolf was not a fool and he had to keep reminding himself that just because he wanted things to be a certain way, that didn’t necessarily mean they would be.

  “You have to understand where I might be in a position to question you, baby.”

  “Don’t ‘baby’ me! And no! I do not understand. Going from me having a night out where I don’t feel like one of your club tramps to me associating with someone that tried to kill you is a big jump, not to mention an insulting and unreasonable one. Where is this coming from?” Suddenly the anger seemed to be gone and she had tears in her eyes. “I thought you loved me, Wolf. I thought you and I had something like no one else had. You’re the love of my life. My soulmate...”

  She began to sob and sat down again, burying her face in her hands. Wolf’s first impulse was to comfort her...but if she could live with him, and make love to him, and cook and clean for him while all the time plotting his death, she could sure as hell fake a few tears. He waited her out and when she realized he wasn’t going to put his arms around her, she looked up at him, once again with flames shooting from her dee
p-brown eyes. “You don’t love me at all, do you?” She jumped up again, and before Wolf could decide how he wanted to respond to that, she ran down the hallway to the bedroom. He heard the door slam and he lowered his own head down into his hands. He did love her. He loved her more than he wanted to take his next breath. How the fuck would he go on if he found out that she was behind this? He had to know, and it had to be soon.

  He got up and went to get his phone. He’d left it charging on the counter the night before. That was when he saw his old lady’s phone charging next to it. He’d never looked at her phone before. He’d never had any reason to doubt her. With a heavy heart he reached for it and pressed messages. Her text messages had been cleared. He pressed recent next; that had been cleared too. With a sigh he pushed the icon for her FB Messenger. There were a few messages from Clara, an old friend of hers that she spoke to often. They were simple messages about a show they both liked to watch and shopping...girl stuff. He was about to click it off when he saw the icon that said, “Secret Conversation.” He pressed that and there it was...the end of his fucking world.

  The message from Clara said, “What do you think Wolf will do to you if he finds out? You need to stop this, Amara. Just leave. I’ll help you.”

  Amara had responded, “If he finds out, he’ll kill me. But, he’s not going to just let me leave, and Papa needs the money.”

  The money? What money was she talking about? Wolf filed that away for later...his chest hurt, and he was having trouble breathing. He put her phone down exactly where it had been and picked his up. He found the shirt he’d worn the night before on the chair where he’d pulled it off when he came in. He sat down and pulled on his boots and then slid on his denim vest. Sticking the phone down in his pocket, he stepped outside. He had to stand still on the porch for several seconds, trying to catch his breath. He was dizzy, and he knew that he was about to hyperventilate. He took some time breathing in and out long, slow breaths and then he finally stepped down off the porch of the house that he’d thought was his loving home, and he headed over to the shop.