by Zoey Parker
“Don’t be a pussy,” I said. “Come on, come out and get drunk with me. I’m your president, damn it. I can tell you what to do!”
“I don’t know,” Axel repeated. “Can’t you call Kenny?”
I growled. Kenny was at home, watching over Katie, but I couldn’t really tell Axel that. I knew I’d have to tell the guys about my choice sooner or later, but right now didn’t seem like the best time. After all, Katie was a business deal. But she was also a liability, and I didn’t want to spook the guys so soon after Matthias’s death.
Thinking about Matthias put me in an even blacker mood. I had no idea how I was supposed to concentrate on everything that was going on, not with Katie hanging around and needing protection. She was something else, all right.
I wondered how many people in the club thought I was really responsible for Matthias’s death. Shit.
“Come on, Axel,” I said. “I mean it. I won’t keep you out all night. I just need some company.”
“You’re so fuckin’ needy, Jace,” Axel grumbled. He hung up the phone after telling me that he’d meet me in downtown Marquette in about an hour.
I swallowed hard. It was only a little after noon, and there was no fucking way I was going home, not for a few hours. Last night had been one of the most incredible fucks of my life, but being around Katie was really stressing me out. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her when she’d told me about changing her number so many times, but it seemed unlikely that Troy was really as smart as she made him out to be. In the few times I’d seen him around town, he always seemed so fucking slow and dull-witted. I’d never thought of him as really dangerous before. When he and Katie were together, I barely saw her. Matthias always took it real personally, but I knew now that Troy had likely worked hard to keep her away from the only family she had.
Thinking about that made me want to hunt him down like a dog and punch the shit out of him. He was such an asshole, thinking he could get away with treating Katie the way he had.
I need a fuckin’ drink, I thought sourly. I need to stop fuckin’ thinking about this shit over and over.
I pointed my car in the direction of The Old Tavern and pressed hard on the gas. Ever since I’d patched in with The Silent Havoc, I didn’t have much use for bars. After all, we had a killer setup in our clubhouse. But sometimes, times like today, I couldn’t stand the idea of being around everyone.
The Old Tavern was good for days like these. The people who staffed the bar were old, the kind of people who didn’t pay attention to anything, and the whole bar smelled like mildew and stale beer. I’d heard it was a good place to pick up coke once, and I wouldn’t have exactly disbelieved it. My drug days were long behind me, but, still, it was the kind of bar where one could feel truly anonymous.
“Give me a lager and a shot of whiskey,” I said to the aging bartender who took my order. She grinned at me with yellowing teeth. She was attractive for being in her mid-fifties, but she still dressed like a young bar wench, and I wondered when she’d last looked in a mirror.
“Got it, handsome,” she said, batting her eyelashes at me. When she was out of sight, I rolled my eyes. At least I wouldn’t be tempted to pick up any girls tonight.
Something was really bothering me, and I was starting to figure out it didn’t have anything to do with Matthias, or Katie. It had to do with Troy. I didn’t know much about him, aside from what Katie had told me, but he didn’t seem like the type of asshole who made a habit out of bothering women. In fact, he seemed like a fucking outcast from society in general. He and Katie had been together for years—what exactly had he been trying to do with her?
“Yo.” Axel’s familiar voice made me whirl around. “What’s up, man?” I stood up and we hugged, clapping a hand on each other’s back.
“Not a thing,” I lied. “Just been to see Rosa.”
“Oh yeah?” Axel raised his eyebrows. “She still as fine as ever?”
I laughed. “It ain’t like that anymore,” I told him flatly. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”
Axel nodded. “I gotcha,” he said. “So…what was the deal?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to tell him about the note I’d found at Matthias’s house, not until I knew who was behind it. This whole thing was such a mess that I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it. I had no idea how much the other guys knew, if anything.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Just a social visit.”
Axel nodded. He looked down at my hands. “Did I miss something?” He pointed to the ring. “What happened?”
Shit. There goes that one. “I got married,” I said with a grin. “You remember Matthias’s daughter, Katharina?”
Axel nodded. A look of wonder came over his face. “Hell yes, I remember her,” he said. “She’s fuckin’ hot to trot. I’ve never seen anyone who looks as fine as she does!”
“I know,” I said drily. “She’s fuckin’ gorgeous. She came to me, asking for help, and this is the best way I can protect her.”
Axel nodded. “That happens a lot,” he said. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Her old boyfriend used to hit her,” he added.
“What the hell, man? How did you know that?”
Axel shrugged. “Common knowledge, man. Everyone knows that. I mean, they used to get into it in public sometimes. The few times I saw her, she was always with him, and always wearing sunglasses to cover some shiner on her eye.”
I blinked. Maybe the guys weren’t as oblivious as I’d first taken them to be. “I can’t believe you knew that,” I said. “I had no idea until she told me.”
“Come on,” Axel said sarcastically. “You really never paid attention? She didn’t even go to her own father’s funeral.”
I nodded. I had remembered that. It was one of the things I’d been meaning to ask Katie about, some time when we were alone. I knew she and Matthias hadn’t exactly been close, but I always wondered why. When he was leading The Silent Havoc, Matthias had been a good man. Stern but solid, the kind of man you’d follow into battle.
“Yeah,” I said after a pause. “I guess I do remember that.”
“Yeah,” Axel echoed. The waitress brought over my beer and shot and Axel ordered the same. I waited until he was served, then we clinked together and knocked our drinks back.
“I’m feeling really weird about all of this,” I confessed. “Troy, that asshole, he keeps bugging her. She’s real afraid of him, too. She acts like he’s gonna break in and try to kill her while she’s in my house.”
Axel frowned. “He’s a crazy motherfucker, you know? She might not really be exaggerating, man.”
“Really? He’s gonna try to do shit to her even after she married me?”
Axel glanced away. “Did I ever tell you about what happened to my mom?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “What was it?”
Axel let out a long sigh. “My dad used to beat the shit out of her,” he said after a moment. “Like, every day. For no reason. He’d just get in that mood, and get that look in his eye, and go after her. She couldn’t even defend herself most of the time. She didn’t know how.” He took a long swallow of his beer and stared down at the dirty wooden bar. “She was just shocked.”
“And what happened?”
Axel held up a hand. “I ain’t done yet,” he snapped. “Shut up and listen.”
I nodded. “Sorry. Go on.”
“Well, when I was in high school, I asked her why she’d stuck around for so damn long. Like, if Pa beats you, why didn’t you just leave? Hell, why did you marry someone like that in the first place? And you know what? She said she didn’t know. She said she never had a reason for sticking with him.” Axel paused for another drink. When he continued, his voice was harsher than before. “I did some diggin’ around after she died. He beat her to death, you know. He beat her with a tire iron in the backyard and left her to die. She drowned in her own blood.” Axel sucked his teeth. “My uncle killed him,” he said. “He
showed up with a shotgun and about blew his head off.”
I nodded. Somewhere, I remembered Axel telling me this story before. It was unusual for us to be talking this openly without being completely shitfaced; I was sure when I’d heard the story before, I’d been so drunk that I couldn’t even stand up. Axel was one of the most reticent guys in the Havoc, and he wasn’t prone to talking just to hear his own voice.
“Yeah, so I got to doin’ some research,” Axel said. “Started looking around for old shit that Mom had written. I didn’t find much; she met Pa when she was real young. But he pulled her away from everything she cared about, and her family. Her brother was the only damn person who bothered keeping in touch.” He swallowed hard. “That’s what assholes like my Pa do, Jace. They cut a woman off from her support network. My mom knew exactly why she didn’t leave; she lied to me. She never left because she didn’t think she had anywhere to go.”
“What about your uncle? Wouldn’t he have taken you in?”
Axel shrugged. “She probably didn’t want to be a burden,” he said. “That was Mom’s way: always worried what other people were gonna say about her when she was gone.”
I nodded. “That’s a hell of a story. Damn, man.”
“Anyway,” Axel said. “There’s one more thing. Before he killed her, I think she knew she was gonna die. I think she knew that deep down, there was some connection, some thread that bound the two of them together. She hated him, sure, but part of her loved him because it was all she knew. She probably thought it was her destiny or some shit. She probably thought it was the only way she’d ever die.”
I blinked. “What are you sayin’?”
“That if Troy got into Katharina’s head the same way my daddy did to Mom, no wonder she’s fuckin’ scared,” Axel said darkly. He threw his head back and poured the rest of his beer down his throat. “If I were her, I’d probably spend every minute of the day workin’ it over in my mind.”
“I hadn’t really thought about it like that,” I said.
It frightened me to think of Katie not being able to leave Troy. It scared me to think he might have killed her before she got the chance to run. I knew Katie was a strong, impulsive woman. But even the strongest of people got beat down every now and then, and maybe it was only a matter of time before Troy really would have done something awful.
“She’s mine now,” I said suddenly, staring down at the ring on my hand. The ring gave me a chill, and for a second, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. The rings I’d used when Katie and I got married were the rings I’d had on hand when Margot died. Katie’s ring had been fitted to Margot. I was just glad I hadn’t had them engraved. But still, it felt pretty fucking weird. I hadn’t worn the ring since Margot and I went to the jeweler and tried them on that day. Now, it felt like a part of her ghost was clinging on to me with every step that I took.
“She is,” Axel said in an appraising kind of voice. “Is that where Kenny is? Watching her?”
“Yeah. She didn’t want me to leave her alone unless one of the guys was in the house with her. I thought she was being silly at the time, but now I’m fuckin’ glad she insisted.”
Axel nodded. He had a dark look on his face. I wondered if he was thinking about his mother again. “Yeah,” he agreed.
The waitress stopped by in front of us and we each ordered two more pints and shots.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” I said. “I told this fuck to leave her alone, but it obviously didn’t convince her.”
“You think he listened to you?” Axel raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Fuck you,” I said in a joking tone as we clinked shot glasses together. “I’m fucking Jace Carver, of course he listened to me.”
“Whatever, man,” Axel said. He gulped some of his beer and changed the subject to an upcoming weekend ride.
Every summer, The Silent Havoc drove up to New Hampshire for a week on the lakes with other bikers. It was a hell of a time, and we usually made the paper at least once because some dumbshits got into a fight. I’d always gone as a single man, except for when I’d been with Margot, and now I wasn’t sure what was going to go on. There was a lot of fucking that went down over that week, but, oddly, the prospect didn’t excite me the way it had a year or two ago.
“I can’t wait,” Axel said. He grinned at me. “So many girls, so little time.”
“Wear a rubber,” I advised. “You don’t want some bitch calling you and telling you that you knocked her up.”
Axel pretended to shudder. It was like our serious chat of a few minutes ago had already disappeared. I could tell he was relieved the subject had changed; he didn’t want to dwell on his dead mother any more than I wanted to dwell on Troy beating the shit out of my wife.
But I couldn’t not dwell on it. Even though I’d been feeling cocksure and confident earlier, now I wasn’t sure I’d been right. After all, if Troy was as deranged as Katie said and Axel implied, he wasn’t going to stop until she was dead.
A cold chill ran through me.
“What’s wrong?” Axel asked when I stopped laughing.
I shook my head. “I got a bad feeling,” I said, turning the words over in my head. “I dunno, I can’t put a finger on it. But I feel like Katie might have been right about something.”
Axel looked at me. “We gotta get you out of here,” he said. “Come on, man. Come have a smoke with me.”
I rolled my eyes. Draining the rest of my beer, I strode into the men’s to take a piss, then joined Axel outside. It was the middle of the afternoon, hot and muggy, and I realized I was a little drunk on my feet.
“Hey, do you see that guy?” Axel punched me on the shoulder and pointed towards the street. He sniggered. A skinny, tall blond guy was walking along the sidewalk, glaring down at his feet.
To my surprise, he turned on a dime and started towards us.
“Yo, I don’t think we know you,” I said as he got closer. His expression changed from one of simple malice to pure hatred, and before I knew it, I saw him balling his hands into fists at his side.
“Do we know you, man?” Axel asked.
The blond man kept advancing. Holy shit. “I know who that fucker is,” I said under my breath as he got closer. “It’s Troy.”
“That’s right, asshole.” He turned to me and glared. He was a reedy, thin man with a skinny, long face that looked like a rat. “You fucker,” he said, leaning to the side and spitting on the ground. “You really married Katharina?”
I sniggered, holding my left hand up in the air. “I got a ring on it and everything,” I said with a smirk.
“Watch out,” Axel muttered behind me. “That asshole looks dangerous.”
“He looks like a fuckin’ pussy,” I announced loudly.
Troy’s face twisted with rage, and he sprung at me like an animal released from a cage. Laughing, I reached up and grabbed his fist, twisting his arm down and making him howl.
“Fuck you,” Troy spat. “Fight me like a fuckin’ man!”
“Okay,” I said, grinning. Balling my hand into a fist, I swung it behind my body and cracked Troy hard on the face. Blood streamed down out of his thin nostrils and he spat on the ground, leaving a tooth in a pile of gore.
“That good enough for you?” Axel taunted.
Troy lowered his head and tried to charge me like a bull. As quickly as I could, I yanked my knee upward and right into Troy’s face. I could feel cartilage and bone cracking.
Troy crumped to the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees, moaning.
“You’re a pathetic little shit,” I mumbled down at his body. “You need to stay the fuck away from Katie, got it?”
Troy opened his eyes and stared at me. Despite his mauled face, I saw real hatred in his eyes. “I’ll do what I want,” he said in a raspy voice, spitting blood into the air. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do, you piece of white trash shit.”
I reached down and grabbed Troy by his shirt collar, yanking him t
o his feet. I was surprised at how light he was; he was like a feather, or a little kid. “We need to get one thing straight,” I said loudly. “One thing, you got that? If you go near my wife again, I will personally take the time from my day to put a bullet in your brain.”
Troy stared at me. He opened his mouth and I swung my fist back again, preparing to punch the hell out of him. But then he closed his lips. I saw a brief look of defeat flash over his face.
“You got that?” I asked again, my breath coming heavier than before. My heart was pounding in my chest and my blood was gushing hotly through my veins. It was almost the exact same feeling I’d had the night before, when Katie and I had been fucking each other’s brains out. It was pure energy, exhilaration.
Troy laughed. I almost dropped him when I heard the weird sound bubbling up from this skinny, reedy slip of a man. But instead I held onto his collar and pressed my forehead up against his.