Fractured & Formidable: The Sacred Hearts MC Book V

by Downey, A. J.

  “No, I’m not fucking good to talk,” I growled.

  Trig grunted in return but didn’t press it, rather he fielded several calls from other Sacred Hearts men as we piloted our way through the snow dump outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if the power started going out; there was a reason I had a woodstove at my place.

  He pulled up into the drive at the club carefully, sliding a couple of times before making it up in to the lot and parked over near the Sheriff department’s cruiser. It looked like Ghost and Reave made it back. Dragon had stuck them together to see if they could work out their differences over Shelly. Reave still hadn’t completely forgiven Ghost for fucking up there and it hadn’t exactly been a gas keeping those two from tearing each other apart a few weeks back.

  First thing I did when I got inside the clubhouse door was scan for Red’s copper curls. Ashton was immediately in Trig’s arms and with a solemn search of my face with her golden gaze she whispered softly, “In the kitchen with the deputies,” before she shied into the shelter of my big partner’s frame. I shook myself like a dog coming out of the water and tried to lose the scowl. I didn’t like scaring the shit out of the diminutive woman.

  “Sorry Sunshine.”

  “I understand,” she murmured, “but be careful with her.”

  I nodded and went into the kitchen and there was my girl, fixing coffee for the two sheriff deputies that belonged to the cruiser out front. She looked up startled and bit her lower lip, like she was waiting to see if she was in some kind of trouble and immediately my anger fucking cooled. Like she was some kind of soothing salve for my soul or something. I’d never felt anything like it but I wasn’t about to question it, you didn’t question things like that you just went with them and remained grateful for them.

  “C’mere Red,” I said softly and she obediently came around the counter and reached for me. I held her to me and breathed in her pristine floral scent and leveled the older of the two deputies with a stare.

  “Are you Jose or Draven Trujillo?” he asked.

  “Naw man, they’re on their way. Can you fill me in though?” I asked. Mandy pulled back gently and searched my face.

  “Perhaps its best we wait until everyone is here,” she said softly, “That way they don’t have to keep giving the bad news over and over.” I eased my hold on her into a gentler thing and smiled at her, even if it was tinged with the hurt and anger surrounding what was what with my club brother.

  “Yeah, sure. Okay Babe, makes sense.” I nodded and she slipped from my grasp to bring the coffee with its tray of cream and sugar, along with some mugs out for everyone. I gave her a hand and happened to come out the kitchen door just as Dragon, Dray, Reave and Ghost came through it. I turned and called back over my shoulder to the deputies that our Pres. was here and they both pushed off their stools.

  Dragon shook hands with the older deputy and then with the younger one before he motioned for them to step into the chapel with Dray, Trig, Reave and Doc. Mandy made sure they were set up with coffee and murmured she would make hot chocolate for everyone to get them warmed up. Dragon pulled her into a one armed hug and pulled her down to kiss her temple.

  “Thanks Red, the club owes you,” he murmured. She blushed faintly and I accompanied her back to the kitchen to help her out.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked, bringing out some bricks of Mexican chocolate from the pantry.

  “No, Baby! No not at all, Sugar. I’m pissed that you had to tell me, I wanna know what happened, I want to fuck somebody up, but you? No, not mad at you, not at all.” I pulled her into my arms and she pressed her mouth to the side of my neck and trembled in my grasp. I felt her lips waver against my skin and with a deep breath she let out a sob that just broke my heart.

  “I didn’t even know him that well,” her voice was watered down by her tears and she cried against me, “Still, it’s awful!” she cried and the whole truth came spilling out of her, what the deputies had told those assembled back here at the club.

  That Grinder had been run off the road in the cold, in the dark, and how no one had found him. How my brother had lain trapped beneath his bike in the cold, in the snow but had taken a day, maybe two to die. How no one knew how to get in touch with his family. How the only reason the police had come knocking here was the dues receipt in his wallet for the club.

  I pulled back and frowned, “Wasn’t he wearing his colors?” I asked, she shook her head violently back and forth.

  “I don’t know, they didn’t say.” I nodded and pulled her back into my arms and rocked her until she quieted.

  “I need to do something, anything,” she murmured and went to splash some cold water onto her face. I slipped up on the stool to be near her in case she needed me while she shaved chocolate with her knife and set milk on to heat.

  She moved about the kitchen with a single minded determination to just not think and I had to admire her silent strength to do for others when she was hurting too. The fact that she spared a thought for the cops and their feelings, on how it must be for them to deliver bad news to people over and over. Shit, her grace and generosity never ceased to amaze me.

  “Can you get me the Fireball from behind the bar?” she asked softly.

  “Yeah, Babe. Be right back.” I slipped off the stool and out the kitchen door and picked up the bottle of cinnamon whiskey. Everyone was sitting somber and stoic waiting for Dragon and the rest of the Sacred Hearts officers to come back out. We couldn’t see shit because of the heavy black curtains but there really wasn’t much doing until they came out and brought the rest of us up to speed. I brought Red the bottle like she asked and she considered it thoughtfully before liberally dosing the pot of drinking chocolate she’d concocted.

  “Trying to get us all drunk, Sugar?” I crooked a smile but it was met with one of the most heartbreaking looks from my girl.

  “I think we’re all going to need the edge taken off tonight,” she murmured and took the pot off the stove before the alcohol could cook off.

  I nodded, “I’m thinking you might be right.”

  She directed me to bring this cushy silicone mat thing out to the bar so she could set the pot on its top and prevent the wood beneath from burning. Soon Sunshine was pitching in, taking paper cups of the steaming liquid and passing them around almost as fast as Red could ladle them out.

  Those who had been out in the cold searching were served up first, and it was as she passed out the last few cups that the door opened to the chapel and the men all filed out. The deputies shook hands with Dragon at the door and with a final murmured thanks at my girl for fixing them coffee, they slipped out into the snow. Just about everyone held their breath, waiting to hear what Dragon would say. He turned back to the lot of us, and with a heavy sigh filled us in.

  “Grinder’s been murdered,” he said.

  He told us everything, sparing no detail. That Grinder had been run off the road maybe two, three nights ago. How it was obviously intentional, a car versus bike scenario. Last he’d been seen he was wearing his cut, but he hadn’t been found wearing it. How he’d been pinned under his bike, leg broken and some ribs too. He’d suffered. There was evidence that whoever had run him off didn’t like him much, on that he wouldn’t elaborate but whatever details he was holding back, likely on account of the women of the club being present, well… it didn’t take a genius to see how much it stoked his fires and pissed him the fuck off.

  “Tonight, we get our heads around this, around him being gone. Tomorrow, I need the Ol’ Ladies to do what they do best in times like these,” he gave a nod to Chandra and Shelly who would know, they nodded back their understanding.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Chandra assured him, while the rest of the women looked on mystified, not my Red though, she was a preacher’s daughter and likely knew her way around a funeral.

  “I’ll speak to my father about a service,” she murmured.

  “Graveside? That would be nice sweetie but we don’t do no church
service, the wake will be here,” Chandra’s tone was gentle and Red nodded.

  “I need to call the chapter he come from,” Dragon’s tone was heavy, “He’s got three guys he come up with, I imagine they’ll be wanting to stick around and see this through. Church tomorrow in the am. Doc, I need numbers for his family.”

  Dragon held out a hand and our VP put a bottle of tequila in it before Dragon disappeared back into the chapel, Doc on his heels. Dray pulled Everett into the circle of his arms and kissed her, holding her close, foreheads pressed together as he spoke with her softly.

  Red looked on with a watery smile, happy for her friend yet still attempting to process the news, that someone she knew, had interacted with weekly if not daily, was gone in one seriously insidious and horribly painful way. I could see it in the pinched lines of her face, in her tight and rigid posture, she wasn’t handling the news well but she was carefully holding herself together, giving an appearance of calm to benefit the rest of us who knew Grinder better. I pulled her into my arms and she startled. I was seated on one of the stools at the bar and it gave me added height, so for once when I pulled her back to my front, my knees carefully bracketing her hips, I could rest my chin on her shoulder from up here. I tightened my arms around her and held her to me.

  “It’s okay, Red. You ain’t gotta pretend for me or no one else. You’re hurting. You don’t have to put on a good show here. No one expects it.” Her breathing all but stopped. Her fingers dug into the sleeve of the thick leather of my jacket and the hooded sweatshirt beneath that.

  “I don’t want to fall apart out here,” she murmured, barely loud enough for me to hear it. I kissed the side of her neck and slipped off the stool, shoving her forward gently. I propelled her towards the back, towards my room and caught a glance from Everett who nodded gracefully in my direction.

  It was awkward walking, her back pressed to my front but I didn’t care, as soon as I had us through my club room door I kicked it shut behind me and she trembled. She turned in my arms and we held each other while she cried silently.

  “I shouldn’t be this upset, I mean should I? I didn’t even know him that well,” her voice was mournful and I sighed and smoothed my hands up and down her back which felt like an exercise in futility, encased as it was in her thick forest green sweater. I leaned back and chucked her under her chin.

  “Baby, you were just told that a man you knew died in a horrible way and that some living, breathing, human piece of shit out there did it to him. You’re allowed to feel any way you feel. Ain’t nobody, least of all me, going to tell you otherwise; if anybody does, well, fuck ‘em.”

  She blinked rapidly, twin tears slicking down her face, magnifying her freckles.

  “I feel like I should be doing something, like I should be helping,” she murmured. I smiled sadly at her.

  “You are baby. Just by letting me hold you, you are. I promise. Not much else can be done tonight, so let’s go to bed, huh?” I didn’t think she’d go for it but she nodded mutely, miserably and we helped each other out of our street clothes and in to some sleep wear.

  I got into bed and held the blankets for her and she snugged herself perfectly into the curve of my body, her head resting on my shoulder.

  “I love you, Baby,” I whispered into her hair. It suddenly seemed triply important that she know that, that I speak the words out loud.

  “I love you too, Zander,” she murmured back and I felt complete; the last of my anger cooling to a manageable level. Some of the tension easing out of my muscles. I held her for a long time, and simply stared at the ceiling above our heads while sleep eluded me.

  The Suicide Kings had gotten one of us and if the game had been high stakes before… well, this was a game changer for sure. I listened to Mandy’s soft breathing in the close dark of my room and wondered what the hell I was going to do because now, more than ever I had so much more to lose. To say that sleep, when it came, was as uneasy as it got was an understatement.

  Chapter 22

  Mandy…

  When I had woken the morning after we’d all received the news about Grinder, it was to an empty room. Zander had already risen and was cloistered in the MC’s little fishbowl of a room they reverently referred to as the ‘chapel’. I rose and with a shiver, dressed quickly. It was a white and pristine winter outside. Beautiful and serene. To add to our heartbreak it was just passed the New Year, a time that was supposed to be all about new beginnings, which just made this seem all the more awful, didn’t it? To greet the New Year in such a way?

  I found Ashton and Everett in the kitchen, the three of us being the early risers among the Ol’ Ladies, which I was still coming to terms with the title. Zander had presented me with a leather vest on New Year’s Eve, beautifully embroidered with the somewhat distasteful moniker of ‘Property of Revelator’ on the back, the little name patch on the front boldly spelling out ‘Red’. He explained to me what it meant to belong to him, the commitment he was offering me and suddenly the choice of words on the back, property of, didn’t seem at all distasteful but rather a very special honorific.

  Evy and the rest of the girls had a laugh over my initial reaction and all but Chandra and Shelly had agreed that Everett’s first reaction had been along the same lines as mine. Evy had nearly torn Dray a new one and they’d had quite the argument until Shelly had stepped in and explained it to my sister from another mister. Apparently Reaver and Trigger had been much better at explaining it to Hayden and Ashton. Shelly and Chandra had just been around the MC long enough to know what such a thing meant. Chandra had put it best when she said for a lot of the men, an engagement or wedding ring meant far less than bestowing a woman with their ‘rag’ as she called it.

  “You look thoughtful,” Evy remarked, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to her lips she blew before taking a tentative sip.

  “Just wondering what happens now, I mean, what do we do?” I stretched and Ashton poured me a cup of coffee, I took it gratefully and added the requisite amount of cream and sugar from the tray of offerings to make it palatable.

  “I talked with Chandra and Shelly late last night. They said it’s up to us to do what it is women do during funerals, make the arrangements, buy a casket, and have the funeral home bring him here once he’s released. Cook for the club, clean up after and be there for our men for whatever they may need.” Ashton shrugged.

  “Best be expecting a lot of company in the coming days,” Chandra said from the kitchen door, her sentence punctuated by the flick of her Bic lighter. She took a deep drag off her cigarette and released a large plume into the air with a harsh exhale.

  “Shit gets crazy at a biker funeral,” Shelly agreed shoving past the older woman.

  “How does it work?” Evy asked, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

  “Well, just about every chapter across the states sends out at least one representative, unless the entire chapter shows up. Not sure how many brothers Grinder was good with, that makes a bit of difference. We could be packed to the gills and then some. Two, three hundred strong maybe more. Given the weather here though? My guess would be more like fifty or sixty. Again, depending on who he was good with,” Shelly explained, fixing herself some coffee.

  Chandra smoked some more and sighed, running her long nails through her short platinum blonde dyed hair, the dark roots coming in.

  “We have a wake here, things get crazy. A lot of eating, a lot of drinking and a whole lot of fucking, with no mind to where they do it. You girls better wear your man’s rag or it’s just assumed you’re fair game, you get me?” she pinned us all with a hard look as we three nodded mutely.

  “Everybody gets up the next mornin’, hung the fuck over and the ride happens, a grand ol’ procession to the cemetery. I don’t know if Grinder’s brothers are takin’ him back to his home state or if he’s being laid to rest here. The Sacred Hearts were in such a bad way some years back gettin’ killed, that Dragon bought a hell of a plot over at the ol’ Brundle Hills
cemetery. Bought half the damned place out. There’s still a lot of ground out there left for anyone in the club has no place else to go. Sacred Hearts take care of their own, no matter where they’re from.” She took another thoughtful drag and pushed off the doorway where she’d been leaning.

  She was dressed in jeans and knee high boots, a white lace edged camisole peeking out from the front of her fitted snap-button flannel shirt in reds whites and blues. The club colors. She tucked her cigarette between her lips and set about fixing herself a cup of coffee. Chandra never went without her makeup and this morning was no exception, her kohl lined eyes making the light color stand out vivid, her cigarette stained with her light pink lipstick.

  “I can handle food, but could use some help,” Ashton remarked softly but she was looking at me. I nodded.

  “I’ll talk to my father today about conducting a grave side service,” I said.

  “I can keep the coffee flowing,” Evy shrugged, “Pitch in with whatever else.”

  “I’ve got the funeral home’s number that we use, Shelly can help me with figuring the cost. Everett you need to make sure the bar is stocked because these boys are going to go through it,” Chandra looked my friend up and down but Everett was already nodding.

  “Aye, I can do that.”

  “I wonder if Reaver has called Hayden,” Ashton remarked and speak of the devil, there he was just appeared out of thin air in the doorway.

  “Yeah, she’ll be here for the funeral but then she’s got to fly back out,” he said and didn’t look too happy about it. Ashton immediately went to him and hugged herself to him. Reaver smiled down at her and kissed the top of her head, rubbing up and down one of the small woman’s arms.

  “Thanks Sunshine,” he murmured and she beamed up at him.

  “Well okay, everyone knows what to do, you boys got a count and a time frame for me?” Chandra asked.