BRANDED: Wild Aces MC

by April Lust

  She shrugged her shoulders a little, then reached for the remote control. She turned on the TV, but kept the volume all the way down so all you really heard was the buzzing of electronics fill the room. “I’m all right,” she told me, but didn’t meet my eyes. It told me that she was in a lot more pain than she was letting on. “Why don’t you have a seat? Talk with me a bit. I haven’t seen you all day.”

  I winced a little at that and hoped she couldn’t see it. She was right. I hadn’t seen her all day and I’d barely seen her yesterday. It made me feel guilty because I knew a lot of the time she didn’t get around much, and without someone home to help, sometimes she wouldn’t get much done. Eating could even be a real pain. “I know, I’m sorry,” I told her earnestly, coming around the other side of the bed so I could sit on the other side of her, one leg dangling off the edge and the other curled up beneath me.

  She waved me off. “No, no, it’s fine. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad,” she told me quickly. “I just meant you’re my daughter and I miss you, that’s all.”

  I nodded, but still felt guilty despite her absolution. I really knew I should be over here more often, but it was hard. Taking care of her was hard, though I tried not to look at it that way. For a while, after Dad died, we hired a live-in nurse. She took care of mom, made sure she bathed and ate and did her physical therapy—for all the damn good it seemed to do—but that was expensive. I definitely didn’t have the money, but Max took care of it. He paid for everything from the nurse to the heating bill to the funeral arrangements. Everything. He made sure Mom was well taken care of and I knew she appreciated it.

  I appreciated it.

  But money wasn’t grown on trees. It was earned and made through whatever means necessary, and after a certain point, there just wouldn’t be any more. That was the point Max had reached. I never asked where the money came from or how he got it; I was just grateful that someone was taking care of my mom.

  Now, things were harder. It wasn’t that I hated having to be here more or taking care of my mother in general, but things were complicated. Everything here was a reminder of my father and that bloody mess I’d come home to find.

  Besides, I wasn’t a nurse and couldn’t provide better care than a registered nurse. It would be better to have someone who was trained in this stuff, not someone like me who had to go to internet search engines whenever I thought something was wrong, only to spend hours scrolling through pages that might be total and complete bullshit.

  “How was tonight?” Mom asked when I didn’t speak for a while.

  I stared at the TV screen; some game show was on with bright flashing lights and people laughing hysterically. But I wasn’t watching. Instead I was thinking of Max and the way his eyes had lit up and the thrill that had run through my body at the sight of him, just like always. “It was fine,” I told her. Mom knew about initiations probably better than I did. She’d been in the club—as much as a biker’s old lady could be—since getting involved with my father. No one had expected him to marry her, she loved to tell me, but he did and they had a whole slew of badass bikers wearing leather jackets over tuxedos. She said it had been perfect, though I couldn’t say I agreed with her.

  “Fine?” Mom repeated, probably sensing more than anything else that there was something wrong. “What happened?”

  I shook my head with a sigh and starting to tell her in earnest about the night. Mom wouldn’t let it lie if I didn’t; besides, I didn’t want her thinking someone had died. It hadn’t happened in a long while but it did happen sometimes. “Nothing, really. It was pretty much the same as every one before it. The guy’s name was Thunder.”

  My mother’s eyebrows rose in question. “Is he hot?” There was a tiny smirk tugging at her lips, but it was forced. I could see the tightness around her eyes and the sadness lurking in their depths. She was faking it to convince me she was all right, but I knew better. She wasn’t over Dad and maybe she never would be.

  I scrunched up my nose to make a disgusted face. Thunder might be brave or determined, but he definitely wasn’t hot. “No, definitely not.” I made a big open circle with my arms around my waist. “Huge and kinda sweaty, but he also had a hard night, so it’s hard to hold that against him.”

  “Disappointing,” Mom muttered, but her eyes were on the screen of the TV and she’d dropped the smirk. “He made it, though?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a damn hard head. Seems like a decent enough guy.” I wasn’t really sure if that last part were true or not. Maybe he was a total asshole; maybe he was a saint. You’d be surprised how many of each the biker lifestyle happened to get.

  Mom lifted her shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. I fell silent again. We both watched the soundless TV show, but I doubted either of us could say what had gone on in the last fifteen minutes of it.

  Finally, it was, again, my mother who broke the silence. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  No, was my first thought, but then I considered this was my mother and if there were anyone who might make things okay, who, maybe, could at the very least understand what I was going through, I thought it could be her. “Thunder took a real beating tonight.”

  My mom frowned, looking over at me curiously. “They always do,” she told me seriously. “That’s part of it. If you’re not ready to take a beating, you aren’t ready for this kind of life, you know.”

  I did know. I’d known that for a long damn time, but knowing it and understanding it were different and now I wondered if I hadn’t recently stumbled onto understanding without realizing it.

  “I know,” I told her, struggling to find the words that would make her understand what I was getting at, what was bothering me so much. “It’s just…it’s just there was so much blood tonight and everyone was enjoying it so much. I don’t know why it bothered me so much tonight.”

  Mom considered me in that way that told me she was trying to see right through to my brain, as though she could read my thoughts and decipher them for herself. She did this for a while until finally saying, “It’s a release. Some of those guys have to push everything down inside. Bad things, good things, just all of it. Some of them have trouble with their emotions or their personal thoughts. Some of them just struggle with life. The beatings…” She shook her head, then said, “They aren’t about the guy who’s getting the beating, no matter what anyone says. They’re about the guys who are giving the beatings. It’s about letting lose and getting rid of all that crap they’ve let build up and fester inside of them. It’s about walking away cleaner than when you walked in.”

  I frowned. That didn’t make sense to me, not really. How could beating the absolute crap out of someone be about walking away cleaner? I didn’t think something like that was possible and it must have shown on my face, because she gave me a sympathetic look and patted my knee.

  “Marcus used to come home with these bloodied, bruised hands,” Mom told me, looking wistful as she always did whenever Dad dropped into the conversation. “It used to make me really nervous. My mom was one of those women who ended up with an asshole for a father and then, like an idiot, went and married someone just like him.”

  Mom didn’t talk about my grandmother much. Georgia was an alcoholic and a flake, but no one blamed her much for it because her life had been so terrible. Her father had taken to beating her with his belt over and over again when she was a child because he couldn’t hold his liquor or his life, and he had to take it out on someone.

  At sixteen, Grandma Georgia made a break for it. I heard all kinds of stories about what she did to survive—prostitution, dealing drugs, stripping, raising dogs to fight—but Mom never said for sure one way or the other. I did know Georgia was pregnant at seventeen and no one knew who the father was. Mom didn’t care and didn’t ask, she said, but I felt that had to be a lie.

  By the time she was nineteen, Georgia had married an attractive man who liked to beat her purple. But she put up with it because he was the
kind who said he was sorry afterwards and bought her pretty things—or stole them, anyway.

  Whenever Mom was telling an anecdotal story, something with a point behind it that I was supposed to take away and apply to my own life later, she used Georgia as her example. “She used to tell me, ‘He’s a brutal bastard, just like the rest of them,’ but I never believed her.” She shook her head and it took her a while to come back to the conversation. She sat there and stared ahead as though lost in her own little world; I figured she was and it was one with Dad sitting there with her. “I didn’t believe her, honey, but I thought coming home with blood wasn’t a good thing. So I confronted him about it—I was five months pregnant with you.” She poked at me a little, emphasizing her words.

  I pushed away her hand, though I smiled a little at her. “What did he tell you?”

  “Well, I asked him why he had to do all of this. Why couldn’t he just let the others do the beatings if they were so damn necessary and just come home to me as my lover and my husband? And he told me the truth. He said to me, ‘sometimes men have bad things in them. Sometimes they’ve got demons and they need to be exorcised. It’s not something any priest can do, only a man and his own hands. So we make sacrifices by using the new member to take out our demons on, but then he becomes one of us and he gets to exorcise his demons, too. So we can go home to our lovers and our wives as nothing more than the men we are.’”

  I thought long and hard about that. Did I really believe it? I thought of Max that night, the wild look in his eyes, and I thought maybe, but mostly I thought I could see exactly why that was something my mother wanted to believe. It was better than the alternative: that they were all monsters. Shrugging my shoulders, I said, “I guess that makes sense. I just worry about Max.” And me, but I didn’t say that part.

  Smiling kindly at me, she said, “He’s all right. Max’s a good man. He’s always been tougher than the rest.”

  I nodded my head. “Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t worry.” But I did.

  “Speaking of Max…” My mother’s smile turned sly. “How are things between you two?”

  I glanced back towards the TV screen because I didn’t want to tell her the truth. How was I supposed to explain that I felt like I didn’t even know him sometimes, but that I loved him still? How was I supposed to tell her I wanted him desperately, but didn’t think I could bring myself to have him like I had before, because I was worried about the violence and the gore? So instead I said, “Good. I hate these late nights, though. I can’t help but worry.”

  “Oh, honey, is that what’s bothering you?” Mom asked me, sympathy lacing through her tone.

  It wasn’t, not exactly, but I let her think. “A little. I just keep thinking that one day I’ll come home and—” I stopped. Six months ago, I’d made a promise to myself that I would never discuss the night my father had died with anyone. It held true and I couldn’t let it go. It terrified me and there were nights where it still haunted my dreams. Max said I should talk about it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to relive the images that swam through my head. It was just too much.

  I’d come close to telling her about it now, though. I hadn’t meant to, but once I started talking about Max and the things he did at night, the dangerous things that were part of the club business, I couldn’t help but associate him with my dad’s death. Not in the sense that I believed he caused it, but rather that I was scared on some level I would have to repeat that death with Max.

  Cold swept through me and I felt a little sick. It took everything I had to stay calm on the outside even as my insides wrapped around themselves and tried to eat me alive. My palms were sweaty, but I resisted the urge to rub them on my pants to dry them off.

  I realized how true it was that I actually was worried about Max tonight. I realized I hated not knowing where he was or what he was doing, and I was terrified of coming home to find him dead just like I had my father. Whatever might be wrong with our relationship right then, I knew I loved him and I couldn’t lose him. Not like that.

  My mother must have sensed what I was going to say, because she put her arm comfortingly on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “It’ll be okay, honey.”

  I shook her off; I didn’t want to acknowledge things in any way if I could help it, so I focused on the here and now instead. “It’s fine. I don’t know why we watch this show anyway.”

  Evidently deciding that she wasn’t going to get anything more out of me, Mom agreed that the show was stupid and shifted topics. Sort of. She stuck with the topic of Max, but at least it was no longer focused on how that was bothering me. “When’s the wedding anyway?”

  My head jerked in her direction, my eyes wide. “The what?” Wedding? What wedding? I was sure someone would have mentioned something to me about a wedding if there really was going to be one, but I hadn’t heard a damn thing. Not a single, solitary thing, and if Max had been talking to my mother about it behind my back, so help me god, I’d—

  She laughed, bright and full of life. Saucy, people called that laugh. “Oh, calm down, honey. I’m only teasing.”

  Teasing. I glared at her fiercely even as a twinge of disappointment trickled through my system. “Not funny, Mom.”

  Her grin suggested that she still felt like it was. “I’m only asking what everyone wants to know.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, then you get the same answer that everyone else gets: none of your damn business!”

  My mother held up her hands in surrender, but she didn’t really mean it. “Is it wrong for a mother to ask when you two are finally going to tie the knot? Is it?”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, slipping back against the pillows. “Mom, you’re ridiculous. You’re like a gossiping high schooler or something, you know it?”

  “Stop it. You’ve been dating Max since you were sixteen. That man is crazy about you. He’s dying to marry you.”

  I couldn’t stop my barking laughter, though I wanted to. I didn’t like how bitter it sounded. “Please, that’ll be the day. Can you even imagine me and him in a wedding? We’re not the settling type.”

  Or at least Max wasn’t the settling type…was he? Was I? I wasn’t really sure anymore, but I knew one thing: Max Riley wasn’t going to ask me to marry him.

  I got up from the bed, pecking my mother on the cheek, and then heading over to the door. “I’ll make us some dinner, okay?”

  I didn’t wait for her answer, though I heard her call something unintelligible out after me. I reached the kitchen and went directly for the large pot and filled it with water to put on to boil, because spaghetti was about all I was ready to do right now. I didn’t have the energy for anything else.

  Tonight I knew the truth even if I wasn’t brave enough to admit it to anyone else: I needed to get out. This life wasn’t for me and now it never would be. But the other half of that was Max. I couldn’t leave without him, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d never get out.

  Chapter 6

  Max

  The night air was warm. Sure, the drive down had been chilly thanks to riding down the mountain on our bikes, but the night itself was nice. It was one of those nights that was clear and crisp without being cold. Like a freshly washed blanket straight from the dryer. It was the best kind of night and I knew there were a lot of things I’d rather be doing than standing in the industrial district gearing up for a meeting with the leader of my enemies. All of them had to do with Lucy and none of them had anything to do with Blade.

  “You good?” I asked Bills, mostly to break the stillness of the air, because now that we’d come to a stop and were standing on the pavement looking towards the abandoned warehouse, things were too quiet and too still. It made me nervous.

  Bills nodded once, reaching around to pull the piece he’d tucked into the waistband of his jeans. It was identical to mine, even kept in the same place, and I knew Bills had a hell of a lot more experience with it.

  I’d shot rounds with mine and
was a decent shot, but I’d only had occasion to use it a few times in the last couple of years, and maybe twenty since I’d joined the Sin Reapers. It was sort of a record in reverse and the guys liked to joke about it, but I took pride in knowing I didn’t have to resort to violence at the drop of a hat to get things done.

  Well, that kind of violence anyway.

  “We’re early,” I told him, glancing at my wristwatch. I took an extra moment to check my phone, but I shouldn’t have bothered. I knew even before I saw the screen that there wouldn’t be anything. No messages, no calls. I needed to stop thinking about Lucy.

  “Think we oughtta take a look around?” Bills asked, already trying to glance around the corners of the buildings and through the grimy, dirt-stained windows. Several of them were broken, but even those were impossible to see through. It was too dark inside and even if it weren’t, I knew Bills wasn’t tall enough to look through them. Not unless he had some superhero jumping capabilities he’d never mentioned to me before.

  I shrugged my shoulders. Part of me—most of me—thought it was a good idea, but I also knew Blade. He was a finicky bastard, and if he actually showed up tonight, casing the place would be taken as a pretty serious insult. Especially if we got caught doing it. And the other half of that was that there was a good chance they were already here, just as early as we were. If I were in their shoes, I would be.