Broken Wings

by Sweet, Izzy

  There’s something even more satisfying about feeling the bump of impact and hearing the scraping of metal against asphalt.

  Too bad it ends too soon.

  Still, it feels good, the final hard bump up and down when one of their bikes ends up under the tires.

  When I finally shift back into park and open my door, my only regret is that Coy’s driveway wasn’t steeper or longer…

  “Oh god, what am I going to do? My bike, man… My bike…” Hammy cries.

  Dropped down in a squat in the grass, he grabs at his head.

  Steve is staring in horror at the minivan and looks like he might faint at any second.

  Poster Boy looks at me like he doesn’t know who I am.

  Laughter tries to bubble out of me, but I swallow it down and walk back up to the house.

  When I reach the front door, I call out, “I’m sorry! I’d give you a lift, but my van is the only ride I’ve got!”

  Then I slam the door shut and twist the deadbolt.

  Fuck them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Coy

  Fuckin’ livin’ the life of a President… Yeah, it ain’t all glamour and easy choices. I’d have stayed home and let someone else deal with this if I thought I had the option, but shit starts at the top and rolls down.

  I gotta figure out why the fuck Snowbird’s dead in the fucking trunk of some random car.

  Fuck, it ain’t gonna look good to the club or anyone else when everyone finds out she’s dead. Not after I kicked her out of the fucking office like I did.

  Shit’s gonna spread like wildfire. Girl gets yelled at, kicked out of the office, and then she ends up in a fucking trunk.

  Yelling over the roaring of my bike, I try to vent out some steam. “Fucking goddammit!”

  Grem, who’s following behind me, must have heard because I hear him throttle up his bike so he can move up to my side.

  He gives me the hairy eyebrow wag, checking on me.

  Shaking my head, I motion for him to fall back. I need my fucking space right now, too much mental shit is coming at me.

  Nodding his head, he falls back behind me. Giving me the room to think and weave through the heavier traffic of the town.

  I’ve got the fucking Bloody Scorpions crawling up my ass, guns coming from Alaska but no clue if they’ll get here in time, and a wife and kid at home who don’t know who the fuck I am.

  The very last thing I need right now is a fucking dead sweetbutt inside of a trunk. A dead sweetbutt who has my DNA all over her fucking body.

  I can barely contain the chuckle at the thought of me being a suspect because of my boot print…

  Thankfully, she didn’t swallow or have any of my cum on her.

  Slowly rolling up to the taped-off police scene, I wince when I notice there’s already a few looky-loos standing around. Pulling far enough away that I can still get a good view of the scene, I don’t like what I’m seeing one fucking bit.

  “What the fuck was she doin’ at Lonnie’s Bar?” Gremlin asks once he’s shut his bike down beside me.

  “Probably pissed as fuck at me,” I say with a grunt.

  He shakes his head. “Yeah, I heard about you givin’ her the boot outta the office, Coy. I was gonna talk to you about that. The skanks and sweetbutts knew you weren’t exactly an available bachelor before Allie came back, but you bein’ a dick like that…”

  Again, he shakes his head at me in this big brother way, like he’s disappointed in me, but doesn’t say anything else.

  He’s right.

  I’ve been pretty fucking good about keeping my distance from the skanks and sweetbutts except for occasionally blowin’ off steam.

  When Allie left, I died.

  I didn’t move on. I fucked my way through a couple strip clubs to try and heal in the beginning, but that shit didn’t work. I wouldn’t let anyone get close to me like she did again. The moment I got even a whiff of them thinkin’ we were more than a fuck, I dropped ‘em.

  “Think this will cause any issues in the club?” I ask him.

  Shrugging his shoulders, he says, “No. I don’t think anyone will think you did this, but it’s gonna scare the fuck out of the girls.”

  “Alright, let’s see what Harry has to show us. Fuck, this might not even be Snowbird,” I say while getting off my bike.

  “Coy, I love you like a little brother so I’ll be honest with you right here and now,” he says as he walks beside me.

  “What?” I ask.

  He points down to the gremlin bell taped to his kutte. “You’re not that fuckin’ lucky.”

  “Jesus, you superstitious fuck. Gremlins ain’t gonna fuckin’ kill our girls,” I say with a roll my eyes.

  “Just sayin’, you ain’t the luckiest bastard on the block.”

  I grin. “Yeah, well, I got my ol’ lady back, so at least that’s goin’ for me. And I got a son, too.”

  He snorts at me. “Fuckin’ sucker. You got a family package right out the gate. You’re gonna end up in a cage, fast.”

  Shaking my head, I stop next to Sheriff Jones, who is standing off to one side of the crime scene.

  “Harry,” I say with a nod to him.

  “Coy, this shit ain’t supposed to be happenin’ in my backyard, much less right on my fuckin’ doorstep,” he snarls out at me from behind his thick mustache.

  “No shit, Harry. What the fuck happened?” Grem asks before I can snap at the pissed-off Sheriff.

  Harry sighs. “Got an anonymous tip that somethin’ was up with this car. Caller said it smelled like somethin’ was dead in the trunk.”

  “How anonymous?” I ask.

  “It was a burner phone, most likely,” Harry says. “We sent a squad car out to check around nine this mornin’. When the Deputy arrived, he checked the car out, saw the trunk was popped but down.”

  “Any idea who owns the car?” I ask as I look at the late model Buick.

  Harry reaches up to push his hat back and wipe at his forehead. “Stolen out of New Albany. Went missing ‘bout a week back.”

  “From anyone noteworthy?” Grem asks.

  Pulling his hat back down, Harry shakes his head. “Just an older retired couple. We can poke around and see if we can catch when the car crossed the toll bridge, but that’s gonna bring more heat onto this.”

  I shake my head. “Not a good idea right now.” Then I look to Grem. “Let’s get this over with. Harry, show us what you found.”

  “Coy,” Harry says, all the anger gone from his face. “This ain’t gonna be an easy one to see.”

  “How bad is it?” I ask with a knot forming in my stomach.

  “Bad. Whatever they did, they made sure she hurt before she died. Only thing they didn’t touch was her face, I guess. There was a bag of that damn heroin shit right next to her head,” Harry says.

  “Heroin?” I ask, my blood instantly fucking boiling through my body.

  “Yeah, small baggy of it. Coy, you and your daddy know the rules. No drugs in this town, we made a damn deal.” Harry shakes his head in disgust.

  “It ain’t us, Harry,” Grem says.

  Ignoring them both, I duck under the police tape and head over to the back of the car. A couple of deputies stand with their backs to the trunk, and the county coroner is leaning inside, taking photos.

  Fuck. This one ain’t gonna blow over easily.

  “Jerry,” I say to get the coroner’s attention.

  Standing up to look at me, he shakes his head. “Might not want to look in, Coy. This ain’t the kind of thing you want to see.”

  Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “She was part of the club.”

  Family is a sacred thing in this world, especially in a motorcycle club. Doesn’t matter if you’re blood or not, we look out for and take care of our own.

  Even if she was a sweetbutt.

  Jerry steps away from the trunk as Grem comes up beside me, murmuring something about hoping we didn’t eat breakfast.

  Walking up
to the trunk, I look in, and at first, I really don’t know what I’m lookin’ at. The flawless, porcelain skin on her face that gave her the name Snowbird is still so perfect, so unmarred, it’s hard to believe she’s dead. Even the way her white blonde hair is laid out, spread around her, it looks like she’s posing for some magazine.

  It’s only from her neck down that the world shifts from sleeping beauty to brutally tortured corpse.

  Grem grunts before running to the front of the car. “Jesus fucking Christ, Coy.”

  I hear him heaving out what he’s probably eaten for the last year. Loud, wet splats hitting the pavement.

  “Goddammit,” Jerry curses. “This is a crime scene.”

  Snowbird doesn’t resemble a girl anymore, and whoever did this wanted us to know exactly how patient they were when they killed her.

  There are bruises and cigarette burns all over her body. Human bite marks where her nipples used to be. Even chunks of her thighs have been bitten off. Her front pubic bone was shattered with a hammer or something because the skin is all fucked up, shards of bone ripping through the skin. One of her hips has been crushed, too.

  At first, I can’t figure out how they got her body to lie so straight in this small trunk. But then I notice that her legs have been cut off mid-thigh and shoved deeper into the trunk.

  Her fingers are missing and more chunks of skin are missing from her arms. Her stomach… I can’t even figure out how you would bruise one like that.

  Fuck. I can feel my stomach churn slightly, but I gotta memorize every single wound, every single mark against her flesh.

  “Any idea what finally killed her?” I ask when I turn away from the trunk.

  “Some of those wounds are post-mortem. The poisonous scorpion I found crawlin’ out of her throat when I got here is my bet,” Jerry says, and there’s anger in his eyes at me and the club for that last tidbit.

  Bloody Scorpions. I couldn’t pick a dumber fucking MC name if I fucking tried. Fucking dickheads think they’re in some kind of fucking western. Every single fucking Scorpion I’ve ever met reminds me just how much they scrape the fucking bottom of the barrel. Fucking degenerate fucks. The Bastards are a lot of things, but we aren’t fucking psycho serial-murdering trash like them.

  Walking over to where Grem is still revisiting his past deeds, I slap him hard on the back. “You alright, fuckstick?”

  After coughing out another heave of puke, Grem growls at me, “So… you can touch me now?”

  Slapping him on the back again, I say, “Yeah, wanted to give you a helping hand.”

  He snorts through a couple of deep breaths before he grunts, “Fucking Royal Bastard.”

  When his ass is finally able to stand up and not puke everywhere, he looks at me. “Coy, I’m going to fucking kill whoever did that. I’m going to show ‘em every fucking mercy they gave her.”

  “Fucking Scorpions,” I quietly growl at him as we walk away from the car. “They put a poisonous one down her fucking throat.”

  “I’ll fucking kill every single one of ‘em,” Grem says quietly. “They came after a sweetbutt, a fucking chick, man.”

  “I know, brother, I know,” I say, and I don’t have many words of comfort.

  “No, you don’t, Coy,” he says before swinging his leg over his bike.

  For once in my life when I look at my best friend, I don’t see that light in his eyes he usually has. It’s not there anymore, and all that’s left is cold, dark resignation.

  “You’re not allowed to leave town, Grem,” I say to him.

  “What?” he asks, his voice rising.

  “Time and place. There’s a fuckin’ time and place for payback,” I growl.

  He spits on the ground at my feet. “I don’t give two fucks about time and place.”

  “Then give a shit that your fucking President says get your ass to the fucking clubhouse. And if you leave without fucking telling me, I’ll fucking come after you!” I nearly roar at him.

  He stares into my eyes for a long fucking time. A long fucking time determining what I’d do if he ignored me. Would I punish him? Would I take his position away? Would he lose his fucking patch?

  I can see every single thought running through that head of his.

  “Coy,” he says with a deep sigh.

  “Brother, now is not the time to run off and do somethin’ stupid. We don’t have the firepower,” I say, then look around us. “You want to fix that issue? Do me a favor, start hittin’ up any and every contact we have to sell us their guns. Hit up any suppliers you can think of, and check with all the good ol’ country boys and tell ‘em we’ll buy any heavy firepower at a premium.”

  Nodding his head, I can see that he doesn’t like my answers, but he’s going to fucking listen to me.

  “Alright, I’ll head over to the club now and see if Hershey has any contacts we can use too,” he says before standing his bike up.

  “I’m gonna call Whitey. Gonna need another Church for this shit. Need him to get the club in order and see if we can pull the lifers into the protection,” I say.

  “Yeah, I’ll make sure Darlene talks to the girls about safety too,” Grem says.

  “Make sure they’re doubled up if they go anywhere,” I say as he starts his bike up.

  “Got it,” Grem says before sticking his knuckles out at me. “Thanks, Pres.”

  “Got ya, brother,” I say and knock mine against his.

  That’s as much of a hug as he’ll ever get out of my ass.

  * * *

  Compartmentalization is a fucked up thing. And it’s another thing I learned about when I was in high school.

  School made me see this counselor about grieving and shit when my mom died from her fucking heroin overdose. He tried to get me to talk about why I wouldn’t touch people. Why I didn’t weep and wail, and why I wasn’t moping around.

  About all I got out of the whole thing was, it’s okay to cry (I didn’t), and that what I was doin’ was compartmentalizing shit. Instead of lettin’ shit overwhelm me and dealin’ with it properly, I was puttin’ it away in neat little cubby holes. Filing away all kinds of shit I didn’t want to deal with for later.

  Most of it is probably still filed up there in my brain collecting dust.

  So, me pushing all emotions aside with Snowbird’s death is pretty much the easiest way to figure out how to respond to it. It might seem cold and callous, but that’s part of the gig.

  I can’t fucking rush off doing stupid shit.

  Instant violence will only solve so much right now. We don’t have enough firepower to hit the Scorpions hard enough to make them leave Louisville. But we can’t let this hit go unpaid either. We gotta make sure they know they fucked up bad.

  We hit one of theirs cause he was caught slingin’ around our little town. Shit don’t float like that, they know it too.

  But torturing a sweetbutt?

  Fuck that. Especially with what they did to her. I can feel my mind wanting to slip into a rage of emotions, but I gotta shut it down.

  Stupid thing is, I’m wonderin’ if the Bastards have become complacent in our little town of La Grange outside the big city Louisville. Have we become the fat cats and let our asses get tender?

  Fuck, I hope not.

  But we should’ve never been in the fucking position of not havin’ enough firepower like we are right now. We ain’t gotta be fucking doomsday preppers, but shit, we’re fucking sittin’ ducks if a real war comes down the pipe at us.

  This deal we got with Anchorage is good for everyone that’s involved, but it’d be even better if the guns and ammo were here yesterday.

  Fuck. Gonna have to call up Church tonight or tomorrow, depending on what shit we can get from Grem looking for guns.

  My stomach starts to warm the closer I get to home, though. I’m feeling warm and pissed the fuck off. I don’t like how Allie and I left things, even if it was on somewhat better terms because she finally stopped screaming at me.

  Alli
e’s home and she brought my kid with her. A kid I never knew existed. I can’t be mad that he’s here, just pissed I’ve missed all the shit a new dad gets to do. Missed his first words and first steps. Missed bein’ up all night with the cryin’ and changin’ his diapers.

  I’ve missed it all, and it fucking crushes me inside when I can’t put my feelings neatly away.

  I want to rage and scream at Allie. I want her to quit fuckin’ messin’ around with all this bullshit of not rememberin’ me.

  But how do I do that?

  Is it really fucking possible she lost all memory of the time we had together? Is that even a fucking thing? Amnesia? Don’t that shit only happen on soap operas and shit? It’d sure as fuck explain stuff, but damn.

  In bed she sure as fuck acts like the old Allie Cat I knew, and that pisses me the fuck off even more.

  Did she fuck Mikhail?

  Did she fuck him like she fucks me?

  I can’t believe that she did. I felt something last night that I bet even she didn’t know she had in her. She fucked like it had been years since she felt something so real. That, and I had to stretch the fuck out of her. If she’s been fucking some other dick, it was tiny as hell.

  Bet she didn’t even get off half the time she was with soon-to-be-dead Mikhail.

  Fuck, having her home is good, but I’m gonna have to boost security around the house. Can’t let her out of my sight till I know she’ll fucking behave, and I don’t trust the Scorpions not to go after any of us now.

  They broke one of the Bastards’ rules, no women and no children. They broke that rule, will we?

  Fuck.

  My damn head is everywhere.

  Pulling into my neighborhood only strengthens my resolve to make sure the Scorpions don’t come anywhere near us again. We’ve got a good, quiet community here. We’ve established a giant ring of protection around us. We keep drugs out, we don’t do protection rackets, and we take care of everyone we can.

  Crime is practically nonexistent.

  We don’t want the people around us unhappy. Unhappiness is the quickest way to find the law and all those agencies that hate MC’s coming down on our heads.