Blow Out (Steel Veins Book 1)

by Jackson Kane

  Seeing that he’d missed, Bones unloaded the rest of his handgun at us.

  Despite Remy’s warning, Top refused to move or fall; instead he just spread his arms out to cover more area. The confusion on his face was replaced with resignation, then rigid determination. He might as well have been bolted to the ground. Top wasn’t going anywhere.

  His massive form was the only thing standing between us and Bones’s vengeance. Bullet after bullet slammed into Top, but the big man held his ground, protecting his brother the only way he could now. Maybe even attempting to make amends for all that he’d done.

  The last bullet caught Top just above the ear, racking his head to the side, and even then he stubbornly stood for a moment before finally collapsing.

  “No!” Remy screamed. Unbridled rage overcame him. He ran through the hail of return fire that peppered the car Bones was reloading behind. “He’s mine!”

  The Veins stayed their hands and let this play itself out.

  Bones reloaded as fast as he could. He slammed the magazine in and fired at Remy.

  My whole body cringed as I watched a bullet punch right through Remy’s shoulder. The bullet didn’t slow Remy in the slightest as he dove over the car and crashed into Bones. They disappeared behind the car, and I heard Bones’s gun fired several more times.

  “No....” I disregarded the gunfire and ran around the side of the car as fast as my scraped and bruised legs would carry me. I had to help Remy if I could.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  “¡Hablo español, pedazo de mierda!” Remy screamed the words into the face of an unresponsive Bones. The parking lot had quieted enough for me to clearly make out the sickening crack of blow after vicious, raining blow. “I understood everything you said! Every fucking word!”

  One glance at Bones’s mangled face was enough to know that he wouldn’t last long. I reached out to Remy to stop him, but then stopped myself and looked away. I could’ve pulled him from the dark path he spiraled down, but I knew deep down that he needed this. To finally expend all that rage he’d bottled up over the years.

  Every violent, punishing strike was for Maria, for Top, and for all the bullets and pain he’d endured at the hands of this man and his wretched club.

  I could’ve stopped Remy, but honestly? I didn’t want to.

  In my heart, I knew Bones deserved it, just like Roughneck deserved it. All the Lobos deserved what they got. The part of me that protested, that said this kind of brutality no matter how justified was wrong, that part quieted a little more each time Remy’s fist landed.

  Remy’s path would always be one of violence. I didn’t see that changing any time soon, and I realized fully that I was all right with that. I accepted it. I was a part of it now. No guilt, no remorse, and no mercy.

  This was a hard world, but then so was I.

  I turned my eyes back and watched.

  Finally, Remy’s scarred fists lifted from the sanguinary pulp of what was once Bones’s face, gore slid from his chiseled arms. It was over. All of it.

  My Remy looked up at me, slowly coming back to his senses. He realized that I’d been right there the whole time watching what he was doing. The rage on his features melted away in an instant and his eyes welled with years of spent anger, pain, and anguish. He looked exhausted from so much vented emotion and ashamed at what I might think of him.

  “Star...,” I knew he was trying to find the words to apologize for that dark, merciless side of him that I’d just witnessed.

  I could read it plainly on his face. His deep brown eyes shined with worry that he’d finally frightened me away. That this bloody beating might have been my last straw. I’d seen him face almost certain death on several occasions, seen him defy his family and turn his back on his whole life, but it was only right then, with him looking at only me, that I’d ever seen Remy truly terrified.

  He was afraid that the only person he couldn’t save me from was himself.

  The only thing he couldn’t recover from, the only thing he was really scared of, was losing me.

  Any worry about him losing control on me, of him being more killer than man, vanished. Whatever depths of violence Remy was capable of was dwarfed by his concern for me and what I thought of him. I knew without the shadow of a doubt that no matter what happened in this crazy life of ours, only I would ever be completely safe from Remy.

  I didn’t care if the world burned around us or what happened next as long as I had him.

  “I—” Remy started, his features wracked with pain.

  “Did what was necessary,” I finished his sentence the way it was meant to be said and hugged him with all of my strength. “You have nothing to apologize for. I’m with you until the end of the road.”

  “No,” he whispered. I could hear it in his voice and feel it in his embrace—he’d come to realize that I accepted him, completely accepted him, for all that he was. That he could show me anything, everything, and that I couldn’t be scared away. I was his. “I... love you.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Remy

  My last brother was dead.

  As much as I wanted to hide in Star’s arms forever, I was drawn back to Top. I had to see him. I’d known him, in some capacity, my whole life. If I didn’t sit with him or grab his hand or fucking something, then I wouldn’t know for sure that it was real and that he was really dead.

  My knees struck the black pavement, which was slick with my brother’s blood. Bones’s last bullet caught him in the side of the skull and blew out the front of his right eyebrow.

  It was damn hard to look at.

  Top kept a bandana tied to his belt. I unknotted it, opened it up, and laid it over his face. He looked ridiculous with his giant beard sticking out the bottom. In my head, I could almost hear him complain that a tiny red bandanna was all he got.

  Lawrence was a hard man. I was at odds with him almost as much as I wasn’t. We’d been through a lot together, and sometimes things got messy. Real messy. Like what he tried to do to Star. I never would’ve been able to fully forgive him for that.

  But in his typically fucked-up way, Top was just trying to protect me from her, from jail, from Deadeye.

  “Goddammit.” I sharply drew in a breath and fought back a sob that stuttered through my chest. In the end of it all, he did exactly that. Protected me. Protected us. I would never forget that. I looked over at Star, her sadness for me was also a painful sight.

  “Goddammit, Lawrence,” I breathed the words to him. The asphalt beneath us was beaten to shit by bullets and time. Top’s blood had flowed into a little patch that was worn down to gravel. I ran my fingers across a shrinking dry spot, scooping up the pulverized bits of pavement into my fist and crushing it.

  I’d lost so much.

  Tee keeled down beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t look at him just yet. I let the gravel slip between my fingers. Watched it fall.

  Both my brothers were dead.

  When the gun barrel was pushed into the back of my head, it wasn’t a surprise. I couldn’t find it in me to move.

  “The fuck are you doing, Deadeye!” Tee slapped the gun away just as quick as I’d felt it then shoved the wounded president backward.

  Fortunately, I still had some friends here.

  “Killing the traitorous shit who caused all this! Poet turned on us! He was working with the Lobos.” This statement by the national president turned every member’s head toward us.

  I still hadn’t stood up, but I could hear the unrest through the ranks. No one wanted to believe it, but they had to take it extra seriously because of who said it. I didn’t have a lot of close friends in the extended club, but for whatever reason, most of them respected me, even beyond the SV patch that was supposed to set us all on even footing.

  “That’s bullshit!” Tee reflexively came to my defense.

  “It’s okay, I got this.” I was in no shape to do this right now, this soon after everything had gone down
. That was the thing with the club lifestyle, it never slowed down to let you be ready. When the pieces fell, you were either ready or you weren’t.

  I could let Top’s death cripple me or use it to give me the strength I needed. The thought of letting Deadeye kill me flashed as a moment of weakness, but I’d come too far to let Star face this world alone. Top didn’t let himself get shot just so I could give up when it counted.

  If I didn’t fight now, none of it would’ve mattered.

  “Deadeye’s right.” I squeezed my fallen brother’s shoulder, then stood up to face everyone. “I brought the Lobos here. I even opened my clubhouse door for them.”

  “He admits it.” Deadeye raised his gun at me again.

  “We don’t kill our own. Not like this!” Again, Tee slapped it down.

  “And my son, Rio? He was a patch holder! Where’s his justice?”

  “That was self-defense. I was there. I saw what happened.” Tee was a good friend. Even after I shot him, he was willing to lie for me.

  “I don’t care. Killing brothers and helping our rivals to tear us apart is too far! I’m calling a vote for judgment. All in favor of killing Remy Daniels for crimes against the club?” Deadeye thundered.

  Everyone was hesitant at the sudden call for a vote, especially one involving the life and death of a member, when we still had the wounded and dead Veins to take care of. No one wanted to be rushed for a decision like this.

  Doing it this way was against the spirit of the club, and everyone knew it.

  “Let the kid speak for himself first,” one of the older members in the crowd cried out.

  Deadeye begrudgingly kept quiet and let me speak.

  “Let’s tend to the dead and hurt first,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Star came over, and we all helped the wounded into a few cars bound for the hospital. The dead Veins were laid along the side of the building; we’d lost five good men and four of Deadeye’s crew.

  I took some time to mourn over my brother.

  I thought the guys would be more pissed at me for all the things I’d done, but each and every one of them came up and gave me their condolences. I didn’t know what Tee told them all before bringing them over, but there was nothing but support and understanding coming from them over Lawrence’s death.

  All the Lobo bodies were tossed into a pile by the dumpster. As much as we’d have loved to leave them for the garbage truck, we’d have to call the cops and do it the right way. There were just too many bodies for anything else. Fortunately for us, this would be a clear case of us defending our house. We shouldn’t have any trouble selling it in court.

  With wounded and dead tended to, soon we’d have to call the cops and go through everything that came with that. If I was going to address the club, it had to be now.

  “Look around!” I spoke to the nearly ninety Steel Veins members that remained. “I look at you and I see a lot of new faces promoted to the big seats in your various chapters. Why is that? Where did the old timers go?”

  I paused and looked all around.

  “Guys who have been around since the club was formed. The men who made this club famous for the right reasons. The great men who opened Steel Veins chapters across the whole fucking world! They’re gone because their club is dead. The Steel Veins that I grew up with, that I’ve bled for, that I’ve killed for! It’s gone. The ideals that were our fucking foundation have been stolen from us. We all do things differently in our chapters, but I can go to any Veins clubhouse anywhere in world and there will be three words carved into the walls somewhere. Community. Loyalty. Honor. That is us. That is who we are. That’s the Steel Veins I remember. So why the fuck are we partnering up with the Knights, of all clubs, to cook doxa? Why are we opening channels through our communities for the H trade? So we can sell heroin to fucking high school kids? Jesus... yeah, it’s not in our community, but so what? That doesn’t make it any less fucked up. Where’s the honor in that? When did the Veins become drug dealers?”

  Members mumbled with some intelligible words and some looked away.

  “That’s why the originals are hanging up the colors, and I can’t fucking blame them! How’d this shift happen? From the Veins we were to the Veins we are now? Chig? Loose? I heard you guys put in for transfers from the parent chapter, that true?”

  “Yeah.” Loose cleared his throat and spoke up. He crossed his arms, not wanting to be the one to start this conversation. “I’m headed to Longwood, and Chig is about to go nomad. We were going to vote on both today at the annual.”

  “Why leave the founding chapter to go fucking nomad?” I asked.

  “Dunno, man.” Chig glanced at Deadeye and shook his head. A look passed between the two men that spoke volumes. They must’ve gotten into a few too many arguments about what I’d brought up. “Too many unfamiliar faces I guess.”

  “Unfamiliar faces? You didn’t know the guys who got voted into your own chapter?” I knew the answer. The question wasn’t even really for Chig. It was for everyone else here.

  This whole soapbox demonstration was only to hammer home a singular point.

  “Loose and I didn’t vote for shit. We don’t know these fucking guys. They were Rio’s guys.” Chig pointed at the Veins bodies that were dragged out of my clubhouse. “We didn’t like ’em, and we sure as hell didn’t trust ’em. That’s why we’re splitting.”

  There were general grumblings from the other members as they started to really grasp how much the club had deviated from the original course set by Deadeye and Teach. The idea that patch holders were getting in without being vouched for didn’t sit well with anyone.

  “I made some hard decisions, I’ll admit, but it had to be like this!” Deadeye interrupted. “Times change. The Lobos. The Angels. In five years, they’ll have us outmanned and outgunned. The Steel Veins needed more manpower, and we needed more money.”

  I glared at him and went on. “I look around and I see brothers. Real brothers! Men I would give my fucking life for. Men like Tee and Top....” I spared my brother a hard glance and almost couldn’t finish. His body was growing cold on the ground. Had I not seen Star watching me, slowly nodding for me to continue, I’d have probably stopped right there.

  The speech would’ve been over, and who knew what would’ve happened.

  “Yeah, I brought the Lobos here. I set this whole thing up. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that the club we loved was dying, so I did something about it. I used the Lobos, and as a result, we united and crushed that club! Good men died today because of me. They died so that we could be strong one last time! Look, I don’t care what you do to me. I’ll accept any judgment that comes my way, but I refuse to accept it from that man.” I pointed at Deadeye. Then I turned my attention to everyone else, and in a booming voice, I added, “This is your chance to start making the Steel Veins whole again.”

  “That’s fucking bullshit! If you love this MC so damn much, then where are your colors? Never trust a man who can’t keep his fucking vest.” Deadeye was making his play. I had lost my vest when the kill teams were after me. It wasn’t something any member should ever lose.

  Under any situation.

  I tore off my hoodie and shirt. The words were prominently tattooed across my chest in big bold letters for the whole world to see.

  STEEL VEINS.

  “I may have lost the vest, but I never lost my colors,” I spat defiantly. “Every letter was paid for in blood and love and sacrifice. Doesn’t matter what I wear or what happens to me. No one can ever take them from me. These colors don’t come off! Can you say the same, Deadeye?”

  Deadeye’s lone eye flared at me. He blustered at the question, angry spittle flying through the air. But he couldn’t get any actual words out. For whatever reason, he couldn’t lie to these men. He was a founding member. He helped create the Steel Veins, and it was because of him that they were all falling apart. Somewhere in his deepest self, I thought he knew that.

  I thoug
ht that was why he couldn’t offer anything else up in his defense.

  “Dishonoring the spirit of the club, running drugs, and bringing in untrustworthy men without a vote—Deadeye is the real traitor to the Steel Veins.” I was done talking. I had said my piece.

  Our fates were up to the club now.

  Tee spoke up then. “Remy was working with me and Top. When I briefed you all on the situation at the meet before we rode over here, it was Remy who put his ass on the line to get us that info. Without Remy, the Lobos would’ve caught us with our pants down. Even if we somehow beat them back today, they’d have fucking decimated us! We sure as hell wouldn’t have killed Bones, and it’d only be a matter of time until they picked us off one by one. Especially—” Tee paused for full effect. “—under Deadeye’s ‘leadership.’”

  Deadeye lowered his head a hair. Me fighting back against him was one thing, but hearing other people saying similar things cut him deeply. I thought, in the back of his mind, he knew it would eventually go this way. It was only a matter of time.

  “Call a vote,” Tee told Chig. “You’re still in as VP, right?”

  “Till we eventually hold the annual, yeah,” Chig answered.

  “Then call a vote. Kick that son of a bitch out of our club!” Tee pointed at Deadeye.

  “You can’t do this. I’m the national president!” Deadeye found a final reserve and protested, hoping a loophole might save him.

  “Not in my chapter,” Loose interjected. “In my chapter, you’re just a regular president. And I don’t find you fit for your position. I’m calling a chapter vote. Kick this piece of shit out. All in favor?”

  Both Chig and Loose raised their hands.

  “Opposed?” Chig turned and asked the lined-up bodies that were all that was left of Deadeyes’s new guys.

  To vote someone into the club, it had to be unanimous by all members, but to kick someone out, it only had to be a majority. Deadeye saw that there was only the three of them left in his chapter and knew he was done. He didn’t even bother raising his hand, and he was too proud to whine or beg.