Chapter 57
CHAPTER 57
B EAST
The Past
It’s twilight and the streets are covered in deep shadow as Dodger and I ride our Harleys through Port Town.
Twenty minutes ago, I was having a beer with Sticky and Viking at the clubhouse when he texted me, demanding I meet him somewhere. But to not tell anyone, emphasizing it was important no one knew. When I asked him what it was about, he told me to get my ass down to the location and stop fucking about.
I don’t have a fucking clue what this is about, why I am being dragged into town at supper time. But I know better than to question my old man. Everyone in the Knights of St. Boniface does. Because Dodger is as unpredictable as they come.
We pull into an alleyway near the old theater and park our bikes.
“We walk from here,” he says.
I follow him, and it doesn’t take me long to realize the route we are taking is avoiding all the CCTV cameras in the area.
An uneasy feeling churns in my gut.
Dodger doesn’t want anyone to know where we are going.
Which means whatever this is, it isn’t sanctioned by the club.
We slip through the dusky shadows and finally stop outside a little house across from the old theater. The lights are on inside, and I can see someone inside. A beautiful woman. Her long blonde hair pulled into a thick braid down her back.
Something stirs in my chest.
“Do you recognize her, son?” Dodger’s deep voice cuts into the fading light.
“Should I?”
He chuckles. But it’s cold and mocking. “When you were small you used to cry yourself to sleep at night over her because you thought she was dead.”
In my head, the years peel back like the pages of a book and land on the memory of the first person I ever loved.
My gaze darts from the woman to my father. “Are you telling me that’s Bluebelle?”
He chuckles. But it’s cold and cruel. “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. But she goes by Belle now.”
I turn my attention back to the beautiful blonde moving about inside her house, dishing up dinner at a small table set for two, and I know in my heart it is her. The little girl who vanished from my life twenty-five years ago.
A long-healed wound cracks open in my chest.
My childhood best friend.
The little girl we all used to call Blue.
The first person to show me the deep pain of loss when she died.
I keep a photo of her and I in my wallet to remind me that nothing good ever lasts.
What Guinevere and Jennifer did to me pales in comparison to the deep grief I felt growing up without Blue.
I can’t drag my eyes off her. Her luscious lips. Her big blue eyes. The dimples in her cheeks. She’s fucking beautiful.
It’s her.
For the first time in a long time, I feel a surge of love spill into my chest.
“But she died.”
“Apparently not.” Dodger sounds inconvenienced by her survival. “She was found two days after the accident. But by then, our town was burning. I don’t even know if it made the papers. Everyone was preoccupied by the fire.”
He’s clearly agitated, and I don’t understand why he is so pissed about this. She is club born. She belongs with the Knights.
“Where has she been all this time?”
“Right under our fucking noses. Apparently her uncle took her out of town immediately after the accident. He had some job with the government in Florida. But they returned a few years later when Belle was older.”
“How long have you known all of this?”
“Only a couple of days. They flew under the radar when they returned to St. Bon all those years ago. Lived a quiet life. Then she ran away with some boyfriend when she was eighteen. Came back recently to look after the old man.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“The old man approached the club for a loan.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“With interest.”
I can’t describe the relief I feel.
Bluebelle is alive.
When she died, I cried myself to sleep for months until my father smacked me across the mouth and told me to man up and get over it. People died, he snarled. She was better off dead.
But I never believed she was better off dead. She was my best friend and she belonged at the clubhouse with me.
I always believed God got it wrong when he took Bluebelle away.
“This is a good thing,” I say.
But Dodger snarls. “Are you fucking dumb, asshole? This isn’t a good thing. It’s the complete fucking opposite. Her very existence is a threat to this club.”
I frown. “How is she a threat to the club?”
In the dim light, Dodger’s eyes glow with menace. “She’s a loose end I thought I’d taken care of.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and my gut twists because I don’t like the slope we’re sliding down. “What are you talking about?”
“When I ran her parents off the road.”
At first I think I misheard him. “You caused the accident that killed her parents?”
“The brat was supposed to die too.”
I take a step back. I can’t believe what I am hearing.
Dodger killed Hangman and Lucy. And tried to kill Bluebelle too.
A darkness claws at my insides trying to get out. I grit my teeth. “You’d better start explaining, old man. Was this a hit?”
He gives me a warning look, not appreciating my tone.
“Not sanctioned. But done to protect the club. That’s what you have to do when you’re the president, son. You have to make decisions to protect the club. They’re not always pretty. But this wasn’t the hardest. He was a direct threat to the club. And you can bet your life I’m always going stop any threat to the club.”
“You fucking killed them.”
“Yes, and I’d do it again and again to anyone or anything that is a threat to the club.”
“You psychopath?—”
“Calm down.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down. You’re telling me you killed a Knight and his family. That breaks every fucking rule in the book.”
“Not when it is to protect the club.”
“You’d better tell me how the fuck annihilating a family—a child—protects the club.”
“Hangman had a hobby. Genealogy. He spent hours poring over old documents and researching his family history. It was just dumb luck he came across a document showing that he was the true descendant of the rightful owner of the clubhouse.”
“How is that even possible?”
“Turns out his family and another family owned the land but sold it during the war, but with only one signature on it. So legally, it still belongs to him. Asshole knew he had the club over a barrel.”
“So the land was illegally sold to the Knights?”
“Nice to see you’re catching up.”
“So you killed him.”
“He got greedy. Started talking about lawyers and rightful ownership. Wanted money. Even got the land valued. Knew it was worth more than what we had in the coffers to buy it back. We would’ve lost the land. The clubhouse.”
“But why his old lady and kid?”
“What would’ve happened when his old lady decided she wanted to take the land? Or little Bluebelle when she grew up? They were risks that needed to be annihilated. The Knights have fought to keep this land for eighty years. I wasn’t about to lose it under my watch.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “So you murdered an entire family.”
“Not all of them.” He turns his head to look at the beautiful woman inside the house. She’s serving up soup for dinner. “There is still one left.”
I can tell from the tone in his voice why we are here.
He wants to finish what he started twenty-five years ago.
He’s going to murder Bluebelle.
“You’re not going to hurt her,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You’re right, I’m not.”
The relief hits me in the chest.
But it’s short lived when Dodger looks me in the eye and I can see the malevolence there.
“I’m not going to kill her—you are.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t have a lot of time left in these bones. I need to know when you wear the president’s badge it’s sewn onto the correct cut.”
“You’re talking insane.”
He grabs me by the cut. “Listen to me, you big fuck. If you’re going to be president one day, then you’re going to have to do things you don’t wanna do. And I want to know you’re up to the task.”
I barely bite back my rage. “Knights don’t hurt women or children.”
“Maybe. But presidents do what needs to be done.”
“Not like this.”
“You do this, or you don’t wear the president’s badge when I’m done.”
“Fuck you and that badge. I’m not hurting her and neither are you.”
He lets me go with a shove. “I should have known you would let me down. You always had a soft spot for the girl. Cried like a fucking little baby when you heard she was dead.”
He looks at me with absolute disgust on his face. “You’re not president material. Born a fucking freak of nature in size but with the same soft heart as the whore you came out of. I should’ve left you to the rats in the tunnels when she brought you to me. I kept you only because my useless wife had failed to give me a son by then. And even when she finally did, it was a sickly child with a black heart. I had hopes for you. The prodigal son. But I can see you’re not. You should be tough. Strong. Powerful. But you’re soft. I thought I could harden you up, after all, you’re half my blood. But I was wrong, and this proves it.” He scoffs. “Don’t send a little boy to do a real man’s job.”
He takes his gun from his waist.
“No,” I growl.
He’s right. I loved Bluebelle the moment I laid eyes on her. She was my best friend. No, she was more than that. Even from a young age, I knew what we had was special. And when I thought she was dead, it felt like one half of my heart was missing.
“You hurt a hair on her head and I will break every bone in your body,” I warn him.
He laughs coldly. “You try stopping me and I will send Gaston to finish the job. You can’t protect her every single day. You have to sleep sometime, my boy. You know your brother has a special kind of darkness about him. He doesn’t do well in the light of day. But in the shadows he is the master. He will slip into this house one night, and the way he ends her life will be a lot less pleasant than how I am about to.”
He’s right. Gaston is a special kind of evil. I have no choice but to end this now.
Too many people have already died for this lie.
I am not a saint. I am capable of malevolent violence. I have taken lives to protect my club. And I’ve done things that weigh heavily on my conscience.
But I won’t let this happen. I won’t let her die.
“Put your gun away, Dodger.”
“If you don’t have the heart for this, then you don’t have the heart to be president of the club.”
“I said put your gun away.”
“There you go, whining just like the weak little junkie whore. You’re just like her. Stupid bitch.”
“You shut your goddamn mouth.”
His eyes narrow. He’s enjoying this. “Your biological mother was a club whore who thought I liked her more than I liked my wife. When she came to me with you in her arms and told me you were mine, she thought I would leave my old lady for her. But I only liked to fuck and leave the junkie slut. She did give me an heir though, and my gracious old lady agreed to take you in. At first your mother fought the idea of another woman raising you. Told me your place was on her tit, not with my barren old lady. I broke her teeth for that comment. But then she gave you up for the price of her next hit—which incidentally killed her.”
“You gave her a hot shot?”
“No, Adam, my old lady did.”
Kaitlin killed my biological mother?
“Why?”
Dodger chuckles. “To warn any of the other whores I was fucking that if they tried to do the same then she wouldn’t stand for it. She was a tough old lady. She did what had to be done.”
I should be shocked. But I’m not. I always knew I was raised by psychopaths.
Kaitlin was cold and unloving. Right up to the moment she died giving birth to Gaston. Her real son , she told me one night as she rubbed her hand over her round belly.
She wasn’t one for hiding her cruelty.
Maybe that was why I would sneak into Blue’s room and crawl under the covers with her. I was five years old, and my parents didn’t care enough to know I wasn’t even where I was meant to be.
I remember the ache I felt when I knew Blue was gone and I didn’t have a place to escape to anymore.
Over time, I had blocked it out because the pain was unbearable. But five minutes ago, it all came rushing back when I saw those familiar blue eyes.
For twenty-five years I’ve missed her.
Every cell in my body explodes with rage. I feel the venom sink into every atom and neuron.
I move so quick, I don’t think he even sees me before my gun is pressed under his chin. “You stay away from her.”
But he only laughs. “You really think you can stop me? Any threat to the club and I’m a fucking freight train barreling down the tracks to run down whatever the fuck is in my way. Don’t think I won’t hurt you, boy.”
I press the gun deeper. “You are not hurting her.”
“Maybe I’ll fuck her sweet little pussy with my gun right before I put a bullet in her?—”
I squeeze the trigger, and the bullet tears through Dodger’s skull. In seconds, his face blows apart and splatters across my leather cut.
He falls to the ground in a heap. Missing half his head.
I swing around to make sure Belle hasn’t heard or seen anything and am relieved when I see her laughing with the old man sitting at the table with her, undisturbed by the murder outside her window.
I look at Dodger and back to her.
And a plan begins to form in my head.
The Present
The memory is a cold blade running along the length of my spine. I can still taste his blood on my lips and smell the ocean as I threw his body off the cliffs.
I thought his death would weigh heavily on my conscience. But by taking Dodger’s life, I ensured Belle’s safety and it’s all I needed to accept what I’d done.
I knew if the club found out, I’d be sent into The Well, or out to sea alongside the man who I detested.
And Belle would die. They would understand the threat and eliminate it somehow.
So I devised the plan.
I would marry her so I could protect her for the rest of her life.
But the likelihood of her wanting to marry me was slim, and I didn’t have time to try.
Her uncle’s debt was the perfect opportunity to force Belle into marriage. I was going to approach them both. Present the opportunity with a little more finesse than blackmailing her.
But then Gaston did what he did, and my plans were given a hard shove forward.
It took everything in me not to kill him. But Dodger’s disappearance had the club on edge. Me killing Gaston might turn their suspicion on me. So I banished him and focused on protecting Belle.
Now she’s looking at me like she wants to run far away.
Which is exactly why I haven’t told her before now.
Because I’ve already lost her once.
Losing her again might damn near kill me.