Slaughter (Golden Skulls M.C. #18)

Prologue

The machines beeped in a steady rhythm that had become the soundtrack to my personal hell. Beep. Beep. Beep. Each one marking time I didn’t want to pass, counting down to a moment I refused to accept was coming.

I sat in that uncomfortable plastic chair, my hand wrapped around Julie’s, willing her fingers to squeeze back.

They didn’t. They hadn’t moved in three days.

Three fucking days since the doctors had used words like “brain death” and “no higher function” and “keeping her comfortable.” Three days since they had pulled our daughter from her body in an emergency C-section while Julie’s brain was dying from an embolism nobody saw coming.

One minute she had been awake, smiling at me despite the pain, telling me she loved me. The next, nothing. Just gone. Her eyes open but empty, her body breathing only because a machine was doing it for her.

The ventilator hissed and clicked, breathing for her. Up and down. Up and down. A mechanical rhythm that was nothing like the soft sound of her sleeping beside me every night for the past five years.

I heard footsteps behind me but didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to see the pity in whoever’s eyes. Didn’t want to hear more condolences or suggestions or medical fucking jargon about brain activity and organ failure.

“Hey, beautiful girl,” a familiar voice said, and I knew without looking it was Reaper. “Thought you could use some more company. Sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

He pulled up another chair on the opposite side of Julie’s bed, settling in like he had all the time in the world. Like we weren’t sitting vigil over my dying wife.

“I hear you have a beautiful baby girl,” he said quietly. “Remi’s visiting with her now.”

The mention of my daughter sent a spike of guilt through my chest. “She’s so little,” I heard myself say. “The docs say there might be complications. How am I gonna tell Julie when she wakes up?”

“You tell her the truth, brother.”

Silence followed his words for a beat, then he asked, “Have you gone to see your daughter yet?”

I shook my head, unable to look at him. Unable to admit out loud what a piece-of-shit father I was being. “No. I’m waiting for Julie to wake up.”

“Brother,” Reaper said, leaning forward. “Your daughter is all alone in the NICU. Has been for days. She needs to see her father.”

“I can’t.” My words came out broken, barely a whisper.

A lone tear rolled down my face, and I didn’t bother wiping it away.

“I can’t do this without her. She wanted a baby.

Not me. I just wanted Julie. She’s all I ever wanted.

I told her we could adopt. There are so many kids who need a loving home, but she wanted one of her own.

Everyone told her it was impossible, but she had to prove them wrong. Now look at my girl.”

“Chapman, look at me.”

I turned my head, meeting Reaper’s eyes. I knew what he saw. A man, destroyed, eyes red and swollen from crying, barely holding on.

“What are the doctors saying?”

“I’m sure everyone’s already told you.”

“Yes, they have, but I want to hear it from you.”

I sighed, turning back to Julie. Looking at her face, still so beautiful even with the tubes and wires.

“They said when the placenta fully detached, it caused an embolism that went straight to her brain. They say she felt nothing, but I’m not so sure.

One minute she was awake; the next, nothing.

They managed to get the baby out fast, but she was so little.

She was barely twenty-seven weeks old. I never got to see her.

They rushed her out of the room. Julie’s doctors were able to get her heart beating again, but apparently the damage was already done. ”

My voice cracked. “Every test they’ve run says the same thing. That my Julie is brain dead. That the machines are the only things keeping her alive. But miracles happen all the time. Right?”

Reaper nodded. “Yeah, brother. They do.”

“The hospital administration wants me to take Julie off the machines. They say if I don’t soon, her body will start to deteriorate. Something about her organs being close to shutting down. But I know my girl, Reaper. She’s a fighter. She won’t ever give up.”

“Brother, listen to me. If there was anything the doctors could do, don’t you think they would have tried it already?

From my understanding, Julie’s doctor even called in a specialist for her.

Brother, I hate this for you. I really do, and I’m not telling you to give up hope, but you have a baby girl downstairs who’s ready to go home.

She’s beaten all the odds, brother. The doctors say she’s healthy and thriving. She’s gonna need her daddy.”

The words hit me like a physical blow. “I’m a dad.”

“Yeah, brother. You are a dad.”

I leaned forward, bringing Julie’s hand to my lips, whispering through tears that wouldn’t stop, “You hear that, baby? You did it. I’m a dad now. We have a baby girl. You did it, Julie.”

“Mr. Moore?”

I didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to face whatever was coming next.

I heard Reaper get up, heard him talking to someone in the hallway. Heard the murmur of voices—Savage, Whiskey, Digger. My brothers, here to support me through the worst moment of my life. Then Reaper was back, his hand on my shoulder. “Brother. The doctor needs to talk to you.”

“No.” The word came out flat, final.

“Chapman.”

“I said no. I’m not ready. I’m not—” My voice broke completely. “I can’t let her go.”

“Her body is shutting down,” Reaper said gently. “The latest tests came back. If you don’t let her go now, you’re going to watch her fade away in front of your eyes. Is that what you want? Is that what Julie would want?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I knew he was right. Knew it in my bones, in the part of me that had loved Julie since we were kids, the part that knew her better than anyone. She wouldn’t want this. Wouldn’t want to be kept alive by machines, her body failing piece by piece while I held on out of selfish desperation.

But knowing it and accepting it were two different things.

“I need—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t say the words out loud.

“Take your time, brother,” Reaper said. “We’re right outside if you need us.”

The door closed softly behind him, and I was alone with Julie again. Just me and her and the machines that were breathing for her, keeping her heart beating, maintaining the illusion that she was still here.

I stood up on shaking legs and climbed onto the bed beside her, careful of all the tubes and wires. I gathered her into my arms the way I had a thousand times before. Her body was warm but wrong. Too still, too lifeless. Not my Julie at all.

“I love you,” I whispered against her hair. “I love you so fucking much, baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough.”

The machines kept beeping. Kept breathing for her. Kept lying to me that she was still alive.

I started singing. My voice cracked and broken, the words to the song we danced to at our wedding. Garth Brooks. “To Make You Feel My Love.”

My voice broke on the second line, but I kept going. For her. Always for her.

I felt her slip away as I sang. Felt the exact moment her heart stopped fighting, when the machines’ beeping became irregular, frantic, then flat.

The nurses rushed in, but I didn’t let her go.

Held her tighter, kept singing even as they tried to pull me away, even as alarms screamed and the world fell apart around me.

She was gone.

Three days later...

The rain soaked through my cut, through my shirt, straight down to my bones, but I didn’t feel it.

I felt nothing except the gaping, raw wound in my chest where my heart used to be.

Three days. It had been three fucking days since I listened to her heart stop beating, since I felt the last remaining bit of life drain from her body, since I held her and sang her our song, against the beeping of machines as our family watched, knowing nothing could save her.

The priest’s words were muffled, lost in the wind’s mournful cry and the roar of blood in my ears. I couldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to hear him. What the fuck could he say that would make this right? What words existed in any language that could fill the void she left behind?

She was never coming back. No matter how hard I wished, no matter how many bargains I tried to make with whatever cruel bastard was running this universe, she was gone. Forever. That word echoed in my skull like a death sentence.

My knuckles were white where I gripped the single white rose in my hand, the thorns biting into my palm.

I welcomed the pain. It was the only thing that felt real.

Everything else was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.

I could see her so clearly in my mind. Eight years old, pigtails flying as she raced me to the creek behind her mama’s house.

Fourteen, blushing when I kissed her for the first time under the bleachers after a football game.

Eighteen, walking toward me in a simple white dress at the courthouse, her smile brighter than the Tennessee sun.

Twenty-three, laughing as I carried her over the threshold of our first apartment, telling me she was pregnant, her eyes shining with joy and hope, only to shed tears weeks later.

Every memory was a knife twisting deeper.

She hated being the center of attention.

She would have hated this. All these people, all these flowers, all this fucking ceremony.

She would’ve wanted something small, something quiet.

Just me and her and the people who mattered.

But I couldn’t even give her that. Couldn’t give her anything anymore except this cold ground and a headstone that would never, ever be enough.

The faces around me blurred. My brother, Digger, stood to my left, his hand on my shoulder, steady and solid.

Ravage was there too, and Reaper, along with half the fucking club.

They all came to pay their respects, to support their brother, but their condolences sounded hollow and distant, like they were speaking from the other end of a tunnel.

I wanted to scream at them to leave. To take their pity and their sorrow and get the fuck away from me. This was mine. This grief, this agony, this unbearable weight crushing my chest. It was all I had left of her, and I didn’t want to share it.

A single tear escaped, hot against my frozen cheek, and I hated myself for it. Hated that I was standing here crying like a broken man when I should’ve been strong enough to save her. Should’ve been strong enough to keep her here, to keep her safe, to keep her alive.

I was an executioner. I dealt in death. I’d killed more men than I could count, had looked into their eyes as the light faded, had felt nothing but cold satisfaction at a job well done.

But I couldn’t save the one person who mattered.

Couldn’t protect the woman I had loved since I was eight years old and she shared her lunch with me because I had forgotten mine.

The cruel irony wasn’t lost on me.

I had a daughter now.

Aurora Julianna Moore, born at 3:47 AM on August sixteenth, weighing six pounds four ounces.

Perfect. Beautiful. Alive.

And Julie was dead.

She hemorrhaged and threw a clot. That was what the doctors said.

Postpartum hemorrhage caused an embolism that went straight to her head.

They tried to stop it, tried to save her, but there had been too much blood, too much damage, too much of everything except time.

I refused to look at my daughter. I wanted nothing to do with her as I held my Julie’s hand in the days after.

I felt nothing for the life we brought into this world, only rage and grief and a terror so profound it had nearly brought me to my knees.

How the fuck was I supposed to do this without her?

How was I supposed to raise a little girl when I didn’t know the first goddamn thing about being a father? Especially when every time I looked at her, all I saw were Julie’s eyes, Julie’s nose, Julie’s delicate features, and felt the loss all over again like a fresh wound.

The rain had started to fall now, soft and silent, dampening the raw earth. The mourners were dispersing, offering final words I didn’t hear, touches I didn’t feel. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t walk away. Couldn’t leave her here in this cold, dark ground.

My feet were rooted to the spot, my eyes locked on the coffin.

A polished wood that gleamed even in the gray light, covered now with roses and lilies and all the flowers she loved.

I put the white rose in my hand on top of them all, as my fingers trembled and my vision blurred.

“I love you,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

“I love you, baby. I’m so fucking sorry. ”

Sorry I couldn’t save her. Sorry I couldn’t keep my promise to always protect her. Sorry that our daughter would grow up without her mama, without the woman who would’ve loved her fiercely and completely and perfectly.

The world felt wrong. Irrevocably altered.

Like someone had tilted the axis and everything was off-balance, spinning out of control.

I built my entire life around Julie. She had been my constant, my anchor, my reason for everything.

And now she was gone, and I was adrift in a sea of grief with no shore in sight.

Digger’s voice cut through the fog. “Brother. We gotta go. Aurora needs you.”

Aurora.

My daughter.

Julie’s final gift to me, and the cruelest reminder of what I had lost.

I took one last look at the grave, at the flowers, at the headstone that read Julie Marie Moore, Beloved Wife and Mother, and felt something inside me shatter completely. Then I turned and walked away, each step heavier than the last, leaving my heart buried six feet under Tennessee soil.