Chapter Three
Chasm
The ride to Little Rock was long and rough. The constant need to be aware of our surroundings as we rode meant this ride wasn’t for leisure.
After a day and a half of hard riding, we finally pulled into the clubhouse in Little Rock. I sat on my bike and looked up at the old warehouse. This place had been my home until it hadn’t.
“You having second thoughts?” Romeo asked beside me.
“And third and fourth.” I sighed, blowing out a breath as I swung my leg over the seat of my bike.
The front door slammed open, and men piled out. Brothers who’d always had my back until they didn’t. Zombie reached me first and threw his arms around me. “You stupid son of a bitch!”
“Where the fuck have you been, Chasm?” Warden asked behind him.
“Hiding in plain fucking sight, brother,” I answered with a smirk. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
We piled into the main room, and I looked around. Not much had changed since I’d died.
“This place is fucking depressing,” I said.
“Yeah, we need to do some updating. Still working on getting all the accounts straight. Steele and Stone weren’t exactly forthcoming with everything.”
I looked at the men around me. “So what’s this bullshit about me being president?”
Zombie smiled brightly and slammed the patch into my chest. “Congratulations, brother.”
I stared at the patch in my hand. “You guys really want this?” I asked, not looking up.
“No one else we’d rather have. Except maybe King, but I don’t think he’s willing to come back.”
I snorted rather than answer. King was a good man. Despite my doubts, he knew how to lead. I guess he’d gotten that from his father, Braesal O’Malley, the head of the Irish Mob in Boston.
“What about everyone else?” I asked, looking around to see who my officers were.
“Everyone handed in their patch. Starting fresh, now that the trash is gone.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone,” Zombie confirmed. “We figured you knew who you could trust.”
I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone. But I looked at Romeo and Ace. “You two staying or going?”
“We’ll stay for a few days; help you get set up. But our place is in Nebraska now.”
“Okay, I guess we better have church and figure out what the fuck we’re doing.” Shouts and cheers echoed through the room as we all moved down the hall.
I walked into church, and memories assaulted me. Times I’d spent in this room, discussing jobs, enemies, money, pussy. I looked toward the corner and asked, “Where’s Steele’s desk?”
“After you... died,” Ambush began, “Steele moved into an office. That was when things really started getting shady.”
“Guess I’ll have to check that out later. Anyone opposed to me moving the desk back into church?”
A round of nos went through the room. The men moved to their seats, and the guys from Nebraska hung back against the wall. One seat remained for me.
The president’s chair.
I slowly made my way to the front of the room. My hands held the back of the chair, and I looked around the table. “Not sure I can sit in this chair, brothers. Not sure I deserve it.”
“You deserve it, brother. King told us everything.”
I stiffened at Venom’s words. “What are you talking about?”
Venom looked over at Krypto, who looked to Ambush. “He told us what happened that day. How Steele held him back. He said he didn’t have the proof, but he believed Steele set you up. He told us you’d been suspicious for a while about Steele and Stone having something to do with Titan’s death.”
“And he told us how it was his fault you were in that warehouse alone.” Omen said. “He’s never forgiven himself.”
I looked over at Romeo, who just stared at me with his eyebrow raised.
“I wasn’t completely honest with King that day.
” Romeo pushed off the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was meeting someone. Someone who had the information I needed to prove Steele had Titan killed. But somehow Steele found out and turned it around on me. When King stalled, I assumed he was in on it.”
“Tell them who you met,” Romeo growled.
My brothers waited quietly while I strummed up the courage to confess. “I was meeting a man named Hemlock. He is King’s younger brother, but King didn’t know at the time.”
“How many fucking brothers does he have?”
“Three. Two now,” Romeo announced. “Ravage of the Golden Skulls is King’s brother. Ravage’s father is Morpheus.”
Morpheus needed no introduction; everyone knew who he was.
“What about Hemlock?” Baltimore asked.
“Hemlock was the twin brother to Shamrock. Also in the Golden Skulls. Shamrock was killed by Reaper when all that shit went down with Reaper’s mother and the Society. Their father is Snoopy from the Soulless Sinners.”
“Jesus, and King didn’t know about any of them?” Smokey asked.
“King didn’t know O’Malley was his father until this past December,” Ace explained. He looked at me. “You gonna tell them who your brother is?”
“You have a brother?” Tito asked.
I sighed heavily; they deserved the truth. Secrets got men killed. Mine almost got me killed. “My brother is Justin Peterson, also known as Shame from the Soulless Sinners. And since we’re laying it all out, my father was Samuel Peterson.”
“The fucking cult leader?” Psycho shouted.
“The one and only. Justin and I didn’t grow up with him. We barely knew him. Our mothers raised us. We also have a sister. Janelle Ingalls.” I waited as some of the older members realized who I meant.
“Who is Janelle Ingalls?” someone asked.
“The wife of Karl Ingalls Sr., the former governor of Alabama. Now, with all that shit out there, you still want me?”
“Hell yes!” Cobra shouted, followed by the others slamming their fists on the table.
“Alright. Then let’s get started. I’m not going to assign anything. We make these decisions together. Who do you want for Veep?”
“B!” the men shouted together.
“Fucking hell,” Zombie cursed.
“King said you were willing to be my VP, but you didn’t want to be president.”
“King’s a fucking liar. I never said shit about being VP.”
I threw my head back and laughed. It felt good. I should have known King was blowing smoke up my ass.
“All in favor of B being Veep?”
Shouting and clapping boomed through the room, and with each officer’s patch, I asked for a nomination. By the end of the meeting, I had my circle.
Ambush was sergeant at arms. He was diplomatic and fair, but piss him off, and you’d never see him coming.
Krypto and Venom were my enforcers. Two men who I knew would always have my back. When someone asked about Angel, I explained where he was and assured everyone his place would be there when he came home.
Keno and Tito were the cleaners. They learned everything they knew from Zero.
Monty was the money man. He got his name from Full Card Monty; his hands were quick, but I trusted him to hide the money that needed hiding while still being fully transparent.
Warden was the secretary. There wasn’t a man I knew who was more organized and disciplined than he.
Spider was the road captain, and Crater was the tail gunner. One led the way, and the other picked up the fallout.
That left our tech guy. I didn’t ask for a nomination. He was the only option, and no one could take his place.
“Things are going to be different here. Church won’t just be the officers; it will be everyone. We’re brothers. We do this shit together, or we don’t do it at all.”
“Together!” everyone shouted.
The men filed out at the end of the meeting, leaving me and Zombie in church. “You want to see your office?” he asked.
“I guess so. Not sure I’m ready for what I might find in there.”
“Probably not much. Stone was tipped off that we were coming and hightailed it out with Ballistic and the others. I’m sure he pulled anything incriminating.”
“Probably,” I agreed as I followed him down the hall. “We need to get someone in here to clean the place.”
“The club whores all took off when Stone did. Not sure what that was about, but we’ve been trying to recruit some new girls.”
“What do we have for prospects?”
“They took off too.”
I stopped in my tracks and looked at my new VP. “The prospects took off when Stone did? All of them?”
“Yup.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound shady as fuck, does it?”
We continued down the hall, and when I walked into the office, I dropped my chin to my chest and sighed. It was as though a tornado had come through and torn the room apart.
“Jesus Christ. Do me a favor, B, call a cleaning company and get someone here today to clean my room. If the office looks like this, I can just imagine what Steele’s room is like.”
“You got it, Prez.”
Zombie left me in the office, and my eyes moved around the room wondering where the fuck to start. I moved to the desk. Picking the chair up off the floor, I sat down and started going through the papers.
I picked up my phone and called Monty. A moment later he was at my door.
“What’s up?”
“Have you been through any of this shit?” I asked, holding random pieces of paper in my hand.
“I haven’t. I went through Goose’s office; found a few accounts the brothers didn’t know about. They were empty though.”
“Fuck, do we have any money left?”
Monty smiled. “Steele had his own account. As soon as B called me to tell me he was dead, I had Omen drain it.”
I looked up, surprised. “How much?”
“Five million, give or take.”
I whistled at the number. “So we have some breathing room.”
“More than just breathing room. I had Omen lock down the main account. Goose couldn’t get into it.”
“Thank fuck. Any idea where they went?”
“That we don’t know. But if they didn’t show up in Nebraska, it means they’re hiding.”
“Which means they could show up anywhere,” I muttered. “Thank you.”
Monty nodded and left, and I considered tossing everything into the trash, but I didn’t want any surprises. So I got to work sorting through the paperwork. I’d been in here an hour when Romeo knocked on the door.
I looked up briefly, then went back to the papers in my hand. I pulled open the desk drawer as Romeo sat down in the chair across from me.
“How’s it going in here?” he asked.
“Slow,” I answered without looking up. There were half a dozen files still in the drawer; everything else had been tossed. I pulled the remaining files and stared at them.
Each file had a name.
Meadow Elliot
Windsor Moore
Kaitlyn Ward
Sullivan Prescott
Lauren Hollis
Morgan Delany
“Son of a bitch!”
“What is it?” Romeo asked, leaning forward. I looked up at him; he must have seen the look on my face because he stood up and walked around my desk.
“Kaitlyn Ward is the baby Kay had. Angel’s baby,” Rome supplied.
“He has a file on my fucking wife,” I growled. “How the fuck did he know?”
I grabbed my phone and dialed King. “Hello?” His arrogant tone pissed me off.
“Did you tell Steele I got married?”
“Of course I didn’t fucking tell him,” King denied. “Why?”
“He’s got six files in his office; each file has a girl’s name. One of them is Morgan.”
“What does it say?”
I leaned back in my chair. “The files are empty. So whatever was in them, Stone took when he left.”
“I guess you better get your ass to Virginia,” King ordered.
“I can’t, King. She deserves better than what I can offer her.”
Romeo rolled his eyes at me and sat back down in the chair across from me. He laid his hands on his stomach and crossed his foot over his knee.
“And what if she’s in danger, Chasm? What then? This shit isn’t over. Dakota and Zephyr are out there licking their fucking wounds. Stone is still alive, and by now, he knows you are too. You think he won’t go after Morgan?”
I didn’t answer King; I couldn’t. Morgan wasn’t part of my life anymore. I’d let her go so she could have the life she wanted. And she did.
“You know what, asshole, fucking forget it.” He disconnected the call, and a moment later Romeo’s phone rang.
He smiled at me as he answered, “Hey, Prez, what’s up?”
His smile only got wider when he said, “I can do that. Yup, I’ll go check on her. You gonna call King and tell him we’re coming up to Virginia?”
I stood, walked around the desk, and snatched the phone from Romeo’s hand.
“Don’t fucking call King. I will go check on her, but I don’t want her to know I’m there.”
“I knew you’d see reason. What about the other names?”
“One of them was Kaitlyn Ward. Also empty. The others were names I don’t recognize, but I’ll get Omen on them and see what he can find.”
“Expect Angel to be there tomorrow, because once I tell him, he’ll be on his way. Banshee might be with him.”
“Great, just what I need.”
“You’ll be in Virginia, asshole.”