Chapter 21 Knox
KNOX
The entire ride to Monroe’s was tense, at best. I’d had a long day with the guys, trying to dig into who the fuck set me up for this kid’s murder.
Whoever the hell it was, they weren’t smart.
I wasn’t even carrying a damn knife on me that day.
All I ever carried was a taser and a fucking gun on my side.
If anything else was required, I simply cocked my fist back and punched the shit outta whoever the fuck needed it.
I tried to prepare myself for this talk with Monroe, because I had a feeling it was gonna get bad.
She was gonna try to change me again and I was gonna have to tell her that wasn’t how it worked.
She was gonna cry or yell or hit me or do some shit she thought was worthy of her emotional state and I was gonna have to give her a hard reality.
I didn’t live the kind of life growing up that allowed me a father I could be proud of.
A man whose footsteps I could follow in.
There was no damn business to hand down or job to take over once he was dead.
There was no trust fund set up or money to take after he was gone.
My father was a pathetic piece of slime that hung my momma out to dry.
My mother couldn’t work. Not full time, at least. Her pregnancy with me had been rough, and she sustained a lot of injuries during labor with me.
I was sitting so high up in her fucking body that when she contracted, I went up instead of down.
My ass jammed right into her lungs and collapsed them on the fucking spot.
They had to rush her into an operating room to get me out and save her life, but I’d done so much fucking damage that she couldn’t fully bounce back.
One of her lungs was permanently damaged, her spine was permanently misaligned, and her kidneys still didn’t function the way they needed to anymore.
I messed my momma up, and that came with a lot of anger spewed my way.
My father blamed me for our financial problems. Said he couldn’t float the family by himself and expected me to get a job when I was old enough.
There was always some sort of fighting at night when I was in bed.
My momma would try to tell my father to shut the hell up when it came to that kinda stuff and my daddy would tell her I was the reason we couldn’t pay our damn bills.
Another mouth to feed that couldn’t work.
He took off when I was fourteen. Tired of never having any money and tired of paying for my momma and I to ‘mooch off him’.
He left one night and never came back and I’ll never forget how hard my momma cried.
How many tears she shed that night wondering how the fuck she was gonna feed me.
For two years after that, I watched her bounce around from one part time job to the other, never in the same place twice and doing whatever she needed to get money to feed my sorry ass.
That was when The Dead Souls came into my life.
That was when I found out what family was supposed to do.
I rolled with the club and got myself into some trouble.
Tried to prove how tough I was and how no one could push me around.
There were some men in the club, dead and gone now as I rose through the ranks, but they straightened me out.
Taught me what it meant to be a real man.
Taught me what it meant to provide for family and taught me a lesson or two in loyalty.
I found my place in their charades and was made a prospect, and the moment that happened the money started flowing.
And it wasn’t long after that money started that Canyon was dropped on my porch.
Momma called me crying. Said someone had left a baby on her porch.
There had been a note attached to her, signed by a one-night stand whose face I couldn't recall until Canyon started to blossom into it. A random girl on a drunken night when I had money to throw around after paying off my momma’s house.
A celebration to being inducted, being the provider my father was too pussy to be, and a celebration to the family I’d found.
And created that night, apparently.
I lived this life not because I had to, but because I wanted to.
Because even through it all, those men at the clubhouse saw me through everything.
Through the fights and the anger I held against my father.
Through the confusion of having a baby girl I didn’t know about and being there when I yelled about what the fuck I was supposed to do with her.
They had my back. Them. Brewer and Grave and Mick.
Diesel and Rock and the rest of the gang.
All of them had been there.
And no woman, especially Monroe, was ever gonna get me to turn my damn back on them.
I pulled up to her apartment complex and grinned.
Despite what I knew was coming, it would be good to see her again.
That fire in her emerald eyes matched the glow of the sunset I’d watched on my way here, and her strawberry blonde hair reminded me of the sandy dunes of the desert I looked at every time I was at the clubhouse.
Damn. This was gonna be a hard conversation.
I walked up to Monroe’s apartment and knocked on the door.
I had a couple of ice cold beers in my hand as I waited for her to open the door.
I heard footsteps behind it and a light sigh, and it made me grin.
I could tell she was just as nervous for this conversation as I was, and I figured I could leverage that to keep the conversation peaceful.
“Hey there,” Monroe said.
I raked my eyes down her form and took in what she was wearing. A dark green gown with a matching robe tied tightly around her waist. It matched her eyes and made her hair stand out. The hair that was piled high on her head with nothing but a clip and a prayer.
“Hey,” I said.
“Come on in. I figured we could talk on the porch.”
She led me into her apartment and it seemed very average for a woman like her.
I expected vibrant colors or some sort of minimalistic shit furniture that wobbled whenever someone sat on it.
But it was pretty bland. Tan walls. Popcorn ceilings.
Laminate hardwood floors and hand-me-down furniture.
No pictures were on the wall and there were no decorations on any side tables or anything.
She had only what she needed and there was nothing else there.
It was almost like she didn’t regard the place as home.
I watched her sit down in wrought iron chair outside. Her eyes were cast towards the horizon as her fingers wrapped around a wine glass. The crimson liquid sloshed around in the glass as I stepped onto the porch, taking a seat beside her before I popped open a can.
“It amuses me that you actually brought your own beer,” Monroe said.
“Told ya I would, and I’m a man of my word,” I said.
“Which means you’ll still be going back to the club,” she said.
“Monroe, I get it. You wanna change me and help me find a new way of life and all that. But you gotta understand, these are my brothers. My family. The family I was born into, it wasn’t the greatest. I got a momma that can’t work well because of having me and a sister that relies on me to provide for them so they can live the life they deserve. ”
“You have options, if that’s the issue,” she said.
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s more than that.
I went through some shit in my teenage years, and they were there to help.
Men in that club who have been dead and gone for years taught me lessons my own father should’ve.
Lesson about loyalty and hard work and what it meant to really have a family.
What it meant to be someone a person could lean on.
They got me through hell and back. It’s not that I can’t turn my back on them. It’s that I don’t want to.”
“What’s wrong with your mother?” she asked.
“Bad back. Bad lung. Bad kidneys. Shit like that.”
“You said it was because of her pregnancy?”
“Yeah. I was a rough one.”
“Doesn’t shock me,” she said with a grin.
It lit up her eyes and I had problems pulling my gaze from her face.
“What happened to her?” Monroe asked.
“Long story short, I used her kidneys too much as a punching bag and when she started contracting, I started goin’ up.”
“Up?” she asked.
“Yep. Up. Right into her lungs. Collapsed them and killed her. They had to rush to get me out before they could revive her.”
“Holy shit, Knox.”
“She’s a tough woman, but it didn’t come with a price. She’s on disability and works when she can, but it isn’t much. It was barely enough to pay the bills until I paid off her house.”
“You paid off your mother’s house.”
“I did. The club helped me do it.”
“Hell of a gang,” she said.
“Hell of a family,” I said.
“I know what our reputation is around town. I hear the whispers. I get it. But whether or not people understand it, we’re trying to become more legit. Get ourselves out of some things and take on other ventures.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Can’t talk about it. But we’re trying to clean up our act a bit.”
“A bit,” she said with a snicker.
“Yep. A bit. That’s how change works. A bit at a time.”
“Do you guys launder money?” she asked.
“Am I talking to my lawyer or a friend?”
“Would a friend get an honest answer?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I’m a friend.”
“It’s not my place to talk about that, but I can tell you this: we did used to do a lot of the things the whispers around this town accuse us of.”
“Of course,” she said with a whisper.
“I don’t expect you to understand, or even like it. But sometimes people gotta choose their own family. And I chose mine. It might not be perfect, and we might not be completely legal or whatever, but they’re mine. I trust those men with my life. Mostly.”
“Mostly?” she asked.
“We’re going through some stuff. All families do.”
“Uh huh. And what… stuff… does this kind of family go through?” she asked.