Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Confused yet?
I would be, but really, it was quite simple.
The Renegade Reapers weren’t your typical outlaw motorcycle club.
Hence, the Renegade portion of our name.
Sure, most of our patched in members killed people for money, just like I did. We also did a couple of more nefarious things, like arms deals and money laundering. Those income streams only scratched the surface of what we had our hands in. However, unlike other clubs, we committed the sins so God-fearing Christians didn’t have to.
We received jobs from all over.
Some of them were even from outside of the country. We usually farmed those out, but they have sent me on jobs to Russia and the United Kingdom. My brother’s wife taught me enough Russian to carry on a decent conversation, so I had no trouble getting by over there. It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there all the time.
For our assignments, we each received a percentage of the fee. The rest went into the club. It paid for all the bills we had and funded a couple of our charities.
Yes, we could be philanthropists and still slit throats.
Politicians and business owners did it all the time, only most of them didn’t get bloody doing it.
We diversified. How did you think we got the people we rescued from the flesh market out? Connections and funds. We also made sure they had somewhere nice to live, a place to work, and an excellent therapist to deal with trauma.
Our services operated like a one-night stand. Showed up out of nowhere, gave you something you needed. Provided escape. Made you feel good. Took you to places you’ve never been. Most of all, you would never see us again, but what we did for you would never be forgotten.
When our chapter of the Reapers was established, the Prez and VP decided we would be an extension of them, but still do our own thing. We called ourselves the Renegade Reapers. We had our own code. Sure, we took part in the same shady circles that other motorcycle clubs did, but we also had extracurricular activities that most of them rarely got involved in.
Our father got the idea from this television show he used to watch in the eighties. It was about this ex-CIA agent who sought justice for innocent people who found themselves in dangerous situations. He thought, why should we allow people who were willing to pay for a hitman so they could get out of a messy divorce, or a jilted ex-lover or barely an acquaintance falsely accusing someone of a heinous crime for revenge?
We had to keep up appearances, so we were still involved in some other illegal activities, in addition to our penchant for vigilante justice. Dad decided our MC could keep our reputation and avoid dipping our hands in certain businesses. He didn’t want to deal in the skin trade, whether it be via prostitution or human trafficking, because it was a slippery slope, so we stayed away from it. Until my brother took over, the Reapers were involved in the drug trade, but he saw no use to it, so he took it off our docket. It eliminated some issues we had with our rivalries, so it made sense.
However, if our rivalries ever sold drugs to minors, we stepped in.
The gun trade, however, was an excellent way to make money. It also gave us access to the cool new gadgets we could use for our other business.
None of our activities were truly legitimate, which was why we had to watch our step around the cops.
Everyone had to fear the Reapers.
Not everyone needed to know exactly why they should.
Our reputation was everything.
The first time they sent me out on a solo job, it was at my request. Even though I was only fourteen at the time, I didn’t let that stop me. In fact, it was my age that allowed me to gain the upper hand with my target.
My initial assumption going in was that the club thought I was too young. I didn’t let that dissuade me because I wanted a chance to prove myself, so I convinced them. I went through all the necessary channels and planned to meet the President of our motorcycle club. He might have been my brother, some could even argue pseudo father, but he would always be a Reaper first. To my surprise, they invited me to Church where I was told to plead my case to the entire club.
Erik sat at the head of the carved oak table with his tattooed hands clasped in front of him. The room was already intimidating enough, but now it was filled with these burly motherfuckers who could kill a person with one hand. Not that I thought they were going to kill me, but if they wanted to, they could. I stood with my head held high and provided the background for the case, as well as my plans for the perpetrator.
While I was pleading my case, Erik didn’t even interrupt me once. I struggled to believe he wasn’t against me going out to deliver a bit of justice to the misogynists of the male population. Here I was, all prepared with a well thought out argument for why I needed to be involved, and no one argued against it. As soon as I finished the whole spiel, they unanimously answered yes.
There had been a string of rapes involving teenaged girls who attended private schools in the city. The act of raping women didn’t appease this guy. He had to terrorize them, too. For weeks before he raped the girls, he would follow them and leave tokens of his obsession. During the rape, he would fracture their skull, break their nose and their left eye socket. Then, after he raped the women, he would shave their heads. A week later, on the same day of the week, at the exact hour that the rape occurred, a courier would deliver a box with their hair inside.
If there was one thing that pissed me off, it was pathetic men who could only get off by forcing someone. I had been following this case closely because some of the girls who were violated had attended Hilton Preparatory Academy at the same time as I did. We hadn’t been close friends or even acquaintances, but I recognized their names.
One of the teenage girls he had raped walked into our clubhouse one evening. I noticed her immediately because she looked so out of place in her academy uniform, but what struck me the most was her posture. She walked in like she owned the place, head held high and shoulders back. She had fashionably tied a scarf on her head, covering what I would soon learn was one of his calling cards. Even from where I was, I could still see the bruising from beneath her foundation. She marched right up to where I was serving drinks, expertly avoided brushing arms with any of the men, and tossed her backpack up on the bar in front of me. My eyes widened as I saw through the partially opened zipper what was inside.
It wasn’t high school textbooks.
She looked me straight in the eye and told me she needed to order a hit. I immediately called over one of the guys so that they could take over the bar for me and I took her back into the office. She explained in horrific detail what the rapist had done to her, and it rocked me to the core when she told me who it had been. The private schools shared a counsellor who was supposed to provide guidance to these young individuals.
When I was at Hilton Prep, he was the counsellor they forced me to talk to regarding my anger management issue. Just thinking about him again made my blood boil. He was supposed to help teenagers, not take advantage of them. Instead, he used the sessions to gain valuable information about his targets. None of his victims could identify him because his face was never visible, and he blindfolded them so they couldn’t see his body. The authorities were unsuccessful with any of the rape kits because he was meticulous in his clean-up of evidence.
Then he finally fucked up.
He picked the one victim that he had multiple school mandated counselling sessions with. She recognized the scent of his cologne. It was his first of many mistakes. She didn’t need to see his face or body to know exactly who he was. The only problem was that she had no proof. It would end up being a she said, he said situation and with her less than stellar past, no one would believe the truth in her accusations. Then there was the matter of physical evidence because, just like with all of his previous attacks, he forced the girls to take showers and to clean any trace of him off them. She felt like the world was against her because she had been a problem child. The reason she, and apparently all the other girls, had spent so much time in the counsellor’s office was because of all their issues at school.
I thought back to that night.
After she finished her story, I handed the backpack, still containing the money, back to her.
“I won’t be taking your money,” I had told her.
“You’re not gonna do it, are you?” she huffed. “I should have known you would hold a grudge.”
She had been one of the girls who bullied me, but no one deserved what happened to her.
“No, that’s not it.”
“Do you have a problem with rich kids or something?”
“No—”
“Is my money not good enough for you?”
I had almost laughed as she interrupted me again. I finally remembered why we hadn’t been friends in school. She had a huge chip on her shoulder. Yet now, having lived a completely different life than I had at school, that chip she carried only endeared me to her more. No wonder she could walk in the door of a motorcycle club and demand our attention.
“I’m not taking your money because I’ll do it for free.”
Her mouth had dropped open. “For free? You’ll take care of him for free?”
“Yes, but it might not be exactly in the method you want,” I’d responded.
“Then what are you gonna do to him? You and I both know he’s gonna get away with it and be out on the street doing the exact same thing to another girl.”
“Men like him don’t deserve a quick death. Instead, he’ll live the rest of his life knowing that he won’t ever get another erection.”
“Are you serious?”
“I won’t stop there though,” I told her. “I’m gonna dig up so much dirt on him that the police won’t have any problem convicting him.”
“You don’t know what this means to me. I’ve met his other victims too, and they all deserve this just as much as I do.”
They deserved what I was going to do to him and more. I only wished I could invite them all in, so that they could mete out their own justice on him. The only problem was what we had to stay out of the limelight. People could think we were behind the crime, but they couldn’t know the exact timeline and methods used to carry out the crime.
Plausible deniability.
“I only have one more question,” I’d asked. How big do you want this to be?”
“I want everyone to know what he did, so he can’t ever do it again.”
“You got it.”
The very next day, I made an appointment with his office using the ruse of needing to talk to him about my past. It didn’t surprise me when he remembered exactly who I was. Wearing a wire, so my brothers would know I was okay, I sobbed my little eyes out, spilling my guts about some fake biker that had done me wrong. When he went to get me a glass of water, I knew he would take longer than necessary because he needed to spike my drink. So I made use of my time by using an app to download everything on his hard drive to Liam’s offsite storage. Then I synced his calendar to mine and made an excuse why I needed to leave.
There was no fucking way I was going to touch the water.
Early the next morning, we snatched him off the street.
Boy, was he surprised to see my face when I pulled off his blindfold.
We kept him in one of our abandoned warehouses. For all seven victims, we punished him for his discretions. For a week we held him. We beat him within an inch of his life, shaved him bald, and tattooed RAPIST on his forehead. Finally, I used a Newberry knife to castrate him and mailed his balls to our client.
A little sick, but she requested it as part of our contract.
It took everything in me not to kill the bastard for everything he had done to those girls, but I refrained. However, before we dropped him off in front of the police station, I used an industrial stapler to affix a cardboard sign with lock me up written on it to his chest. A full file of his crimes, along with evidentiary support, was sent to the prosecutor’s office and both city newspapers.
He didn’t even see the inside of a courtroom, though.
Prisoners didn’t take too kindly to men who sexually assaulted underaged girls or children. I could still see the look on my brothers' faces when I told them we had a walk in. No one just walked in. Especially not a young girl who had already been violated once.
Once was enough.
Once was too much.
Once was the reason I wanted to cut off his balls and feed them to him before I stuffed his dick in his mouth and sewed his lips shut. However, that wasn’t what was requested. It didn’t matter that I never took payment for the job, I still had to honour the wishes of the client.
With any luck, the Devil’s minions would surround him with fire and brimstone while they forced him to play hide the pineapple with Hitler.