CHAPTER NINE
Sean
“At least she’s getting out of the house again. Before you know it, she’ll be back at school, one day at a time.” I grip Mason’s shoulder beside me in our club meeting—our service.
We’re seated in the chapel room at the clubhouse.
It’s a large space that houses a heavy walnut table, big enough to seat twenty-five.
An intricate metal replica of our cut hangs on the wall, an homage to where we came from.
Wolfe’s grandad Ira designed the insignia with his own hand.
The deadly wolf skull with a snake slithering through.
A reminder: Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
The room is sparsely furnished, just the table with ashtrays on it and in the far corner a fully stocked liquor cabinet. This is our safe space, the place we can speak freely about anything and everything. Business or personal.
“She’ll get past this. We’ll find and fucking gut whoever did this to her, but in the meantime, she’s got the family, and her therapy right?” I ask.
Mason nods. “Yeah, seems like it’s helping.”
The entire table offers similar support after my words.
It wasn’t much more than three months ago that his youngest, now seventeen-year-old, sister was assaulted by a man who had lured her through a social media app.
She thought he was a college student, one she had developed feelings for.
He covered his face, drugged her, raped her and recorded it, stating on the video that she’d consented, that she’d begged for it.
She hadn’t. Fucking disgusting. The videos were released online with the man fucking her, his middle finger raised to the camera.
It was taken down, but the whole thing has come close to ruining her life.
And the police keep saying she’s just another statistic.
They haven’t been able to figure out who did it.
But we know it’s a personal retaliation targeted at our club.
We know it was a Disciples of Sin member because of a tattoo on the guy’s wrist in the video.
Spare none. That’s the motto of our rival club. We don’t know for sure who exactly did it, but we have a damn good idea, and we’ll leave no stone unturned until we find out for sure and bring him and whoever else was involved to club justice.
It’s our most sacred rule. You never, ever fuck with women, children or our families. If you do, we’ll make you wish the devil himself got a hold of you before we did.
Our conversation turns to business, and we listen to our club president, Gabriel Wolfe—my brother for all intents and purposes—talk about next week’s drug shipment being brought in from Canada for our clinics.
Wolfe has been club president for a few years now, and he’s done a hell of a job upholding not only our business but our reputation in both Savannah and Atlanta.
His father was in the club before him, although he was a total fuckup and waste of space.
Wolfe redeemed his family name and learned how to be a true leader from his uncle Ray, the prez before him who passed him the torch.
He’s also found a way to use the club and anything illegal that we sell to give back not only to the community but to our fellow Veterans.
He was an officer in my unit during all three tours in the desert; we’ve been through it all together and then some.
I’ve always found it odd that Wolfe’s uncle asked him instead of his own son, Jake, to carry on his legacy.
But Jake doesn’t seem to mind and is now our VP.
He’s kind of a flake anyway, and I’d never say this to another living soul, but I’ve never liked the guy.
He’s usually looking for a quick fuck or a quick high.
He isn’t calculating, and he never thinks before he acts.
A recipe for disaster in our world, and his haywire actions alone can drive a man like me to the brink of insanity. You can never count on him.
“Alright, so get through this week, and Kai, keep looking for our culprit,” Wolfe says. But even though we’re finished with the conversation, Mason is still seething.
“I fucking know it was someone from the Disciples. The things I’m gonna do to that motherfucker Marco,” he says through gritted teeth, mentioning the Disciples of Sin president, Marco Foxx.
“We all think it was them. But we can’t do shit until we know,” Wolfe says, leaning back in his chair. His voice is commanding. “We have to do this with clear heads,” he adds.
“I’m getting closer,” Kai pipes up from the other side of the table.
He’s smart as fuck with anything tech. At first, I thought he was just some pretty boy when he prospected.
I didn’t think he’d last a week. I figured he just wanted to get his dick wet and prove to the world he was a badass, but after eight months of prospecting and now two years with his rockers, he’s proven me wrong.
He has a deeply dark and twisted side just like the rest of us, but his seems to be fueled by some sort of revenge almost. His backstory isn’t mine to tell, but parts of it are grim enough to bring this peaceful sort of smile to his face when he’s peeling back someone’s fingernails.
“I’ll find out where the video came from. I fuckin’ promise you that,” Kai adds. Mason grits his back molars. The day he gets his hands on the man who violated his baby sister will be a reckoning that I’ll not only welcome, I’ll happily assist with. That man will wish he was never born.
My eyes snap to Wolfe’s for direction as I spin my ring on my first finger.
He sits at the head of the table, tipping the gavel on its head against the wooden plate.
The room is lit with spotlights and the walls are paneled with wood.
I always sit at Wolfe’s left and Jake sits across from me.
My job is to protect Wolfe first, at all costs, and the club second.
After serving with him overseas I’m already used to that, so this has seemed like the natural progression of things for me, and it isn’t a job I take lightly.
I’d take a bullet or a life for him in a heartbeat, and even though it’s not his job to do so, I know he’d do the same for me.
“Alright, enough of that. Off the record, what took you fuckers so long last night?” Wolfe asks me, Mason and Kai.
I shift in my seat, trying to loosen my tight back, feeling my brow furrow.
“You good?” Wolfe asks, always concerned about our well-being. I nod.
“Fucking rain yesterday,” I retort. He knows it always aggravates my back and the chronic pain that lives there.
“The rain, and running down two K-6ers,” Kai chuckles, mentioning a low-level street gang. We scared them off when they were dealing in front of one of our clinics last week and gave them a good beatdown—so yeah, that didn’t help either.
“Well? What happened last night?” Wolfe coaxes an answer out of us.
“You were supposed to be here at nine to help Shelly move tables around for the party, and she isn’t gonna let you get away with that shit.
She was bitching all night about how hard it is to find good help around here.
” He mentions my mother by name. She’s a fireball, and she’s been the den mother around here since my dad died.
She didn’t have to stay, but I was deep in it by then and it was the only life she knew.
She gets a little crazy when it comes to hosting and we’re having a party next weekend for one of our members. It’s Flip’s fiftieth birthday.
“Sorry Prez, we got caught in the rain and we were fucking starving. We stopped at The Palm for a steak,” Kai says, speaking for me.
“The Palm? That would’ve been a sight. Did you clear the place out?” Jake asks with a chuckle.
Mason shrugs. “No one tried to take our pool table.”
The room laughs around us.
“We would’ve been in and out but this prick went and fell in love with some bartender chick and he wouldn’t let us leave,” Kai says, pulling out a smoke with his teeth from the pack in his inside pocket and lighting it with the flick of a silver lighter.
“Fucking stalker,” he adds on his inhale.
The table chuckles as he blows out a steady plume of smoke.
“So if you’re gonna blame anyone, blame him for tripping over his own dick. ”
Wolfe looks at me for a long moment, stroking the scruff along his jaw and leaning back in his seat.
“It couldn’t be helped,” I grit out. “Fucking woman bewitched me.”
Wolfe is a beast of a man and serious as all hell most of the time, so when he smirks, even in the slightest, you just know he’s gonna fuck with you.
“You expect me to believe a woman put a spell on you?” he asks.
“Magic tits?” Robby J jokes from his end of the table.
“Christ … her tits, ass, ohhh that fucking ass,” Kai says, mimicking taking a big bite of her ass with a sort of growl that would have me cock-punching him if I was sitting next to him. My fist hits the table.
“Shut the fuck up,” I say to Kai, instantly shutting him up.
I’m the only one at the table not laughing over his actions. The moment they all realize I’m actually serious, the laughter stops.
I shake my head. “Talk about Layla like that ever again, and your ass-eating days will be over. You’ll be eating through a fucking tube.”
Kai takes another drag on his smoke. “Fuck man, I was only joking. Are you actually gonna see this chick again?”
“Holy fuck, now I want to know what she looks like,” Flip says from the end of the table. Another chorus of laughter.
I turn to face him. “You might be old, but I’ll still fucking beat the shit outta you,” I warn him, and I’m only half joking.
The idea of anyone looking at Layla besides me is causing my blood to boil, and Christ, I may not understand the chokehold this woman has me in, but I will figure it out—and until then, they won’t talk about her like that again.
I need more time to solve this.
“When I bring her around here,” I add. “All of you will fucking behave.” I look around the table.