Chapter 2
Gunner
I have the door to my room at the clubhouse shut tightly, but that doesn’t stop Tyrant from busting his way in. He stands in the doorway, surveying the neat triage kit I’ve spread out over the bed. If you don’t count the scars on his face and his missing finger—both compliments of his daddy dearest—he’d be a sun bronzed, golden streaked, tousled hair, green eyed god of a poster child for modeling underwear or some shit.
Other than his tattoos, which cover most of his body, Tyrant looks more like a high school quarterback than a biker, He’s got the size of his father, but at thirty-one, he’s just now growing fully into those broad shoulders and getting bulkier muscle.
Gray is Gray to his old lady, his best friend, and anyone else who wants to call him by his name. He’ll always be Tyrant to me, even though that name couldn’t be further from his character.
It’s fitting that Tyrant’s best friend and virtual brother, Raiden Gardener, is our VP now. They’ve known each other since kindergarten and belong together as a pair.
I occupied the position for five hot seconds, and grudgingly at that. I was more than happy to move out of. I don’t like men looking to me for guidance or any sort of wisdom unless that instruction is about weapons. I took the position because at the time, there was a lack of scary motherfuckers who could have their arm twisted. But I’d much rather remain amongst the shadows, virtually invisible.
How’d that work out for you tonight, dumbass?
Tyrant’s light green eyes survey the bandages, ointment, gauze, disinfectant, and suturing supplies. “I followed the trail of blood in here.”
“Alas, that’s why you deemed knocking to be pointless.”
“Thought you might be bleeding out and in need of real help. If the door isn’t locked…”
I know what he’s really asking. What the fuck kind of trouble did I get into tonight and is it going to land straight on the club’s doorstep?
“I went for a hike and fell.”
“A hike.” He doesn’t have to say it. All dressed in black, wearing shit kickers, in the dead of night? Where? Unless you drive past Seattle, there aren’t any mountains.
“Fine. It was more of a walk. To clear my head.”
I’ve already cleaned the wound. It’s deep enough to need stitches, an ugly channel carved across my forearm. No wonder it bled like a motherfucker.
My Prez crosses his arms. “Most of the guys are scared shitless of you. They think you’re a psychopath or a sociopath.”
I get the gist of that. My club president probably thinks I’m up to some shady kind of shit. I guess I was, but he doesn’t need to know that. What I’ve been doing in my private time doesn’t impact the club.
I choose to ignore his comment, and instead pick up the needle and thread. I’m going to have to sew with my left hand, but it’s important in any line of work to be somewhat ambidextrous. I’m not worried about the scars, just bursting open the stitches later because I did such a shit job.
Tyrant is one of those men that feels the need to fill silence. “We let you join this club, same as anyone else, my father used to believe that every man deserved a chance. Zale used to be a good man and he took what my grandfather built and made us a real brotherhood with a clubhouse and a means to survive in the world. He solidified this club as a family.”
And then he betrayed it.
Zale Grand is in prison now. He confessed to arson, theft, and took responsibility for several murders. He’s going to be in for life. He made his choice. He put some of his own club brothers in prison because he thought they were going to try and overthrow him as Prez. When the guys discovered what he’d done, they took a secret vote. No president who could set up his own men was a president worth having. Tyrant was supposed to put his father to ground, but instead, he let him go. A mistake that nearly cost him his life. When his father resurfaced, it was nearly the end of Satan’s Angels. It ended up with a standoff at some shit motel on the edge of town after he kidnapped his own daughter. He had two options. Death for real this time or turn himself in and take responsibility for the dead body mess he’d left behind during the kidnapping so that our club didn’t have to.
That’s the thing about men at the top. If they were good to start, that’s not how they finish. Most wind up dead in various ways, good or bad. There’s not much in between in the industries I’ve circled. Power gets to a man and starts having its way with him instead of the man mastering it. So far Tyrant treads the line as a man of his word, I hope that’s how he’s gonna stay.
Tyrant’s voice softens. “I was trying to say that I don’t care what’s going on with you personally, but we keep the peace in this town. We aren’t here to cause fear, and we don’t bring trouble to our backyard. If there’s something that I need to know about because it affects these men who trust me to safeguard them and their families…”
His eyes fall to the wound. I’m trying my best to tune him the fuck out while I concentrate on not making a mess out of my own flesh.
“Christ, are you using numbing spray on that?”
I snort. Does that even deserve a response? It’s not like I’m sewing my own intestines back in.
“Gunner?”
“No, boss. I’m not. And it was just a walk , I tripped and fell. That’s it.”
He rakes a hand through his shoulder length hair and sighs. “I’m your Prez, but that doesn’t make me above anything or anyone.” Translation—don’t fucking call me boss.
Tyrant will never be his father, I can say that. He’s good shit and I don’t want to give him a hard time or make him worry.
In my past life, I became conditioned to survive. You controlled your face or it got you killed. You carried out orders. You obeyed. You lost the fear of dying. You learned there was nothing you couldn’t stomach. I’ve been living that way for most of my life. I’m thirty-four, but I feel like an old man.
My Prez’s eyes trace my bare skin where I have my sleeve rolled up. No one in this club has seen me without a shirt off and most of the time, I’m in a Henley or long sleeves. I have tattoos where my skin could be tattooed, but a large portion of my chest and arms are twisted, mangled flesh. I pulled my old Don out of a fiery wreck and got myself a nice promotion for my troubles and scars.
“For fuck’s sake, man. Wait.” He snatches a pair of black nitrile gloves from the medical kit and snaps them on. “Let me do that before you look like Frankenstein.”
“The monster, you mean. That bastard was the doctor. I think I might already be beyond redemption in the beast area.”
He chuckles. “You might scare the shit out of other people, but you’re a true brother, you feel me?”
I’m not sure if Tyrant’s stitched anything before, let alone human flesh. He hesitates. I’m an asshole, sure, but I do have a sense of humor somewhere. I load an instructional video for him on my cellphone.
“Have at it, boss.”
He shakes his head, but he does start, gaze flicking from the video and back down to my arm. This would be far easier if I did it myself, crooked as fuck or not.
“There isn’t a man here who doubts that you’d die for any one of us. We have your back.”
“I don’t need help.” I don’t need anything but a place to hide and live. This is good cover.
Fuck, maybe it’s more.
I couldn’t help myself five years ago and I’m not much for resistance now.
After leaving my criminal family behind, and fleeing the country, stalking the woman I’d saved and become obsessed with her like a pathetic fucking douchebag, I gravitated naturally to wanting that same connection.
I was here for a few months, watching over Diletta from a distance, before I couldn’t stand it anymore. The town didn’t have much crime because there was a motorcycle club that had eradicated most of it in favor of a monopoly of their own. That kind of club attracted certain kinds of men, and I had the skillset to be one of them.
When I first started hanging around the club, I was like a shadow. I did that for a few weeks, making it obvious what I wanted, before I hounded anyone and everyone here about prospecting. Honestly, at first Zale Grand didn’t like the look of me and said as much without holding anything back, but when I was insistent, he finally gave in.
Said I was trouble, but the loyal kind, and you couldn’t beat that. I proved that loyalty, time and again during that year I prospected, by taking the jobs the other guys wanted and getting them done better than anyone else ever could. I was quiet and most of the guys thought I was weird, but I could be trusted to get my hands dirty. I could take a beating or hand one out. I could pull guard duty for a week in a row without sleeping. I didn’t mind dealing with prospective buyers and I had good intel on where decent weapons could be sourced. It was clear I had a past, but like most men in the club, it was forgotten when I patched in. From that day, I was a brother of the club, nothing more and nothing less. I’ve found a place for myself in this town, I own the tattoo parlor which gives me some income—I bought it with the money Luciano gave me as thanks for saving his daughter—I’m not an artist, I hire guys for that, but in the five and a half years I’ve been in Hart the club has been my life.
The only trouble I’ve brought to this club is my own stupidity. After years, I’ve fucked this up. It’s ironic, in a way, that Tyrant is the one stitching me up when Diletta was a nurse. I close my eyes and imagine her soft hands, even though I don’t want to. She’s not for me.
Never. For. Me.
My mind conjures her touch anyway. Gentle fingertips tracing down my arm, her other hand bracing it from below. She’d look at the scars questioningly. Trace a few of them up to where the flesh really gets mangled.
Take your shirt off. Let me see.
I hate being touched. I hate people looking at me. Diletta is so beautiful. Pure. Kind. I’d do it for her, just to scare her away from the monster. Beauty and the fucking token beast. But she wouldn’t look away. She’d breathe out in horror and in broken pity and I’d hate that, but then her soft lips would kiss the long-healed wounds and the anguish and anxiety would vanish.
You’ll always be beautiful to me.
My little fantasy plays out in my head, and I give a snort of laughter, jerking my arm so the needle goes wonky. Tyrant stops abruptly, green eyes tracing my face.
This man is our president for a reason. He’s smart. Wise. Has this fucking well of kindness that most people lack and that doesn’t make him a pussy. He’s not afraid of staring right into your soul and drawing you out. He’s not scared in the least of doing it to me right now, whereas most men would shit themselves.
Most men who looked at me that way, questioning me, searching for answers I don’t want to give would get their eyes gouged out and fed to them.
Tyrant goes back to stitching. He finishes up and claps me on the shoulder, far more affectionately than I can usually stand. My skin doesn’t even crawl. I’m too distracted trying to figure out how the fuck I’m going to fix what I did tonight.
How am I supposed to keep watch now that I have nowhere to do that properly?
Finding a new spot isn’t the only choice I have.
I’ve followed her before.
I’m not stalking her. I’m not some fucking asshole.
Tonight, I scared her, and that’s unforgivable. I need to stop.
Tyrant walks to the door in a way that says he’s going to give me the benefit of the doubt about this shit. I should let him go. I blurt out the dumbest thing instead. “Can your old lady cook?”
He crosses his arms and leans causally against the doorframe. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. I’ve rarely asked for anything from anyone. “I suppose she can.”
“I’ll take guard duty or check in duty on the warehouses all next week if she can make a lasagna. I’d even… watch the prospects… or some shit.”
He raises a brow, but grins wide, proving his goodness once again. “I can ask her, but why not just order it in? There are a few good places here.”
Why indeed? I didn’t even think of that. More stupidity in less than an hour. I’d barely know where to find something like that. I eat because my body needs food, not because I care how it tastes. I’m like that with sleep too. I don’t do it unless I have to. I’m not haunted. I’m just always going to be a soldier and soldiers aren’t men. They’re weapons.
“Never mind,” he murmurs. “I’m sure Lark would be happy to. I don’t want you on guard duty, though. We’re homeschooling Penny right now so we can properly watch her with all that’s happened, but come fall, we want to send her to school. I’d like you to take her and pick her up.”
I gape at him. Why the fuck would this man trust me with a child, let alone his child ?
“We might not be in lockdown anymore, and things might be settled with the Berserkers, but I want someone with experience watching my daughter.”
Yeah, that’s not exactly an explanation. Or, maybe it is, when it comes to men like us.
My old boss wouldn’t have asked. He would have just delegated and expected his word to be law. Tyrant is giving me the option. Christ. His daughter is five and a half. A sweeter kid couldn’t exist. She’s so tiny. It makes my throat close up with unexpected fear and honor and I’m unexpectedly moved.
“I’ll guard her with my life.” Token words, but true to the heart of me.
He nods, his grin growing wider. “She can be a handful. I’d like you to get to know her ahead of time so that she’s okay with you around. Lark will be with her too, of course. It won’t just be you. I don’t want Penny to be afraid of any of my brothers.”
“Is this for Penny to trust me or Lark?”
He shrugs, a dead tell that he hasn’t even asked Lark about this yet. I expect him to meet heavy resistance, but in the end, she’ll cave because she trusts his judgment, even if she’s not happy about it.
“Your old lady and Ella are close now. Neither of them like me.” Ella is Tyrant’s sister, well, half-sister. Zale sent her to our club as part of the truce, while the truce was bullshit, the arranged marriage between her and our VP turned out to be a good match.
“That’s not true. You saved both their lives.”
“By slaughtering a bunch of Berserkers right in front of them. They aren’t going to wash that day from behind their eyeballs anytime soon, lifesaving or not.”
I get busy with my hands, gathering up the medical supplies and tucking them back into the box.
“Ella’s seen worse, and Lark’s starting to understand this life. They were both raised in very different ways, but they’re not judgmental and they sure as fuck won’t hold it against you that you saved them. You weren’t the only one that killed those men that day. Ella took a fair share of them out.”
He’s right. His half-sister had it mostly under control. She’s great with guns. Smoke came from her old club, and he’s bonded with Bullet over this past year, but nothing like Ella has. She came to us as Widow, a name her father’s club gave her. After everything settled, she told us she hated it. So it’s Ella now, or sometimes Professor. She’s a badass biker babe through and through—even if she’s finishing up her PhD and will probably be teaching college level English come fall. You can’t throw people in a box. I get that. But Tyrant’s old lady is a princess. She’s Raiden’s baby sister and she was raised the way he was. Ultra. Conservative. Things might be different now and she might be learning the ways of bikers and have a love for this club because of Tyrant and her brother, and she might not be judgmental or terrible, but she’s still tender. Sweet and innocent.
Like Diletta.
We shouldn’t rub up against each other.
I have a momentary heart attack thinking about Penny possibly attending the school Diletta teaches at. Even if she wouldn’t be her teacher, dropping Penny off and picking her up would be out of the question, but there are plenty of schools in Hart, most of them closer to the clubhouse, where Tyrant and Lark and Penny are living right now because their house was burned down by Zale and his Berserker cronies.
I’ll recommend against the one Diletta works at if Tyrant or Lark even consider it. Both sides of my life can stay separate.
“You can take time to think about it and let me know. The lasagna is on the house, either way.”
I snap the medical kit shut, clicking the latches into place, and give a single nod of affirmation.
Tyrant isn’t done with me yet. The fucker is far too sage. “Gunner?”
My head snaps up.
“You bleed like everyone else does, yeah?”
I glance at my arm, at the droplets on the floor. “Looks red to me,” I mumble after a pause.
He nods and then he’s gone. He closes the door behind him again. I can hear his steps retreating down the hall, past the other members’ rooms. His and Raiden’s are on the opposite side of the old warehouse Zale had converted. The place is huge and as Prez and VP, they get the largest rooms with ensuite bathrooms.
I never had to move out after I gave the VP position over. I was always fine with my small room down here. There are a few rooms left empty, a few saved just for families should they need them in times of crisis, but most of the other smaller ones are taken. Even if guys have a house in town or on the outskirts, they have a room saved for them here too unless they specifically say they don’t want it.
I stare at the line of stitches in my arm. Should have just fucking crazy glued it together. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.
It’s the general consensus here that I don’t feel a thing, but I do, and he knows it. I’m just built differently than most people, and then my life did the rest for me. I feel, but I don’t let it through. I don’t let it show. I can’t… relate and even if I could, the stone-cold borderline psychopath act is too good a cover to blow.
In the past, filtering shit out kept me sane and being a scary motherfucker kept me alive.
Old habits don’t get a chance to die when you’re still living your past.