Forty-One
D id I think today would be easier than yesterday? What a fucking idiot I’d been, for thinking that this shit would calm down. First the cops were back, minus Grease, who was still on his way back with his mafia lawyer, and then a fucking cadre of bikes turned up, and it was Reacher, and Stitch, and every fucker with an old lady.
I figured they were here to fuck with me, but when their old ladies disappeared off, I got the fucking message. This was about another effort to take Soph from me, a concerted effort to make her see sense. How many times would she give me the benefit of the doubt, before she started to believe them? Would there actually be anything not to believe? I’d fucking murdered, attacked, and tormented them, and of course she should be really sure she wanted a cunt like me. Jesus, the man who kept coming inside her to try and impregnate her. What if it worked, and then I was cast aside, unworthy to be a father to my own child? Fuck, just the thought of that was like a knife to my heart.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked Reacher tersely, as he and Stitch strode towards me, while the others lingered and poked around. I hadn’t missed the fact that Torch was with them, but short of a quick glare at me, he stayed back. Of all of them, he was the one I really wanted to fucking fix things with. We’d been literally as close as brothers until I stuck a knife in his fucking back. How the hell could I ever fix that?
“Watch your attitude, fucker,” Stitch hissed at me, as they stopped right in front of me, and I sighed.
“Look, shit’s kinda in a mess right now. If you were planning an inspection or something, you couldn’t have given me at least a week?” I gestured around me. “We’re still getting back in order after a fucking massacre, remember?”
“Yeah, and you’ve got the cops poking around, Grease got arrested, and Rossi’s pissed. Is this shitshow really the best you can do?”
I glared at Reacher, but what good would it do, really?
“You’ve given me a day, for fuck’s sake! I spent most of yesterday fending off attacks to try and fucking take the club, and now you’re here bitching that I haven’t got things up to Phoenix standard yet?”
“You found the time to add a President patch to that fucking cut though, didn’t you?” Stitch snapped, jabbing a finger at the fucking thing I hated wearing.
“Soph did it. She thought it’d help, but look, it says ‘interim’ too. We both know I’m just a fucking tool you’re using, you all made that clear. I’m doing my best, but it takes time to resurrect a club, which I know is something you both know. So… why are you really here riding me?”
Reacher smirked, turning to look over the site before speaking.
“Just checking in. The old ladies wanted to welcome your woman to the family, but yeah, Rossi is pissed, only I kinda like winding the old fart up.”
“He’s so fucking perfect, nothing ever goes wrong in his little mafia world, right? Never mind the fact that the only biker arrested this morning was one of his people,” Stitch said with a snort.
“Show us around, ‘Interim President’.” Well, that was an order from Reacher if ever I’ve heard one, so I did the tour thing, introducing them to each biker as we met up with them, and talking them through some of the ideas Grease had for improving security. I even pointed out some of the new cameras, which was as much about showing them I knew where they all were, as it was anything else.
“Maybe don’t fuck your woman in the office again though, man. Ice was spitting when he caught a few seconds of the show.” Fucking hell.
“There’s a camera in there too?”
Stitch burst out laughing.
“At what point did you think you were getting any privacy here? This is our club, remember? You’re just here to take all the heat, and do all the work. It’s your penance, and you agreed to it, so suck it up. And on that note, like I said, maybe no sucking and fucking where poor Ice has to watch, yeah?”
Jesus fuck. That bastard saw the whole fucking thing. The sixty-nine and the fucking. Worse than that? He saw my fucking woman naked, and I wanted to break his smug asshole face for that.
“Calm down, son, it’s not like he tuned in deliberately to watch you two getting it on. He was doing checks, while we were having a coffee stop on the journey. Never seen him spit a drink out so fast.”
“She’s not for his fucking eyes.”
Stitch grinned. “Nah, he prefers your sister,” then he burst out laughing, “wow, feels weird to be on the other side of that argument.”
Sophie
I t was so unnerving to be seated with the other old ladies, and to know that they were here because they felt like I had to know their stories, before I could feasibly make the right choice for love.
Tori was Ryder’s old lady, and made it clear that she’d suffered nothing personally because of Micro, except that she’d watched the other old ladies going through it. She was fierce, but quietly spoken, and I had a feeling that she would be just as deadly as any of the bikers, but she mostly remained quiet after saying her piece. Cammy, old lady to the VP, Stitch, also said that she’d had very little in the way of interactions with Micro, except that she’d found him unpleasantly predatory at times. Even hearing someone say that about him hurt me, because it was still a judgement about the man I loved, and portrayed this monstrous person they’d known, that I had a feeling I’d never meet. That was probably a good thing, to be honest.
The women all deferred to Ally, as the President’s old lady, and she was the one who seemed the most earnest and concerned.
“I know that you love him, and I can’t question that, because we’ve all fallen for men others might deem risky or dangerous, but at the centre of each of them, there’s so much depth and warmth, and heart. I just don’t see that with Micro, and I’m sorry to say that, but a man who can literally drive a car into a person, to try and kill them, isn’t someone I can see as redeemable in any way.” My god. I never imagined I’d have such conversations with those he hurt the most, but I should have seen it coming, shouldn’t I?
“That’s what he did to you?”
Ally nodded grimly. “I’m still not walking like I did before, and I may never be the same as I was, but whether Micro was aiming for me, or for Reacher, he intended to kill one of us. Or both. That was a decision he made, one he planned. It wasn’t spur of the moment. It just couldn’t have been.”
I twisted my fingers together in my lap, my heart thudding painfully in my chest at her words. It wasn’t that she was making me doubt him, not at all. She was making me doubt me . My own judgement, and decisions. My ability to read a person, and see the right thing in him. What if he really was bad, but I just couldn’t see it, because I was blinded by love? What if I just made bad decisions, because hadn’t I been trapped into making drugs for a biker club, because I picked the wrong man once before?
“We’re not trying to hurt you, or scare you,” Lissa said, leaning over from beside me, to squeeze my hands, “I’m actually very invested in getting to know my half brother better, and to see if there’s any chance of helping him with everything he’s been through, but he did attack me too, and that was terrifying. He trapped me at my therapy office, and I really thought he’d kill me. I mean, at the time, I honestly thought I was done for. Even though we’d barely spoken before, and I had my panic button there, somehow I just knew he’d made that decision before he even voiced it.”
His own sister. I didn’t even know if he’d known that when he cornered her, but either way, I could see how terrified she’d have been.
“If Grace hadn’t shown up when she did, I really don’t know how things would have gone, but that’s how we all found out that he was the one who’d terrorised the club for so long.”
Grace didn’t speak, just offered a shy smile when she was mentioned, but the youngest one, the blonde girl, Elise, spoke up next.
“He kidnapped me twice, but I’m sure you know this by now. He tore my clothes off, and he… he…” she swallowed hard, “he jerked off over me. He threatened to rape me, and kill me.”
I felt tears burning my eyes, as I saw one trickle down her cheek, and Cammy wrapped an arm around her.
“In my nightmares, sometimes he doesn’t just threaten those things. Sometimes he follows through on those threats, and he takes things from me that I never wanted him to have.” Elise covered her face with both hands, sobbing quietly, and I saw her man, Has-Been, approaching rapidly from the left of us.
“Baby,” he murmured, lifting her and sitting down with her in his lap, holding her against his chest as she cried. His eyes, when he lifted his head to look at me, were tormented.
“ This . This is what he did. This is what he does . You keep thinking he’s a man, but he’s not. He’s a monster . You’ve heard how leopards don’t change their spots, and it’s true. Delude yourself all you want, but he doesn’t deserve to live, and if the choice had been mine, he wouldn’t still be breathing.” He got up and carried Elise away with him.
We fell silent after Has-Been’s bombshell, and I saw several sympathetic faces staring back at me as I tried to absorb everything they’d said.
“I know this probably feels like some kind of character assassination or something, but you seem like you’ve met a different version of the man we all knew, and it seems like you need all the information before you can make an informed choice. Has wasn’t wrong. It’s rare for people to change, especially enough for them to redeem themselves after horrific acts. For many of us, he’ll always be the monster under the bed, but for you, maybe he’s something very different. Just please be careful, and always call us for help, if he starts to turn nasty on you. You have family now in us, and we’ve got your back,” Ally said, casting her eyes around to find her man.
Most of their men were back out in the yard now, talking to my man. Micro . The man they’d all just warned me about, yet again. I’d promised him I wouldn’t change my mind about him, but I still didn’t know if that was because I was making poor decisions, or if it was because I had met someone other than the man they’d known. Just like their men seemed to be laser focused on their old ladies, I could sense Micro’s eyes on me, and when I turned fully to look at him, he offered me that lopsided smile of his, and I made a decision that could either help, or completely fuck up everything. I waved him over.