Chapter 2
Otto
I was swaying. I knew it. I felt it. But I couldn’t seem to hold myself steady.
“You better go puke,” my cousin Brody advised me cheerfully, throwing his hand around my shoulders. “If you pass out you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“It’s my party,” I replied, leaning heavily against him. “I can pass out if I want to.”
Brody laughed and shoved me away a little so he could grip me by the shoulders and look closely at my face. “You’ll do. How’s the back?”
“Burns like the worst sunburn I’ve ever had,” I mumbled.
He grinned. “Give it a couple days and you’ll forget it’s there.”
“I highly fuckin’ doubt that,” I scoffed.
The massive tattoo that covered me from ass crack to the base of my neck was one of the reasons why I’d gotten so hammered.
It hadn’t hurt badly while it was being done, I’d had worse scratches given to me during sex, but a few hours after I was done the soreness had begun to grate on my nerves.
I couldn’t make even the slightest movement without feeling the scratch of my T-shirt rubbing against it.
“Quit bitchin’,” my brother Rumi ordered loudly as he strode toward us. “We’ve all got one.”
“Pretty sure you whined for a month,” Nova pointed out, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Nova, can you rub this ointment on my back please? It stings.”
“Sugar, I just wanted your hands on me,” he replied with a chuckle. “By the third day you can barely feel it.”
Nova scowled.
“You just need to find a woman who’ll grease you up,” Rumi told me.
“No women,” I said, shaking my head. Oh, shit, I’d better not do that again or I was going to end up on my ass. My head was already beginning to throb.
“There’s a few around here,” Brody joked, looking around the room. “Want me to find you one?”
“Make sure none of us are related to her or fucked her already,” Rumi joked.
“Who else have you fucked?” Nova spat incredulously. Then she was looking around the room, too.
“No one, baby,” Rumi murmured. “But Brody gets around.”
“I’m not fuckin’ anyone,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above their bickering. “Mom is here. Jesus.”
“You’re the third son to get patched in. Mom has mastered the art of turning a blind eye,” Rumi joked. “She’ll probably leave soon so she doesn’t have to see the debauchery.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” my mom called from halfway across the room.
“How the fuck did you hear that?” Rumi called back.
“If you were trying to be quiet, you failed, son.”
“We’re just tryin’ to get poor Otto laid, Ma,” Rumi said innocently.
“You leave my baby boy alone,” she said with a laugh. “He doesn’t need you corrupting him.”
“Ah yes,” Rumi said snarkily. “He is clearly as pure as the driven snow.”
Eventually my brother and Nova walked away and Brody got called into an argument so I was left alone again to wander around the room.
Everyone was celebrating and I was the main attraction.
It reminded me of the birthday parties we’d have as kids when all eyes were on me, asking if I was having fun, singling me out, getting me whatever I wanted.
Growing up in a family of five kids, I’d fucking loved my birthday.
I wasn’t as interested in the attention as an adult.
“Who woulda guessed the little bruiser who broke every toy he was given would grow up to be one of my best mechanics and join the club,” our president Dragon joked as I stepped up next to him at the bar. “How ya doin’, kid? Havin’ fun?”
“Glad I won’t be bartendin’ or cleanin’ the bathrooms tonight,” I replied, laughing as he gave me a shove.
“You’ll do what’s asked of you and shut your trap,” he said gruffly, but he was almost smiling. “Bein’ a prospect sucks, but there’s a point to it. Gotta know if you’re willin’ to take the jobs no one else wants. Follow orders. Put the club before yourself.”
“I’ll do all that,” I confirmed.
“Never doubted it.” Dragon picked up his whiskey and turned to face the crowd. “You boys, you’re all born into it. You know what’s expected of you before your first day—the others, not so much.”
“Wanker’s a good guy,” I said, following his gaze toward a prospect who was getting fucked with across the room. My dad and a couple other guys were clearly giving him shit about something, but the guy was holding his own.
“Seems to be,” Dragon confirmed. “We’ll see.”
“He was stoked that he wasn’t goin’ to be on the gate tonight,” I said, laughing as my dad stuck his foot out to trip Wanker. “He’s probably regrettin’ that now.”
“I can’t for the life of me remember that kid’s real name,” Dragon muttered, watching Wanker like he was an insect under a microscope.
“It’s Cian,” I replied.
“Cian,” Dragon repeated. His lips tipped upward a little. “The accent is enough for me to keep him straight from the other two, but fuck if I can remember their names.”
“His parents were Irish,” I said helpfully.
“I’m aware,” he said dryly. “The accent is familiar.”
I coughed in embarrassment. Yeah, obviously he recognized the accent. The old vice president—and his father-in-law—never lost his Irish accent even after a lifetime in America.
“Look around the room,” Dragon said after a few moments. “Most of these people were your family before, but they’re all family now. You were one of the protected before.” He looked at me. “Now you do the protectin’.”
“Understood.”
“Though, you’ve been doin’ that a while, yeah?”
I nodded in understanding. A few years before, I’d killed a man who’d threatened my sister-in-law Emilia.
I hadn’t meant to kill him, just knock him out before he could shoot her, but he’d died anyway.
It was something that I knew no one outside the club would ever know about, a secret that I could be confident would never see the light of day.
“It’s a hard life,” Dragon said, watching as his wife laughed at something my aunt Farrah said. “But a damn good one.”
I cleared my throat.
“Got shit we need to go over on Monday,” he said, looking back at me. “But it can wait. Grab another drink and go find a woman.”
“I’ll get the drink,” I said, turning toward the bar. Dragon huffed and slapped me on the back, making the breath go out of me in a whoosh. By the time I’d inhaled again, my hands were clenched into fists and he’d walked away.
“How you doin’, baby brother?” Micky asked, grimacing as he made his way toward me. “Brace yourself for more of that shit. Swear to God I got my back slapped no less than twenty times the night I was patched in.”
“Motherfucker,” I breathed. The thought of it made me queasy.
“You’ll live,” he said, grinning at the look on my face. “Feelin’ any different with that member patch on your chest?”
“A bit,” I replied. “Glad the probation is finally over at least.”
“Yeah, I hear that.”
“Where’s Emilia?”
“She left early,” Micky replied. “Rhett’s got an ear infection so she didn’t want to leave him with Myla too long.”
“Myla was pissed she couldn’t come tonight.”
“Oh, I know.” He chuckled. “She called me and Rumi both, tryin’ to get us to sneak her in.”
“Like no one would notice a fifteen-year-old girl in this shit?” I asked, looking around the room.
The music was loud and people were everywhere.
There was a woman I didn’t recognize completely topless in the corner, dancing by herself.
Rumi and a few of our cousins were having a loud argument by the pool tables about something that probably didn’t matter in the slightest. There was a fine film of residue on one of the coffee tables where someone had been snorting lines.
I wrinkled my nose in distaste. I’d tried coke and didn’t enjoy the experience in the slightest.
“You okay?” Micky asked, lowering his voice when I reached up to push my fingertips against my forehead.
“Fine,” I assured him, dropping my hand back down.
“You know, this is pretty tame for a patch party.”
“Yeah?”
“I got Rumi strippers,” he said with a shrug. “Seemed appropriate for the little horndog.”
“Fuck, I bet he loved that.”
“He sure did.”
“Thanks for not gettin’ me strippers,” I mumbled.
“You’re not the type,” Micky replied, smiling. “You’re pretty reserved on a good day—even more so the last few months.”
I nodded. I wasn’t really sure what the response for that was. I’d never been the life of the party.
“You ever find that girl you slept with?”
I jerked in surprise and looked over at my brother. I’d mentioned to my sister-in-law Emilia that I’d slept with someone and couldn’t remember who it was but I hadn’t realized she’d talked to Micky about it.
“Can’t remember shit,” I lied, shaking my head slowly.
“You go to the clinic?”
“I’m not an idiot,” I replied with a scoff. “I went, and I’m clean.”
“Well, there’s that.”
“I wore a condom,” I muttered. “I found it in the Mustang—it’s the only reason I knew I’d fucked someone.”
“How do you not remember fuckin’ someone?” Micky asked dubiously. “Seems like it would be on the highlight reel.”
“You remember every woman you’ve fucked?” I asked defensively, then immediately snapped my mouth shut with realization.
“Yep,” Micky said in amusement. “But, you know, I’m livin’ with her. Kinda hard to forget.”
“You realize how fuckin’ weird that is, right?”
“When you’ve had the best,” he said with a shrug, his words trailing off. “Why bother lookin’ for anythin’ else?”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Once you find her, you’ll get it.”
“Probably,” I conceded, thinking of Esther. “Haven’t found her yet.”
“Maybe you have,” he replied, lips twitching with humor. “And you were too drunk to remember it.”
“Fuck you,” I grumbled, laughing.
“I mean, I doubt you were her best,” he continued, laughter in his voice. “Considerin’ you were so drunk you can’t remember it.”
“Fuck off.”
“Can’t imagine you were all that coordinated,” he mused. “Or hard.”
“I can stay hard when I’m drunk,” I snapped. “You got an issue with that? You need to talk about it, brother? Let’s unpack.”