21. Rex #2
Nyx’s mouth gaped, Link had eyes rounder than a silver dollar, Steel had dropped his deck of fucking cards, and Sin looked as if he’d shit a brick. Even Mav was surprised, and that took a lot.
In the background, I heard the roar of engines, the screech of brakes, and when silence fell outside, I knew most, if not all, of the men were here.
“We should head on out,” I mumbled.
Nyx scrubbed a hand over his face. “That toxic cunt is your half-sister?”
“She is.”
“Jesus,” Link rumbled, his fingers tugging on his rosary as if that’d give us divine assistance in making sense of the nonsensical.
Steel frowned. “When?”
“You remember when Mom had that miscarriage? Then.”
“Not like Bear to give up,” Sin remarked.
“No, it wasn’t. But she was…” For a second, I stumbled over my words before I realized I didn’t have to.
I wasn’t about to excuse what my old man had done.
My woman had been more of a wreck, for nearly twenty fucking years, but that hadn’t changed anything for me.
“He fucked up.”
“Now we’re paying for that mistake,” Nyx said grimly.
I dipped my chin. “She’s on a short leash.”
“Why?”
I turned to Link. “If all the recent BS wasn’t enough… Storm told me some shit about what happened with her.” My mouth tightened. “Not my story to tell, but let’s just say he didn’t sleep with her out of choice.”
Sin’s eyes bugged. “You’re saying she raped him?”
“Storm wasn’t comfortable phrasing it that way but I am.”
“Then why the fuck don’t we get rid of her?” Nyx demanded.
My hands balled into fists at my sides.
I owed the woman no loyalty, but Dad’s letter ran on repeat in my head.
Maybe you could help set her up somewhere, get her a house, do something to make her stop whoring herself out. I don’t know if she’d even want that. The MC means something to her so maybe she’ll refuse, but try?
“We’ll discuss this later,” I said gruffly, uncertain of what to say or fucking do.
Dad’s request went to war with what I knew about the woman.
Getting to my feet, my council’s words in my head of the recent malcontent in the club—something I’d seen for myself—at a loss over how to handle the Kendra situation when instinct told me to shove her out on her ass quicker than she could count to ten, I strode out the door and over to the bar.
Five times bigger than the last one, it fit every single brother. There were still remnants of the pink Rach had told me about that were a leftover of a Posse punishment, but it was scuffed around the edges.
A quick glance and a rough head count keyed me into the fact that every brother was here.
There were a lot of relieved faces, some pissed ones, some gloomy ones.
I didn’t catch anyone’s eye, just headed over to the pool table and leaned against it. Around me, my council lined up at my side. I didn’t need their support, but fuck, it felt good to have it.
In California, I’d been kinda naked. It had felt freeing not to have the weight of the MC on my shoulders, but it had also been weird not to have these dipshits at my back.
I scratched my chin as a low murmur set up around the room, one that had Nyx roaring, “Shut your motherfucking traps.”
My lips curved when there was immediate silence.
On the ride to Jersey, I’d had nothing else to do but think about what to say when my brothers were in front of me, so I pieced all of that together.
“A long time ago, a wise man once told me that the Sinners were more than just a Motorcycle Club—they were family. Families celebrate each other’s wins; they mourn each other’s losses. That man, as I’m sure you can figure out, was my father.
“Bear meant something to all of us. You either served under him or knew to respect him as the Sinners’ OG Prez. You feared him or you steered clear of him. Whichever, Bear was Bear. He was a great man. Not perfect. Made plenty of mistakes, and he died for them.
“A death in the family makes you think about life. Makes you think about where shit went wrong, where it went right. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to think about the Sinners, and I’ve realized that my biggest concern is losing any one of you to jail or to the undertaker.
“In some ways, we’re turning legit, but those legit fronts are ways to launder cash from our main sources of income. We’re one-percenters, there’s no breaking free of that, nor do I want to. Federal law ain’t my law, and it ain’t your law neither.
“Over the next couple years, I’ve decided that we’re going to increase our numbers. Now, that’ll mean your cut’s going to change to account for this expansion, but with the way we’ve diversified, I doubt you’ll see much difference.
“The reason I want to do this is because as brothers get older, as Old Ladies are branded and kids are born, I want those family men to shuffle out of the line of danger.
“Those at high risk will get danger pay. Their cuts will be better. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that my father said the Sinners were a family but he didn’t adjust shit to encompass that.”
There were a couple of murmurs at that, but as I looked around the room, I saw some pleased expressions as well as some angry ones.
“Unfortunately for you, what I say, goes. The only right you have is to leave, and you know full well that leaving the Sinners ain’t easy. If you don’t like the sound of what I’m planning for the MC, then you can bitch about it among yourselves, and you can speak about it with one of my councilors.
“But truth is, brothers, I don’t give a fuck about your opinions on this. I give a fuck about your kids. Your women. I give a fuck about the next generation, because they are what count. You don’t like it, then you shoulda wrapped it up.
“We’ve been living like we’re in a frat house for too long, and that’s about to change. You’ve had years of that, and to be sure, some of that’s gonna go down still, but there are gonna be more family occasions. Because the next gen is everything. It always was; I was just late in seeing that.
“In my defense, I took over the role of Prez too early. Dad shouldn’t have passed down the mantel to me for at least a decade, but he did. I made choices that were a young man’s, and now, I’m older. Wiser—”
“What if we don’t want to take pay cuts? What if we want to take part in runs?”
Unsurprised that Lever was the prick loud enough to mouth off, I shrugged. “You don’t have kids, Lever, so what the fuck are you worried about?”
His brow furrowed. “What you’re saying is that the second we have kids, that’s when our roles in the MC will change?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Murmurs spread among the crowd.
“You just wanna teach ‘em Sex Ed, don’t you?” Sin muttered in my ear, making me grin.
“Yeah. Do I need to bring out bananas and rubbers?” I mocked, smirking when he snickered.
“Some of our Old Ladies would prefer us to risk our asses to get the danger pay,” Two Knives called out, which had a lot of brothers hooting.
“Don’t blame your Old Lady either. Not with feet like yours stinking up the place,” Junk groused.
“You sniff his feet a lot?” Lever mocked.
Junk retorted, “You can smell his fucking feet up in Maine.”
“Fuck off, Junk,” Two Knives grumbled. “I got those goddamn sachets you told me to buy for my boots.”
Unsurprised that shit had gotten waylaid, I rolled my eyes. “Can we get things back on track?”
Junk sniffed. “You trying to tell me that Two Knives’ feet don’t stink, Prez?”
“I ain’t saying nothing about his feet. I just want to make sure he keeps stinking out the clubhouse and not a prison cell, you get me?”
Junk shrugged. “I get you.”
“Look, it’s simple. You got kids, your role in the MC is going to change big time. You only got an Old Lady, that’ll be considered when the council shares out jobs that are high risk. You make the decision to settle down, not me. I’m just thinking of the future.”
“Why does it matter?” Lever derided. “I like things how they are now.”
“Rex is right,” Nyx rumbled, his glower dark enough that Lever’s shoulders hunched in on themselves.
“Half of us here grew up with our fathers going to jail for at least one stint. Some of them died; some of them were pieces of shit who we wished were dead. The only thing that got most kids through was the club.”
“And that’s the take from all this, brothers. The club is everything. It’s our past, our present, and our future. I’m just the guardian for this generation, but there’ll come a day when I’m buried in the backyard, much as you fuckers will be too, and it’s them who’ll rule the roost.
“For them, I’m going to make sure we have fat pockets, and that they have power in this town, enough to keep our people safe for many decades to come—”
“And if that ain’t something worth celebrating, I don’t know what the fuck is!” Link hollered, whooping and amping the crowd up until even the naysayers were cheering in my favor.
It wouldn’t last.
We’d get complaints.
But it was time to grow up. I didn’t have my dad to fall back on anymore. Neither did they.
Real or imagined, the safety net was gone.
The future was laid out there, terrifying in its complexity, but all I fucking knew was that I’d spent two decades apart from Rachel, and I wasn’t about to compound that by wasting any time I had left in a jail cell or by ending up six feet under prematurely.
I had a life left to live, and so did the rest of my council.
I wasn’t about to do anything to cut that short.