Chapter Nine
Micah
T he funk that Tadhg fell into after the incident with his asshole ‘coworkers’ has been concerning to say the least. He doesn’t want to talk to me any more than he has to. Any opening I saw to talk about his life has been completely shuttered, and we suddenly feel like two strangers sharing an apartment.
At first, he just slept. He’d been sleeping like the dead, which worked for me because his body still has a lot of healing to do. But the past two or three days, I don’t think he’s been sleeping at all. He’s trying to hide it from me, but I can tell.
He’s jittery and on edge. His hands twitch a little, and he’s constantly consumed by some sort of dark, introspective cloud that he refuses to let either of us acknowledge.
I’d be worried about withdrawal, but I’ve been so careful with all the meds I’ve doled out, and he’s had the lowest possible doses of painkillers. Unless he had something he was hiding from me. But I know the signs of every street drug there is, and nothing about his behavior before gave me an indication that he was under the influence.
It doesn’t make sense. But it’s got my stomach twisted in knots with worry. The more his body heals, the worse his mental state seems to get, and the farther out of reach my brother is. If he heals much more, he won’t need to be here anymore, and I may lose him for good.
Unacceptable.
What’s also not helping is that I’m completely out of PTO, as well as the good graces of my department head. I have to go back to work, which means leaving Tadhg unattended to do god-knows-what. Even if it’s just stewing in his own abstract misery, it’s not a good idea.
But I’m out of options. Not only has my PTO dwindled to nothing, there’s a bad flu going around the hospital, which has left them in a staffing nightmare, needing emergency coverage. When I get off the phone call where I was just informed it’s time to get my ass back to work tonight or find a new job, I walk out of my bedroom to let him know. But instead of finding him sprawled on the couch in a semi-catatonic daze, or sitting up and staring at the wall, fidgeting and anxious, he’s… dressed?
Sort of. He’s trying. And there’s another fucking mafia moron in my living room.
At least this time it’s Colm, who is the only one of them who doesn’t give me the ick. They turn and stare at me as if I’m the one invading their space, and I’m stuck watching Tadhg attempt to get a plain black t-shirt over his head with fumbling fingers.
Colm doesn’t help him, and I want to offer, but I know it wouldn’t go down well. He might if we were alone, but definitely not in front of the other Banna. Instead, we both have to stand there as Tadhg swallows down his grunts of pain and tries to stretch out muscles that are still repairing themselves.
Lifting his arms over his head must be agony. He’s already white as a sheet and sweating, but I know nothing I say will stop him.
“Going somewhere?”
I try not to sound too much like an angry sitcom housewife when I say it, but I don’t know how much I succeed.
Tadhg grunts in my direction, refusing to meet my eye when the t-shirt finally slides down over his face. When he doesn’t respond, Colm is the one to break the long, awkward silence.
“There’s a meeting. I’m driving him. Should be back in a couple of hours.”
His tone is just as gruff as the rest of them, but at least he looks me in the eye when he speaks to me.
I don’t know what to do. If I make Tadhg feel like I’m henpecking him in front of his men, he’ll withdraw even further. But there’s no way he should be up and moving around right now. Especially in a situation where he will be unwilling to show any ‘weakness’.
“Tadhg, can you help me for a second before you leave?” I’m scrambling. “I need to steal your strength for something before I go to work.”
To make my point, I raise my hand and wiggle my fingers. I’m actually a fuck-ton stronger than I look because I haul people around for a living, but I have long, elegant-looking fingers, so you wouldn’t guess it at first sight.
Colm takes the hint, thank fuck.
“I’ll be outside.”
It’s all he says before disappearing through the front door like a ghost. Is this what it’s like to have a bodyguard?
Not wasting any time, I hurry over to Tadhg and speak to him in a harsh whisper.
“You cannot do anything strenuous. Do you understand me? You’re healing, but you could still really fuck yourself up if you re-injure yourself. You shouldn’t be going to this at all, but I know telling you not to would be a waste of oxygen, so I’ll tell you this instead: sit as much as you can. No sudden movements. Absolutely no lifting, bending or twisting. And if you’re not in this apartment when I get back from my shift in the morning, I will call the fucking cops.”
Tadhg raises his eyebrows at me but stays silent.
“I’m not kidding. I’ll do it. I’m not letting Patrick undo all my hard work by having you spend the night digging graves or beating people up or whatever the fuck you do for him.”
My brother snorts, and it’s the closest thing to mirth I’ve seen from him in days.
He watches me in silence for a moment that stretches out like syrup until something in his hard eyes softens.
“Okay, Bambi. I’ll be back.”
Then he lets out a heavy sigh and ruffles my hair like a child, before turning away from me to follow Colm out the door.
I’m not sure I believe him.
Savage
My head is already throbbing when we get into the car, and it feels like there’s two inches of plexiglass in between me and the rest of the world.
And inside that plexiglass, I’m like a rat in a cage, buzzing so hard on anxiety I’m ready to chew off my own arm. I swear it wasn’t this bad last time I ran out of my meds. It felt like I had the flu: I was dizzy, nauseous and foggy-headed, as well as being kind of wound up.
This time is so much worse. Maybe because I’ve been on this one for a while, after going through fourteen different rounds of trying endless medications until my shrink eventually settled on one that she said gave me appropriate “coverage”, whatever that means. They all have their own horror-show side effects, but at least with this one I’ve been able to get up, get dressed and get through my shitty day-to-day life.
Now that it’s been taken away, I feel like my skin went with it. I’m raw and exposed to the world; one giant nerve throbbing out in the open. Which completely contradicts the plexiglass imagery, but my brain is throwing these metaphors at me faster than I can process them. When I don’t really give a fuck about the poetry of the situation.
All I want is to feel fucking normal .
Wasn’t that the point of all this in the first place? I risk my life by sneaking out to see the shrink and I fuck up my already fucked-up body with the meds so I can feel like a normal human being. Not so I can continue to eke out a meager existence until the second I skip a few days of pills and then feel like the universe is falling apart.
But here I am. Red raw, itching out of my own hollow human shell, trapped in between reality and my own twisted perception of it, and now I have to go see my father and pretend I give a fuck about Banna business.
I miss sleeping most of all. The best thing about the amitriptyline was how I slept like the dead, which is not something I’d ever experienced before. No nightmares, no fidgeting, no staring into the shadows of the room. It was such a relief after a lifetime of nights spent in terror that I was willing to accept the drug strangling whatever enthusiasm my dick had left for life, which was hardly a lot to begin with.
Maybe it’s a sign that I’m already half-checked out of this plane of existence, but I’d rather sleep well than fuck well. No question. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what it feels like to never be safe in your own home.
When Colm turns the engine off, the sudden silence in the car makes me jump so hard it startles him. Which makes sense, because who jumps at silence?
This guy, that’s who. This fucking walking wreck of a human being.
He looks at me, not bothering to hide the empathy and curiosity on his face.
“Do you want me to tell your father you’re still too injured? You got shot three times. I think the guys will understand if you need more than a week to sleep it off.”
I pull my normal bullish, aggressive expression onto my face to hide whatever reality might be leaking through my crumbling mask.
“No. I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with. I fucking hate the countryside. This whole place smells like cow shit.”
I’m saying it mostly for something to say, but it’s also true. The Banna headquarters, which were the local motorcycle club headquarters until we took over, is out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a huge converted farmhouse sitting off a rural route that runs in between two nothing towns, where hopefully even the Aryan Brotherhood won’t be able to find us.
And there’s plenty of land, which means plenty of space to store whatever guns, drugs or anything else Father is planning on shuffling through this place.
We get out of the car, and I concentrate on not flinching as the pain sears every time I try to bend or flex at the waist. At least Colm picked me up in an Escalade, so I don’t have to climb out of some low riding sedan or something. I might hurl if I had to bend that much.
Our feet get sucked into the mud with every step we take toward the main house. How are farms always muddy, even when it hasn’t rained? They’re steeped in misery, that’s how. The house is rundown and shabby, which is most likely deliberate. No one wants to attract more attention than they have to.
Everything seems normal until we get a little closer, and I hear the strangest noises. It’s almost like children crying? Or screaming? But not quite. Like some hell-dimension version of it. I see chain-link cages running along one wall of the main building and blink my eyes until the double-vision that’s been plaguing me rolls back.
I don’t think I’m hallucinating, but what the fuck? They can’t possibly be keeping kids in cages. Not even my father would do something like that, and I know firsthand how little he cares about kids’ welfare.
Colm catches my wide-eyed stare and makes a face like he stepped in something disgusting.
“I know. The fucking things stink and make a constant racket. But our deal for the property included the former club president’s old lady getting to stay here. She keeps her mouth shut and the place clean, so it’s a fair deal, but no one said anything about the side business she runs out of the house and how much fucking screaming we’d have to put up with. Padraig is already about to lose it, I swear. That woman of his—Cheryl—is the only reason he hasn’t set the little shits on fire.”
I’m sure my mouth is hanging open, but it feels like Colm and I are operating in two slightly different realities.
“But why are they in cages in the first place?”
I don’t know what else to ask. We’re moving at an excruciatingly slow pace toward the house, and this weird situation isn’t helping me concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. I still can’t let him help me when the others could come out and see at any minute. I need to present a strong front.
Colm cocks his head at me, his brow furrowed.
“Where else would she put them?”
“I thought we didn’t associate with people who sell kids? That’s Father’s only rule. What the fuck? And in cages ?”
Colm’s feet stutter to a stop and he turns to look at me, flabbergasted. Then he laughs. A hearty laugh that I’ve rarely heard from his mouth. He can barely talk, he’s laughing so hard.
“Jesus H Christ, Sav. No! They’re fucking foxes. Little yappy screaming fox things. She breeds them and sells them on Facebook as exotic pets or whatever. You know how people love that shit. Although, why anyone would want a wild animal in their home is beyond me. Humans are already enough to deal with.”
His laughter fades as he stops walking again and looks at me more closely.
“You thought that sound was kids screaming?”
“I—”
I don’t know what to say. Yes?
The connection between my physical senses and my brain has been fried until it feels like beef jerky, and only a sliver of information is getting through.
Help me, please God, don’t make me see Father like this. I just want to go back to Micah and sleep until everything makes sense again.
Instead, I shrug. “It’s weird screaming. How the fuck am I supposed to know what a fox sounds like?”
I shove him for emphasis, which makes me feel more normal for about a third of a second, until more pain tears through my side, quickly followed by a wave of nausea. It’s so bad I have to stop for a minute, taking a few rough breaths in through my gritted teeth while Colm watches me with a deliberately blank face.
After a minute, his fingers touch the small of my back. Just slightly, to get me moving forward, but discreetly enough that I don’t think anyone else would notice if they were watching.
“Come on, Sav. Padraig’s waiting. Let’s get this over with and then I’ll take you back, okay?”
One more deep breath in and out, and the nausea fades enough for me to straighten up, taking another step forward. I’ve gotten too used to lounging around Micah’s apartment wearing sweatpants and the soft cotton undershirts he Amazoned for me. Now I’m wearing the clothes Colm brought, which are just normal jeans and a t-shirt, but everything feels too tight.
The denim is rough and scratchy against my skin, everything presses in too hard over my wounds, and the whole thing is so tight I feel like it’s about to strangle the breath from my lungs.
There are too many emotions warring inside of me right now to pick any of them out, which is fine, because I have no use for any of them, anyway. All I need to do is get through today without melting into a puddle in front of Father and the others.
Colm and I stay silent for the rest of the walk. I can feel his concern, but I appreciate that he doesn’t say anything. We’ve worked together for a long enough time that he’s seen me in many of my less-controlled moments and knows what I’m really capable of. And what I’m capable of powering through.
Today is just another day on the endless, interminable trail of days that will ultimately lead to my death.
Which will be the only day in history when Father and I both get what we want.
When we get inside, everyone is sitting around a large, scarred table that fills up the main room. Father is sitting at the head of it, as expected, and the sight of him makes my entire body flush hot and cold with adrenaline. My muscles tense in preparation for… something, and the last few brain cells I had working to keep me moving seem to blue screen before diving into whatever sewer drain sits at the bottom of my shitty, desiccated frontal lobe.
When everyone sees me, they clap. A few of them stand up to pat me on the shoulder or something equally masculine, each one rocking my body forward in a way that makes my wounds throb and my stomach churn. Once again, I feel like I’m watching it all through plexiglass. I think I’m making the right noises and facial expressions in response, but I’m too braindead to know for sure.
What little mental energy I have left is trained on Father, whose attention is trained on me in return. He’s watching me from his seat. His eyes are focused, but his expression is neutral in a way that always makes me nervous, and my body continues to sing with the urge to flee this fucking situation. Just run. Arms and legs flailing like a Muppet. I don’t care, just fucking run until he can’t see me anymore.
Even if it ends with me bleeding out in a ditch in the woods.
With both hands, I mentally reach inside myself, take hold of my frayed, withered focus and yank at it until the words people are saying start to sound like words I can comprehend.
“—called everyone here, now that Savage is back on his feet, to decide what to do about the Aryans. If we want to answer this contract with a contract of our own, with an all-out war, or bide our time until we can see just how much strength they’re willing to devote to this little passion project.”
Contract?
I swallow around the lump of sand in my throat and make sure my face is contorted in its usual mask of anger and disgust.
“What contract?”
My voice comes out raspy, because it’s still fucked up from all the nasty vomit I inhaled days ago. I’m okay with that though, because it fits with the image I’m trying to present of someone you don’t want to fuck with.
Father looks at me, his eyes scanning my face for longer than they need to, until I wonder just what it is he’s looking for. I really need to sit down, but the chairs are all full and I’d rather open a fucking vein than ask someone to give up their seat for me like a cripple.
My knees start to buckle under Father’s discerning gaze, so I lock them and swallow back another wave of nausea.
“Our informant tells us that the courthouse attack wasn’t about your testimony, which makes sense. Everyone knew you weren’t going to say shit. It was just a convenient time that they knew where to find you. It turns out there’s a contract taken out on you for something else, but they couldn’t rustle up much more information than that.”
“Oh.”
It sounds stupid, but I can’t think of what else to say. The list of people who would like to see me dead now includes Father, myself, and every member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
Yippee.
Of course, Father has never said it outright. I’m just inferring from context.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” he says, like it’s a given, which it definitely isn’t. “But there’s a larger question of what to do in the meantime. Our forces are still splintered. We’ve only just established ourselves here, and it would take a long time to pick up and head back to Oklahoma, as much as I’m already sick of this goddamn hick town. It isn’t a good time to be getting into an all-out war with them over one minor attack.”
On your son, but sure. Whatever.
“At the very least,” Colm interjects in a level voice, “Sav needs to stay out of it. He’s still too injured to defend himself, and if he starts messing around with Banna business, all he’s going to do is draw more attention to our new location.”
On instinct, I bristle at the implication that I’m weak. Of course it’s true, but it didn’t need to be said out loud.
Not when I can see Eamon, his throat purple and yellow from the bruises I left him, eying me like I’m a human obstacle to his ascension in the chain of command.
Standing is making me feel lightheaded. I need to get out of here. Father is still watching me as well, and my pulse is racing.
“I can do whatever you need, Father. I’m healing.”
The words come out of my mouth like it’s muscle memory.
Some of the guys are looking at me, some at Father. But what’s worse is that some of them, including a few I don’t recognize who must be locals, are looking to Eamon. That condescending fuck.
These are my men, and they’re looking at him like he’s some kind of authority figure whose example they’re going to follow. After the way he spoke about Micah, he’s lucky he still has a fucking jaw.
The next time it happens, I’ll remove it from his face and see how many funny jokes he can spit without it.
The image of that blond fuck walking around without his lower jaw, tendrils of raw flesh hanging down, trying desperately to make his shitty, homophobic comments all while eying Micah like a piece of meat, makes me laugh.
No, not laugh, fucking giggle. I’m too on edge. I’m too full of adrenaline and my sanity is officially on a razor wire that’s tethered between my consciousness and the rest of the universe, with me dangling underneath, trying to talk myself out of letting go.
“I mean, you could also just fucking hand me over. If that’s what you want, Father. Drive me out to the woods, bring the Aryans to meet you, put me on my knees, and watch them put two bullets in my head so we can all be fucking done with this. Amirite?”
I look around, a smile on my face for the first time in days. It’s such a simple solution. It would save everybody all this trouble.
But nobody agrees with me. A couple guys are smiling like it’s a joke. Colm’s gaze is burning into me with naked concern. Eamon looks fucking smug, of all things, and Father is watching me with calculating intensity. But no one is getting that it’s an easy out.
“Seriously! Let’s say fuck the war. Give me to them and move on with our lives. Well, your lives. Who wants to have more of these fucking meetings, anyway?”
The distant sound of foxes screaming is still a horrific backdrop to my thoughts. I gesture for emphasis, but it makes me lose my balance, and I stagger, catching myself on the back of someone’s chair in front of me. Colm takes a step toward me, but I wave him off.
“What’s the fucking point in a war? I’m half-dead anyway, as you can see. Let’s fucking go. Come on, Father. If you call them now, we can have all this over with before dinner. I’m fucking…”
My words trail off, and I realize I’m slurring a little. Maybe they’ll think I’m drunk instead of so incredibly deep in withdrawal and my own insane train of thought that the world kind of looks upside-down right now.
“What?” I ask, because they’re still staring at me in silence.
The silence that fills the room is thicker and more impenetrable than the imaginary plexiglass from before.
“Father?” I ask, hating how small my voice sounds.
“I think it’s clear that your injuries need more time to heal, Savage. You’re no use to us like this and you’re only putting yourself and us in more danger. Go back to your brother’s and rest up. Stay off the grid and stay the hell away from anything to do with Banna business. When you’re feeling better, we can make a plan of attack.”
Father’s tone doesn’t leave room for argument, as usual. I can’t help but feel chastised, but I’m not sure why.
“Colm, take him back to Micah.”
Eamon snorts. “Enjoy playing happy housewife with the little queer, Savage .” He somehow makes my name sound like an insult.
Rage filters through my incoherent view of the world, but when it tries to grip my body, I’m already too exhausted to do anything about it. Instead, I turn toward him and make a point of looking down at where he’s seated at the table.
“Sure. I’m on vacation. Enjoy picking up my workload while I run a train through the local talent.”
The words feel gross and performative even as I’m saying them, but I have to say something. Preferably something that makes me seem more normal in front of the men I just accidentally unhinged and displayed my psychotic mind to. And if I tell him how I really feel—that he needs to take Micah’s name out of his mouth before I relieve him of his tongue—I think the guys might take it the wrong way.
Fucking random girls is normal. It’s what normal guys do. They’re telling me to lie low and pretend to be a normal, small-town man, which is kind of what I always dreamed of, anyway. I can do that.
Maybe.
I turn around and head for the door before he has the chance to answer, forcing myself to walk upright no matter how much my body screams at me for it.
As soon as I get through the front door, I double over and puke into the wilted grass in front of one of the fox cages. I vomit water, then bile, then I dry-heave until I realize that Colm’s hands are the only thing holding me up.
My abdomen hurts so much I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and saw my intestines hanging out, so I don’t let myself look.
“Come on Sav, let’s get out of here,” he says in a hushed tone.
He half-drags, half-escorts me back to the Escalade. By the time we get there, the dark spots at the edge of my vision have traveled into the center, and I’m pretty sure I pass out before he has the chance to put me inside.