39. Jax
Jax
By the time I get home, it’s late. I stopped off to buy groceries on the way back, knowing Flynn would be there waiting for me and dragging it out for as long as I could. The more time that passed before the inevitable “big brother” conversation, the better.
Closing the door with my foot, I can smell chili cooking as I head into the kitchen.
“Where are the others?” Flynn asks as soon as I walk in. He’s in track pants and a hoodie, stirring a pot on the stove.
“Aren’t Seb and Ben here?” I ask, glancing up the stairs.
“No one’s here. Just you and me.”
I dump the groceries down on the counter and eye him warily. He’s barefoot, looking very at home.
“You still seeing your graphic designer?” I ask.
He twists around, squinting at me. “Not seeing exactly. But yeah. Why?”
“Because this is the longest time I think you’ve ever been away from this house. Not to mention the club. You in love?”
“I’ve been working, Jax.”
His voice is sharp as he keeps his back turned to me. I can’t see his face, but the tips of his ears have turned red.
“I bought garlic bread, you want?” I say.
“No. I’m okay. This is almost ready anyway.”
His shoulders are tense, the movement of the spoon in the pan jerky and erratic. Swallowing, I head to the bottom of the stairs.
“Scott?” I call, but there’s no answer. Heading upstairs, I check the boys' rooms, but there’s no sign of them.
Frowning, I go back down to find Flynn piling chili into two bowls.
I stand just out of sight, glancing up at the stairs and back down to the door, an uneasy feeling lingering at the back of my mind.
Ben and Seb are notoriously lazy. It’s very unusual for them to miss dinner. Scott almost never leaves without messaging me to tell me where he’s headed. I check my phone, but there are no new notifications. I head over to the table, a restlessness beneath my skin as I sink into the chair.
Flynn doesn’t speak as he comes out of the kitchen, a bag of grated cheese beneath his arm as he sits opposite me.
“How was your birthday?” he asks.
“Good,” I say, and shove a forkful of food into my mouth, hoping he won’t ask me any more questions.
“Was that from your boss?” he asks pointing to my necklace. The word ‘boss’ grates against my senses in a way I don’t want to analyze too closely.
My fingers move to the windchime around my neck. “Yeah.”
“It’s pretty. Looks expensive.”
“So is he,” I mutter, and Flynn snorts.
His eyes move around the living room, as if searching for something, and I chew my food, staring at a long crack in the center of the table.
“Alright, what’s going on?” he snaps, laying down his fork with a clatter. “I know you, Jax, and you’re jumpy as shit right now. Where are the boys?”
“How should I know?”
“You always know where they are.”
“Well, they probably just…” I stop moving, the fork hovering above my plate, as cold dread trickles down my spine.
Oh fuck. No. It can’t be.
I rise as Flynn frowns up at me.
I head to the stairs and go to my room, opening the drawer where I stashed one of the guns. It’s gone. I curse under my breath as my whole body starts to shake. A perfunctory search of the rest of the room confirms my worst fears. All the weapons are gone, and so are my brothers.
They’ve gone to do what I told them never to attempt. They’re trying to teach Nick Monroe a lesson.
I stand in the middle of my room, breathing deeply, trying to calm my racing heart, but the fear feels like a demon that is slowly spreading through every vein in my body.
After five full minutes, there has been no sound from downstairs, and as I kick off my shoes and walk silently to the living room, I can feel the presence of Flynn’s fury before I turn the corner.
“What did they do?” he demands, rising from his chair, the food forgotten. “What the fuck is going on?”
If Monroe doesn’t kill Ben and Seb, Flynn just might.
“Jax.”
I close my eyes, coming back to the table and sitting slowly down in my chair. Flynn remains standing, his eyes dark and wary as he places his hands on the surface, leaning over me.
“Don’t make me start yelling.”
I lean forward, my hands covering my face as I try to find the right words to explain the gigantic fuck-up I’ve made. I should have told Flynn right from the start, from the moment Scott told me the truth about the debt. Maybe he could have done something—now all three of my brothers might be dead.
I suck in a breath, panic shooting through me like lightning bolts, and for a minute, I can’t breathe.
“Jax,” Flynn whispers, deathly calm. “What’s happened?”
“It’s not his fault.” Those are the first words out of my mouth. God, I love Scott so much it hurts, but right now I hate him. The stupid fucking idiot.
“Tell me right now, or I’m gonna smash up this house.”
“Scott fucked up.”
“Scott?” Flynn asks incredulously, his eyes widening in almost comical surprise. “I thought it was Seb, for sure.”
“No,” I say, as the slight tremor of humor on my brother’s lips fades altogether.
There’s a weighted silence, the kind of silence I haven’t heard in this house for years. Flynn has his arms crossed over his chest, glaring down at me, and I can tell the moment he works out the truth, his shoulders slumping forward in despair.
“Please tell me Scott hasn’t been placing bets again.” His voice is a hoarse whisper.
I close my eyes. “He didn’t mean for it—”
“Jesus Christ!” Flynn’s arms fall to his sides, reflexively, as if he’s about to flip the table. He walks to the window, turning back to me, his hands on his hips, stubble on his chin, and for a fleeting, awful second, he looks exactly like our father.
“He’s tried to fix it—” I attempt.
“How much does he owe?”
I shake my head again. “A lot.”
“How much?” I don’t reply. “How much, Jax?”
“Thousands.” I pray that’ll be enough, because if Flynn finds out the real amount, I don’t want to be around for the fireworks.
“Alright. We have some savings, so we can deal with it. Was it the horses again?”
“You can’t repay it, Flynn, it’s too much.”
He walks back to the table, standing over me as I twist my fingers in front of me.
“Not the horses?”
“No. He’s in debt to someone.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Nick Monroe?”
To my profound relief, there is no recognition in my brother’s eyes, and he shrugs.
“Okay, who is he? We can pay him back in installments, yeah? We’ve done that before.”
“We’ve tried. Every time we pay him, he adds interest, and we’re back to square one.”
“Every time…? Jax, how long has this been going on?”
“Only a few weeks. I was trying to fix it so you didn’t have to deal with it.”
“Are you fucking stupid? This isn’t something you can fix yourself. Fucking interest? What is this guy, a loan shark?”
“Something like that.”
“Fuck me.” His head falls back, his eyes closed. “This is just perfect. We’re in the middle of opening a new club, Jax, does he owe more than it’s worth? Is that what you’re telling me?”
My silence says more than any words could, and Flynn curses so violently and in such colorful language that I barely recognize him.
He rants, screams, cries bloody murder, before raising a hand in a gesticulation of abject fury.
That’s when he sees me flinch. It’s a learned response from years of witnessing my dad’s rage, and Flynn freezes in place, going completely still as he stares at me, lowering his hand very slowly and screwing his eyes tightly shut.
He walks over to me, pulling my head against his chest, and runs a gentle hand through my hair.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks desperately, squatting down beside me and taking my shoulders in his hands.
“I didn’t want to involve you. You left the club with us, and we fucked up.”
“He fucked up. At some point, you’re gonna have to stop taking on this family’s problems as your own, Jax. You’ve never put a foot wrong your whole life, and you are not to blame for Scott’s behavior.”
With a sigh, he pulls his phone from his pocket and calls Scott. I listen to the sound of the ringing on the other end, and my heart sinks when there is no answer. Scott always answers Flynn’s calls… if he can.
“Where are they?” Flynn asks, turning back to me as a tear runs down my cheek.
“I… I told them not to do it. I told them.”
“Do what?” he asks with infinite calm.
“Scott said they needed to teach Monroe a lesson. When we gave him the first installment, he told us it was going to go up every week, and there’s no way we would ever be able to pay him back.”
“Jax…”
“Seb and Ben talked about torching something of his to send a message, but I told them no. I took away everything they had, I—”
“Are you telling me that my little brothers are becoming arsonists in their spare time? That they’ve gone after some psycho alone?”
“I don’t know, Flynn! I told them not to do anything stupid.”
“Oh yeah, and when have Seb and Ben ever listened to that kind of advice?”
We stare at each other, Flynn’s eyes sparking with fury as he calls Seb, then Ben, then Scott again, and they all go through to voicemail.
“Jesus Christ,” Flynn mutters. “Who is this guy, Monroe?”
“He’s dangerous.”
“Perfect, just perfect.” He pulls on his coat. “Where is he based?”
I look after him helplessly. “I don’t know, Flynn. I have no idea about any of this.”
Flynn opens the front door as I rise from my chair, my arms held out helplessly.
“Flynn, where are you going to go? What, you’re gonna search all of New York until you find them?”
He stops, turning slowly back to me, deep despair in his eyes.
“We’d be better off waiting until they come home. They might change their minds when they see what they’re up against; they’re not suicidal.”
He scoffs, standing with the door open, his hand fisted against the handle, tight enough to break it. Then he slowly closes it.
“Tell me everything, and don’t leave out any details this time. I want to know what we’re dealing with here. And when they get home, I’m gonna fucking kill them myself.”
By the morning, our dwindling optimism has vanished completely. Neither of us has slept a wink, staying up, sitting at the table, staring at the door, willing our brothers to come home.
Every car that passed had Flynn on his feet running to the window, even as he would watch it disappear into the distance, his shoulders slumping a little lower, and a tendril of hope dying with it.
Halfway through the night, to my dismay, Flynn produced a gun from his room. He said it was one of Dad’s and that he'd kept it for emergencies, but the ease with which he held it, loaded it, and sat with it balanced on his leg had me questioning how much of my brother’s life I really understand.
By 7 a.m., we’ve both given up hope that our brothers are coming back. I’ve had to suppress the urge to vomit several times, and Flynn’s skin is ashen.
Once I had told him how much Scott really owed, as well as how he skimmed from the safe in the club, Flynn downed half a glass of whiskey and didn’t speak for three hours. I can’t tell if he’s furious with me, or whether he’s just angry at all of us, but the guilt is overwhelming.
I don’t know if any of this could have been prevented if I had told him sooner, but I know that him finding out like this is the worst possible scenario.
We have no idea where Ben, Seb, and Scott are, and the memory of Scott’s bloody body on the top step of our house makes bile rise in my throat again.
“Let’s go to the club,” Flynn says finally, his voice quiet and hoarse from lack of use.
“We get everything out of the safe, every cent we have, and we bring it back here. If they’ve come home, we give Monroe as much as he wants.
If I have to use the new club down payment as leverage, I will, if it means we get him off Scott’s back. ”
I don’t even have the strength to argue. Flynn has been working nonstop for two years on this club, but one whiff of danger for his family, and he is willing to lose everything to save them.
“I’ll make some coffee,” he mutters. “You need to change?”
I look down at my office clothes, wrinkled from our nightly vigil, and I nod. As my brother goes into the kitchen, I head upstairs, pulling on some sweatpants and a soft black hoodie that I rarely wear. I stole it from Scott years ago and now I hug it to my body desperately.
I grab an empty bag for the money we will need to carry and twist my hair into a braid, tying it loosely over my shoulder. Nothing feels real in the cold light of morning. I can’t contemplate the possibility that all three of my brothers may be lying on the floor of some warehouse somewhere.
I should have thrown the weapons out, not hidden them. I’m a fucking idiot.
When I head downstairs, Flynn is standing by the door with a thermos of coffee in his hand as if we’re heading out to run errands. Neither of us says a word, the exhaustion and fear in his eyes too painful for me to look at. I stare at the ground as we walk down the steps and toward his car.
Pulling the empty bag on my shoulder, I head around to the other side and am about to open the passenger door when I hear a squeal of brakes.
Turning, hoping against hope that it’s my brothers, I barely have time to react.
There’s a shout from Flynn as a van careens toward me, its bumper missing me by inches as the side door is opened and two masked men jump out.
A sharp cry falls from my lips as burly arms encircle me, pulling me back, impossibly strong as I kick out, smacking my head back into the face of the one behind me as he yells in pain.
But there are three of them, and they drag me into the back of the van, the door closing behind them as I hear the click of a gun against my temple. I go still, and then I hear the driver’s voice.
“We’ll return her when you pay up. Every day you delay, we take one of her fingers.”
Then the gun is taken away. I barely have time to breathe a sigh of relief before a sharp pain slices through my temple, and everything goes black.