Chapter Six Maverick
I sighed, taking in all the noise around me as my brothers were gossiping like a bunch of bitches about what went down.
Ares stared off into the distance. Sure enough, he was probably wondering how hard I was going to lay into him about keeping his sister a secret.
All the brothers in the room made up my council.
I called a special meeting earlier with just my higher-up members to get to the bottom of what in the fuck was going on.
We were all seated at the long wooden table in the room we held church in.
It wasn’t much, just a room with no windows and barely any light, a large screen and a small fridge to keep drinks in when meetings go long.
At my right was an open seat for my VP Cage.
He was finishing up a six-month stint in county.
That was nothing to him, though. Cage and I grew up together as kids with his father being my dad’s VP.
When I mentioned shit got ugly with the Sons, I meant it.
Grim had made a lot of promises to a lot of people who hated the Martyrs and wanted to see us gone.
Local gangs, the mafia, hell, those rats even went to the feds.
That’s what got Cage his first sentence.
Though the war was over, the feds weren’t happy that so much killing and destruction went on and they didn’t have anyone’s balls to dangle in their bosses’ faces.
Money was tight in the club, we needed to get back into action with pushing guns.
But we couldn’t do that with the feds breathing down our necks.
With the Sons in hiding, we had to sacrifice one of our own if we wanted them off our backs.
Cage, that crazy motherfucker, volunteered as soon as he heard about it.
I asked him why, and he said he was doing it to save the club we’d be running one day, and now, we are.
We were barely legal back then, and he did five years in and five years out on parole.
When he got out, he got patched in, and we realized pretty soon he wasn’t the same man that went in.
It took him a few years to clean up his act and get over my sister jumping town.
Eventually, he did, so when our dads decided to step down and I got voted in as president, it was only natural that I’d wanted him to run this shit show with me.
To my left sat Ares. Though we didn’t grow up together like me, Cage, and a few of the other brothers, he became one of my best friends after one of my battle buddies named Flynn introduced us.
Next at the table was Circuit, our IT guy; Crash, Sergeant in Arms; Hawk, my road captain; and Pops, our treasurer.
We call him Pops because he’s now the last founding member seated on the council.
Not that my dad, Old School, Sheriff, or some of the other guys wouldn’t sit in on a meeting or offer up advice.
Because once a brother, always a brother. They just weren’t as active anymore.
“Are you pussies done whining or would you like another minute?”
After a few grumbles, the room got quiet. “I called a meeting today because we had a lot of shit popping off and I want to know what the hell is going on.”
I turned my head to face Ares as I waited for him to speak.
“Well, I have a sister.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Crash yapped.
“Look, I didn’t mean to keep her from you guys. It was just that I didn’t think it mattered because she wasn’t family.”
“Wasn’t family? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
In case you haven’t noticed, we protect our own around here,” I said as I slammed my fist down on the table.
I knew I was coming off angrier than I should have been, but I couldn’t help but feel protective over Thea.
Brother or not, Ares practically abandoned the poor girl at the age she needed him most. Everyone at the clubhouse knew that Ares’ parents died some years ago in a car accident.
How long had she been alone?
“I know that,” Ares grumbled. “But Thea isn’t a part of this life. I never wanted her to be.”
“Brother, what you’re not getting is she is a part of this life whether you like it or not,” I scoffed at him.
“You weren’t here to see the shit that had gone down with Sons, but most of the brothers around this table and I were,” I said as I started thinking about those days back then.
Even as just a prospect, you could see how the war was affecting everyone around the club.
“We saw how they picked ol’ ladies and children from grocery stores and birthday parties just to torture them to get back at us! ”
“You’re a member of the council for the mother chapter, which means you'll always have a big target on your head and so will the people you care about. Hell, as an enforcer, you probably got just as many, if not more, enemies than I do. You can say she isn’t part of this life all you want, but if something were to happen to her, we’d ride for her just the same. ”
I looked around to see my brothers nodding their heads and Ares was stuck staring at his hands.
I knew he was finally getting the gravity of the situation.
Not often do we patch in outsiders in the New Mexico chapter of the Martyrs.
Most of the men who ride beside me have been doing so since we were in diapers, but five years ago, when Flynn introduced me to Ares and said he was a veteran who needed work, my pops and I saw something in him.
Not too long after that, he was patched in.
That scary motherfucker worked his way up from being a newbie to our enforcer pretty quickly and you don’t do that without making a couple of enemies.
Thea could have been seriously hurt or taken if someone with a vendetta figured out about her before we did, especially with her living nearly 20 hours away.
“Dude, Prez is right,” Hawk said. “We all list our family members when getting voted in for a reason. Just because we don’t hurt bitches and kids, doesn’t mean that every other club doesn’t.”
“Yeah, son,” Pops said. “We all know what you’re capable of down in the basement. Imagine someone getting their hands on Thea and bringing her down to theirs.”
I clenched my fists under the table. I knew what Pops was saying was true, but it didn’t mean I wanted to think about it.
“Okay, I get it. I fucked up,” Ares said, lifting his head and acknowledging everyone around the table. “Now that she is here, how can we keep her safe?”
We spent the next 30 minutes or so discussing an emergency extraction plan for if Thea went back to school and we needed to either get her here for lockdown or have someone go watch over her.
We assigned two brothers as her emergency contacts, mapped the quickest routes out of California, and established which chapter would move first if she ever called.
That’s what we do as brothers, we think ahead and do our best to protect our own.
***
THEA
I sat on the couch in the living room of the clubhouse with a few other women around me. Serena introduced me to a woman named Anna, who was a little older than me and Crash’s sister.
I also met Anna’s mom Alice and a few other wives named Grace and Cherry. They were all staring at me like I was a freak show, but I couldn’t blame them seeing as I’d just fired a gun outside and now I’m seated next to them on the couch.
The guys were in what they called Church, which I learned was a meeting for club business, but not everyone was invited today so there were still men walking around the clubhouse. Apparently, that’s where they go to talk about some serious shit, and today, that serious shit was me.
Talk about a big elephant in the room.
“Sorry,” Serena finally broke the awkward silence. “We just can’t believe that Ares has a sister.”
Anna laughed from beside her. “No shit, and you're as tough as nails. You’re going to fit in great here!” She offered me a smile and I returned it.
I didn’t see any point in being rude to these ladies because they’d been nothing but nice to me since I got here.
I just didn’t know how I felt about Serena yet.
It’s not like I blame her for anything, but I wasn’t ready to be around someone who was both pregnant and happy when I was neither.
“I’m sorry for causing such a big scene,” I said sheepishly. “My brother is just hard-headed as fuck, and sometimes you got to out-scream him to make him listen.”
“Can we talk about how epic that was?” Anna shouted. “I thought Serena was a badass for how she whipped that boy into shape, but damn, girl. You blew that out of the water.”
We all laughed at Anna, and then they started asking me questions.
I told them a little bit about why I was here, not about the fact that I set my ex’s bed on fire or what led to that, but I told them that I had some drama with my best friend and my ex and I needed to get away so I could focus on school.
They all agreed that Bridgette was a bitch, and I appreciated that.
I learned a little bit about them as well.
I learned that Serena is really from New York City and she came to town wanting to get away from her parents.
Apparently, they were forcing her to marry some jackass who liked to beat on her.
She decided to run away and work for a small doctor’s office where she could help people who really needed it.
Soon after moving to Haven Hills, my brother had a motorcycle accident and was too hard-headed to go to the ER so he waited and went to her clinic.
A few weeks later, he got hurt and their club doctor was out of town, so he ended up at her doorstep, and the rest was history, or so I’m told.
Anna was different. Her parents were Alice and a guy they called Old School.
Anna’s dad was a founding member so she grew up in the club life, along with her brother Crash.
She was a sweet girl, but was very blunt and not afraid to speak her mind.
I liked that about her because there is nothing worse than someone who fakes their personality.
With these ladies, what you see is what you get.
The door opened across the room and a lady stepped in.
She was in her late 50s or early 60s, but she didn’t seem to look like it very much.
She had long blonde hair and deep blue eyes that seemed very familiar.
She was also covered in tattoos and was wearing a worn-down Guns ‘n’ Roses t-shirt like it was authentically from the mid-80s and a pair of blue jeans with steel-toed boots.
She looked like a badass, both in a hot and terrifying way.
“Hey bitches,” she called out walking towards us. “My phone has been blowing up all afternoon telling me to get down to the clubhouse. I had to leave my man in bed. What the hell is going on?”
“Momma, so glad you could finally join us,” Cherry said teasingly.
“Jane, meet Ares’ long-lost sister, Thea,” Serena said as she ushered her hand in my direction. Jane, as I came to know, looked me over and her eyes widened with shock and a hint of amusement.
“You’re shitting me,” she asked, looking at me then to the other ladies in the room. “Well, hi, sweetheart. Welcome to the family.” I was taken aback when Jane pulled me in for a hug, but I wasn’t going to be rude so I hugged her back and then we both sat down on the couch.
“Technically, I wasn’t lost. My brother, on the other hand, hadn’t told me about any of this.”
“What a jackass,” Jane said as she lit up a cigarette. “Do we know why he kept her from the club?”
I knew the question wasn’t for me. All of the ladies shook their heads, and Serena responded, “They’re in church discussing it right now.”
“Well, this Sunday just got a lot more interesting. I’m Bane’s mom, by the way,” she said as she gave my thigh a reassuring squeeze.
“Bane?” I said as I looked over questioningly to Serena and Anna.
“That’s the Prez,” Anna said with a smile.
Oh.
I just met my one night stand’s mother.
Could this day get any more awkward?