17. Void #2
Eagle stood there stunned, watching Sprocket grab another beer out of the fridge and pop the top.
The rest of us watched in silence, afraid to move and set off the bomb.
With a slam of a knife, Eagle launched himself at Sprocket sending him stumbling back out of the kitchen into the living room.
Fists flying as neither one of them were willing to back down.
Sprocket gave as good as he got, if not more, being smaller and faster than our president.
The sound of shattering wood brought us to our feet, and we hurried into the living room where they both landed on the coffee table, still grappling at each other.
Picasso caught my eye and nodded—it was time to end this. “I’ll get Eagle.”
Wading in, I slipped an arm around Eagle’s neck, pulled tight and lifted slightly until I could feel him freeze.
He knew I would knock his ass out if I needed to.
I’d done it before, and it was never fun when he woke up.
Picasso hauled Sprocket away, the man going limp as blood trickled down his face from his busted lip and the cut on his cheek.
It’d been years since these two had gotten into a fight.
Typically, it happened between the brothers, but even that had been some time ago.
“You good?” I asked our president.
He tapped my arm twice, signaling me he’d calmed down.
Hoisting him up, I tossed him on the couch and got a look at his face—black eye, broken nose, and bruised ego aside, his eyes looked tortured.
Heaving a heavy sigh, I headed to the kitchen to grab the pack of peas we kept just for this and slapped it into his hand as I sat down next to him.
“What the hell is really going on, man? You were the one that started this whole thing, bringing up the old rules and shit—what changed?” I questioned.
Eagle looked at me with his good eye, the other now swollen shut.
“Two things, I can’t control her, she’s a loose cannon doing whatever the fuck she wants.
Do you realize the power that she has as the ruler of the Hidden Empire?
What happens if things go too far, and she does something we can’t stand behind? ”
“Yeah, I’m not buying that. Spell it out for me, man,” I challenged. “What did Sprocket mean when he talked about your uncle?”
The change in his body was instant. It was as if he turned to stone and his eyes went vacant, as if he was lost in the past. “Hannibal… my mother’s older brother, and his twin, Bear, the previous VP of the Blackjax.
Hannibal was the man I looked up to most of my life since my father cared more about his clients than either of us boys.
He was the leader of the Devils Spawn MC.
They were small time and worked as support to other gangs in the area.
All they wanted to do was cause trouble and wish they could be like the Hell’s Angels back in the day.
Picasso and I would hang around them, but we weren’t allowed to do much other than simple errands, fetching shit for them.
Han taught us how to shoot, how to ride, and how to take what we wanted whenever we wanted it.
” Eagle paused as Picasso handed him a glass of whiskey and started to clean up the coffee table, as if he couldn’t sit still.
I noticed that Cognac and Sprocket were listening in on the story from the other end of the couch. This made me wonder how much Sprocket really knew. He had an odd knack of finding shit out about you that you never wanted to be found.
“When I turned sixteen, I was finally able to prospect into the MC and that’s when I really learned what it was that they did.
The Devils Spawn were human traffickers, dealing in flesh of all ages and selling them to the highest bidders.
The first job they gave us was to babysit the merchandise before they went to auction and drug them up so they would be compliant.
I did everything I could to avoid being the one who would shoot them up, but it was how they trapped you in the system.
A patched in member would stand there and watch you to make sure it got done and then they would take turns with the women we knew didn’t need to stay pure.
Those who refused to do what they were told got shot point-blank in the head without a second thought.
The Devils Spawn were lackeys to none other than the De León Cartel…
that is until I ratted them out to the FBI.
As family, I got a lot of leeway to pick and choose where I wanted to work in the system, but when my time ran out and I was forced to work one of the auctions, I knew it had to end. ”
“Hannibal escaped somehow—he was an oily bastard like that, once I got to know the real version of him. Did you know that I’m named after him?
My mother’s side of the family liked to use the same three family names and so I got blessed with Enzo, just like that sick fuck.
He figured out that someone from the inside had blown the whistle and I still don’t know how he narrowed it down to me.
After that, what little control he had on the crazy that lived inside him snapped.
He kidnapped Picasso, beat the shit out of him and sent me the photos, telling me that if I didn’t fix this, then Picasso was dead.
Of course there was no way to fix this, so I had to turn to Bear, the new president of the Blackjax, to help me out.
With his help, I was able to save Picasso, but my first kill also happened to be family.
I couldn’t make his twin do it and all this happened because of what I’d done,” Eagle explained, tossing back the last of his whiskey.
“Then we learned what an MC was supposed to be like from Bear, and Picasso and I started the Phantom Saints, taking over the property that Hannibal used and the rest you all know.”
“That is one fucked-up story, man,” Cognac blurted, rubbing his face with his hands. “But it doesn’t explain your issue with our loba.”
“Dax has the same kind of crazy in her that Hannibal did, and I’m afraid that she could crack just like him if the right pressure is applied,” Eagle answered, not looking at any of us.
Sprocket scoffed and shot to his feet. “She is nothing like that sadist. From what I can tell, Hannibal never had a heart or a conscience. The whole goddamn reason Dax became who she is, is because her heart was broken at the loss of her brother. Yeah, she destroyed the Blackjax, but she never went after the families, only the members. And even then, it was a calculated attack to end it quickly. They could have rebuilt if they wanted to, but they chose to join us or leave the MC life all together. What about that says she’s some psycho crazy killer who rapes and kills people? ”
I raised a hand when it looked like Sprocket was going to continue his rant and he snapped his mouth shut. Confident he wasn’t going to say anything more, I turned back to Eagle. “You said two things. What’s the second thing?”
Eagle looked me in the eye, his face deadly serious.
“I would burn the world down for her if she asked me to, because that same kind of crazy lives deep inside me too. What I’m truly terrified about is that she’d ask me to, and the crazy would be set free from the cage I’ve locked it down in since the day I shot my uncle right between the eyes as he begged me to save him. ”
“Well, fuck.”