Chapter 10
Nora
Growing up in a clubhouse teaches you several things at once.
Don’t ever put yourself in a position where you’re alone with a brother.
Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself.
Don’t do anything to make the brothers think you have more in common with club girls than old ladies.
You learn to be in a room so quietly that men forget you’re there and say the things they’d never say to your face.
I was furniture in my father’s house for twenty-two years.
It turns out the skill travels. And most importantly, listen to everything going on around you.
Snippets of information you pick up might save your life one day.
I keep those things in mind when operating at the Sons clubhouse.
I’m refilling the coffee urn in the main room when nausea kicks in. I make it to the nearest bathroom just in time. I don’t know why but I seem to throw up for a long time, until I’m dry heaving again. It’s getting worse. I probably need to see a doctor to make sure this is normal.
When I come out, wiping my mouth, I spot Queenie leaning against the bar.
I give her a wan smile. “Hi, Queenie. You look nice today.” She’s the founder, Rock’s old lady. I really like her. She’s like the mother I never had.
“Darlin’, you need to see someone about that.” She has a kind smile, blonde hair, and blue eyes that have seen more than their share of troubles.
“It’s just nerves,” I tell her, already feeling guilty about lying to her.
She holds my eyes for a few seconds and then pushes herself off the bar. “There are saltines in the pantry. They’re on the second shelf. We keep the ginger ale in the mini fridge below the bar. Help yourself to what you need.”
She walks off without waiting for a thank you.
I feel like the world’s biggest liar because I am.
I’m lying to the nice family who took me in when I had nowhere to go.
I make a mental note to apologize to her for that.
It’s pretty clear that she knows or at least suspects that I’m pregnant.
She’s been around a long time and has probably seen a lot of pregnant women over the years.
Jinx finds me an hour later. I’m sitting on the backstep. It’s under a covered back porch where no drones can see me. It’s one of the little compromises we’ve made so I can get some fresh air and still be safe.
Jinx sits down on the step beside me, a careful foot of space between us. He looks out at the yard instead of at me.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Is it anything I should know?”
“Onyx is stuck,” he says. “We’re still trying to figure out the ins and outs of how the Hyenas are getting their money.
” He pauses. “I hate to ask you for more information, but you grew up in that club. If there’s anything else you can think of that might help us put this together, we’d appreciate you tellin’ us. ”
I scoot closer and Jinx wraps his arm around me as I answer, “I know lots of random things from growing up in my father’s house. It’s hard to know exactly what’s important.”
“Okay.” He nods, thinking the situation over. “Do you know anything about where they bank?”
“Oh, yeah. My dad has an account with Second National Bank. He’s had that one since way before he became a club officer. He said if it was good enough for the club, it was good enough for him.”
“Well, that might be helpful. Do they have accounts anywhere else?” he asks.
I give him a mischievous look. “They swear everything is through Second National Bank, but I’ve seen them using prepaid major credit cards. You know the ones that don’t have anyone’s name on them?”
He perks up. “Yeah, that might be a way for the cartel or Santos to slip money to them.”
“I think that might be what’s happening because there were several weeks a few months back where my father gave me a card and told me to take out the maximum allowable amount per day. It was five hundred bucks.”
“How long did that go on for?” Jinx asks.
I shrug. “About three weeks, until the card wouldn’t work anymore. Each of my brothers was asked to do the same thing. In the end it seems like a lot of money. When I took the last five hundred to him to put in his safe, it was crammed full.”
Jinx goes very still beside me. “What else can you think of?”
“The bikes.” Memories are coming back, the words are coming out easier than I want them to. “They build them to look like junk on purpose. They paint them to look rusted and use mismatched panels. They get a kick out of making their bikes look like trash.”
“We’ve always known they did that,” he responds mildly.
“Yeah, but the engines they use changed this year. They ordered several dozen really powerful engines and put them on lighter frames. That’s why they are so fast now.
I got curious about the process and my brothers stopped letting me near the garage.
That’s what makes me think that information might be useful.
The Hyenas only hide really important things.
” I shrug. “Trash on the outside so nobody looks twice, racing-grade underneath.”
Jinx turns to look at me. There’s no joking or swagger, just a club officer trying to protect his club and his new friend. “Think about your old man for a minute. If you had to identify one weakness, what would you say it was?”
I grin at him. “That’s an easy one. Everyone who knows him can answer that question. It’s his stubborn pride,” I say without hesitating. “He’ll take Santos’s money but hate every minute of it. Needing anyone stings his pride.”
Jinx nods at that as if he’s cataloging the information away to use later.
I continue, “My brothers are like that too. Spark’s smart but careless.
Brave just wants to hit something. And Stripe is creative about his cruelty.
” My voice stammers across his name and I hate the way saying his name sparks fear in my chest. “Whenever my dad decides to take someone out, Stripe is always the one leading the charge. He’ll come loud and angry, and that’s what makes him less dangerous than he thinks he is.
If he were half smart, he’d sneak up on you, but he enjoys fighting and violence too much for that. ”
Jinx is quiet for a moment. “And your father thought he’d make a good husband for you?”
“Yep.”
Later, when it’s time for church, they bring me inside so I can tell them everything I know that might be useful.
Slate watches me the whole time with suspicious eyes. He’s the one I think of as a human lie detector. When I’m done talking, Jasper asks Slate, “Is she telling the truth, brother? I need information that I can trust.”
Slate nods. “Yes. She’s telling the truth or at least she thinks she is.”
“You always know when someone’s being honest and when they aren’t. I wish I had that gift,” Jasper says. Turning to me, he asks, “Why give us intel on your family like that?”
Every man in the room is waiting for my answer.
I realize I don’t have a noble one. “Because I realized a long time ago that my father doesn’t give a damn about me.
To him, I’m just a meaningless meat bag that he can give to his favorite loyal brother, much like you toss a bone to a dog.
This is me taking back my personal dignity. ”
***
After tossing and turning for hours, I can’t sleep. So, a little after midnight I end up in the clubhouse kitchen. Cooking alleviates stress for me. I cooked for my father’s whole crew for years, garlic chicken and pot roast and biscuits at dawn. It’s harder for a busy pair of hands to shake.
The clubhouse pantry is stocked for forty men and nobody’s using flour much these days, so I decide to make homemade biscuits. When I’m elbow deep into the process, it’s the calmest I’ve felt in days.
Jinx’s voice drifts from the doorway. “It smells like my grandmother’s kitchen in here.”
He walks in wearing a T-shirt and sweats. His hair is hanging down around his shoulders and he’s not even wearing his cut. He looks like Jake and I love it so much my eyes begin to tear up.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him. “I hope it’s okay to be in here.”
“Me either. And of course you’re allowed to be here. Cooking is what kitchens are for, right?” He leans against the counter and gazes down at my hand mixing and kneading dough. “That’s a lot of dough. You don’t have to feed the whole clubhouse, you know. Nobody’s makin’ you earn your keep here.”
“I know.” I press the dough flat. “That’s exactly why I want to do it.” I cut a round biscuit and set it on the sheet. “When somebody makes you useful, it’s a chore. When you choose to do it yourself, it becomes an enjoyable hobby.”
He’s quiet for a second. “Sounds like a Jedi mind trick,” he says.
We talk while I work. I tell him about how my mother ran off when I was just a baby. “My father’s method of raising kids was to set up a rule for every occasion. He’s strict. My brothers acted out but I just fell into line.”
“How long was he in the Hyenas?” Jinx asks.
“All my life. He was just another brother for a long time. Then he became a club officer. And finally, in the last year, he became their club president.”
Jinx talks about how he moved around his whole life and never felt he had a place he could call home.
He moved out of his parents’ house young and ended up in the barracks and then couchsurfed for a while before joining the Sons of Rage.
He turns his coffee mug in his hands. “I bought my house the week I got out of the military for cash. It took every dollar I had. People thought I was crazy, sinkin’ it all into a place that far out.
” He shrugs. “I wanted something that was mine, something no one could ever take away from me. It was the first time in my life I had a door that I could lock.”
I stop working the dough. A door that’s mine to lock. He just handed me the thing I’ve wanted my whole life and come to find out, it’s the one thing he valued most as well. “That’s all I want,” I tell him shyly. “A door that locks so I can feel safe.”
“I know the feeling,” he says. “It also made me wonder why you left my door unlocked the morning you left my house.”
I freeze and the room is so quiet that I can hear the noise of the gas oven. “I’m really sorry I did that, Jinx. It was disrespectful. I was afraid to make a noise.”
“It’s fine. I was never angry about it, just hurt because I thought it meant that you didn’t care about me.”
“No, I was just freaking out and wasn’t careful. I promise that won’t happen again.”
We bake and eat biscuits and then go back to bed.
I pull Jinx into my room this time and we cuddle up just to sleep.
I lie against his chest and listen to the slow, steady beat of his heart.
This is the perfect moment to tell him that I’m carrying his child but don’t want to spoil it.
The words are formed and ready and all I have to do is open my mouth. But I don’t because I’m a coward.
Right now, I’m a woman he’s choosing to be with.
The second I tell him, I’ll be the woman carrying his child.
If I tell him, he will either reject me or everything he feels for me will double, turning into something possessive.
He might even turn into one of those guys who will burn the world down to protect his old lady and unborn child.
I don’t know if I’m ready to be loved that hard.
I must have drifted off, because I’m woken up by the sound of someone knocking on the door, and a voice calls out, “You awake, brother? Jasper’s called an emergency meeting.”
“Stay and rest,” he murmurs, kissing the side of my head.
“I’ll be right here when you’re finished,” I tell him.
While I’m drowsing, the burner phone I’m using buzzes against the floor where it fell out of my property cut.
I shouldn’t read the text message. Nobody would text my burner phone at two in the morning except my family. I reach for it, too curious for my own good.
The message is short.
Dad knows you’re playing house with the Ragers, baby sister. He’s done waiting. Somebody’s coming to bring you home where you belong. — S
Because it’s a burner phone I’m using there’s no saved caller ID, but I don’t need that to know who it’s from. Spark. He’s the only one that signs his name S and calls me baby sister.
Below the words, a photo begins slowly loading.
My blood turns to ice when it finally loads.
It’s a picture of me taken from above. I’m wearing the same clothing I wore yesterday.
And I’m sitting on the back patio, wearing Jinx’s property cut.
My face is just clear enough to be recognizable.
I now understand that it was never a matter of if, but when my family came for me.