Chapter 19
Jinx
Three days later we expel the Hyenas from our territory.
Almost all the Sons brotherhood shows up on the outskirts of town to witness the Hyenas leave it for good.
We pick a spot that’s far enough away from town that we won’t draw much notice.
We just line our bikes up along each side of the road.
Two rows of Sons, all of us watching them go.
As near as I can figure, it’s all going according to plan. We give them back their men, and in exchange they agreed to ride out of our territory for good. They seem intent upon keeping their end of the bargain.
If I’m being honest, they are making a pitiful show of themselves today.
Their bikes are up front, then four vans and three box trucks hauling everything their club owns.
Seeing the club’s possessions, packed up and rolling east feels like closure to me.
We don’t know or care where they’re going.
By sundown, they’ll be someone else’s problem and that suits me just fine.
There was a time when the brothers were a bit rougher and less aware of the long-term consequences of our behavior.
If not for cooler heads prevailing, we’d have run them out of town by throwing bottles, talking trash, and making a humiliation ritual out of it.
But Rock’s right about the one thing. A club you humiliate is a club that comes back to even the score.
A club you let leave with its colors on might just ride east and forget about us altogether.
So, instead of acting like assholes, we keep our traps shut and just bear witness to their sad departure.
Nora is riding on the back of my bike with her arms wrapped loosely around my waist, and her cheek pressed against my back. She’s been quiet since we arrived at the meeting point. After what Brave said during our last meeting, she’s pretty much ignoring them both.
Scar and Merc handle the last piece of business, transferring the prisoners we took back to the Hyenas.
The cartel guy is limping because his leg’s still a mess from the interrogation.
I don’t feel particularly bad about that.
He’s a ruthless fuckin’ criminal. The tight-lipped Hyena, Rust, is pretty stoic about the whole transfer.
They’re a strange pair and I’m glad to be rid of both of them.
One of the Hyenas hangs back a beat, looks at our two prospects with something ugly in his face, and Scar just steps between him and them, real casual, and lets the man get a good look at exactly how unbothered he is.
“You need to walk. I ain’t carryin’ ya,” Scar tells him, as he cuts the zip ties around his wrists. The Hyena stumbles forward towards his club brothers. The Hyenas have to come and help the cartel guy across the road and into one of the vans.
I watch it all in stony silence. My fractured rib still hurts when I move in a certain way. Doc said it was a hairline fracture.
The Hyenas start their engines, and the bikes slowly move out first. The vans fall into line behind them, and the box trucks hang back for a few minutes before they follow. We collectively watch until the last Hyena vehicle is out of our line of sight.
Nobody moves for a few minutes.
“Do you think they’ll stay gone?” Onyx asks.
“If they know what’s good for them, they will,” Jasper throws back. “They lost too much to stay. My best guess is they’re ready for a fresh start. They’ll be lookin’ for new territory and a new way to earn now that the cartel’s cut them off.”
“That ain’t gonna be no easy task,” I say. “Not with an inexperienced new club president that’s barely holdin’ it all together while grievin’ the loss of his old man.”
“Spark’s smart,” Slate chimes in with his two cents worth. “At least smart enough to know a second round with us would end his club for good. He would be stupid to risk that right now.”
“Spark isn’t the one you need to worry about,” Nora says.
I think about what Brave whispered in my old lady’s ear, the thing she told me at the overlook. That shit has been circling around in my head ever since. “Nora is right,” I say. “The smart one’s runnin’ the club now. But the slow one is a wildcard. He can’t control his emotions.”
“I truly hope his grief doesn’t drive him to do something stupid,” Onyx adds.
“I imagine that Spark will be keen to lay low for a while. Coal made himself an ally with Stripe’s money.
Now Coal’s dead, Stripe’s in a hospital pissin’ through a tube, and a quarter million dollars’ worth of cartel product went up in smoke.
Santos is out a lot of money and will be lookin’ for compensation. ”
Jasper holds my eyes for a second before speaking.
“Then we need to stay alert,” he says. “We keep Striker’s eyes in the sky operational.
And we don’t get lazy and fuckin’ complacent as the months roll by.
” He nods at the empty road. “But today they’re gone.
We won. The thing that worries me is the Hyenas always seem to come back smarter and hit harder. But that’s a problem for another day.”
We turn our bikes around and ride back into town. Cedar Falls is our little corner of the world, one we don’t like to share with rival clubs. But I file away what we said about Brave.
***
We make one more stop before we go home.
We visit St. Mary’s Hospital. It’s an impressive brick building, located on the good side of town.
Stripe’s room is on the third floor, and the club paid a nurse to leave it unlocked for twenty minutes.
Nora wanted to come. I tried to talk her out of it, but she said this is something she needs to do for closure.
I understand where she’s coming from on that.
It’s also not my place to tell her what to do, so I brought her.
Stripe is nothing but a snake in the grass, so I stand right by her side. If the bastard tries anything, I’ll drop him in a heartbeat.
Only, he looks even worse than I thought he’d be.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting but his skin is gray against the stark white pillow he’s lying on.
He’s hooked up to all kinds of machines.
There’s a tube running out of his arm to a machine that hums, hisses and cycles beside the bed.
Apparently, his kidneys are fucked so I’m guessing it’s a kidney dialysis machine.
His chest is wrapped where the ribs are.
My hand comes up to touch my own ribs as I watch him breathing.
My injury is nowhere near as bad as his, and it hurts when I breathe, so fuck knows how much pain he’s in.
Every breath he drags in sounds wet and weird.
His leg is in a cage of pins and steel, hung up in a sling.
The Stripe that confronted me three nights ago seemed strong and robust. I literally can’t reconcile what I’m seeing with the broken man before me.
How could he go from healthy to this in a matter of days?
While I’m struggling to get my head around what I’m seeing, his eyes drift open.
He’s still got a lean meanness about him, but he also looks exhausted and hollowed out.
“The happy couple,” he rasps when neither of us speaks first. “Did you fuckin’ come to gloat?”
“We came to make sure you got the message about your club surrendering,” I tell him, pulling a chair around for Nora to sit in.
“Spark and Jasper signed off on the agreement just a few minutes ago. None of you can be within a hundred miles of Sons territory. For you, that begins the minute you’re released from the hospital. ”
“That fuckin’ little ingrate. Coal would be rolling over in his grave if he knew.”
“My brother didn’t have a choice,” Nora says out loud.
“Sure he did. When are you gonna learn that everything is a choice, girl? Don’t you worry. I’ll fix his little red wagon when I get out of here.”
I snort a laugh. “That’s assumin’ you make it outta here alive.”
“Are you fuckin’ threatenin’ a man on dialysis, Rager?” He bares his teeth, and for a second there’s a hint of his old menace on full display, but it feels like he’s just going through the motions.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I say. “Lookin’ at you, I don’t have to do a thing. Lookin’ at you right now, a full recovery doesn’t seem remotely possible.”
He wheezes something that might’ve been a laugh once. “Don’t bet the farm on that, Rager. I’m a fighter.”
Nora speaks up, her voice pained. “My father thought he was a fighter too. And look where that got him.”
“Calm the fuck down, girl. Your old man died the way he always wanted, on his feet and fightin’ for his club.”
Nora gasps and before she can respond, he shifts his attention to me. “You owe me, Rager.”
“Is that so? What the fuck for, old man?”
“Yeah, since you seem intent on keepin’ the girl, you owe me a quarter million dollars.
That’s exactly what I paid for her.” Each word comes out in a pained tone.
“I fronted Coal’s buy-in with the cartel for that girl.
Three years I waited. I paid, fair and square, and you took her from me.
” His eyes cut to Nora and there’s a flash of desire so strong I can practically taste it.
It’s buried deep but still there. “Somebody owes me what I’m out, so you’d best get your head around the idea of paying me my due. ”
I step forward to stand in front of Nora, so he can’t see her.
Then I lean down so I can look him in his tired, sick eyes.
“Let me explain somethin’ to you, you ignorant fuck.
You bought a woman off a dead man when she was never his to sell.
Engaging in human trafficking is a crime.
That’s not something I would ever participate in.
You risked a quarter of a million dollars of your own money because you believed that you could purchase a fuckin’ human being.
You bet all your hard-earned cash and lost. That ain’t nobody’s fault but your own. ”
I straighten back up. “Just because you’re the kind of depraved fuck who traffics women, don’t for one second think that I’m the kind who does the same. We’re nothing alike, you and me. I’d burn in the fiery pits of hell before I did something that fucked up.”
He opens his mouth to speak and then shuts it again, twice.
Then Nora speaks up. “I want to tell you one more thing before we leave here today.” She’s had a chance to recover, and her voice sounds steady and clear.
“I never disliked you, Stripe. That’s the part you don’t get.
You weren’t a monster to me growing up. You were just another brother at my father’s club, one more man in a cut.
I didn’t run from you because of who you were.
” She leans forward a little. “I ran because I didn’t want to be forced into marriage, not with you or any other man.
Rejecting the arranged marriage was not the same as rejecting you as a person.
It was just that I wanted an opportunity to choose for myself.
I don’t know why that was so hard for you and my father to understand. ”
I’m watching his face while she explains what she came to say. She’s trying to make him see that she wanted to fall in love on her own, not be in a marriage her father arranged. He doesn’t get that though.
“A lot of women would be proud that a man was willing to pay that kind of money for them. It means they’re beautiful, high value and good wife material,” he wheezes out.
Nora glances helplessly at me. “Maybe club girls would be flattered because that’s how most of them think. They’re very transactional.”
That’s when I realize exactly how fucked Stripe is in the fucking head.
He’s clearly spent his entire life in a one percent club that has its own view of women.
Beneath all the trafficking, I can see he really wanted Nora, not just because she was the club president’s daughter.
On some level, this cold-hearted bastard fell for her but didn’t have enough social skills to court her properly, so he resorted to purchasing her.
“We could have been happy together, Nora,” he pushes out, his breath ragged.
And for just a second the mean, bitter expression drops off his face entirely.
What’s left is just a sick, tired older brother who’s exhausted from fighting for her all this time.
“I’d have treated you right, made sure you had all the pretty things women like. ”
“No,” Nora says, her voice gentle. Taking a step closer to his bed, she adds, “Treating me right doesn’t excuse owning me, Stripe. Women don’t want to be owned. You’re good enough just the way you are. You don’t have to buy a woman to get one. That’s what I wanted you to know.”
He turns his head away and closes his eyes. I think it’s his way of completely checking out of the conversation. Nora comes to her feet and when she glances at me, I put my hand at the small of her back, and we start walking out of the room.
She stops at the door and looks back at him one last time. His eyes are still closed. The fight’s drained out of him and he’s just lying there struggling to breathe. He looks very much like just another old man hooked up to life support.
I watch my old lady look at the man that’s haunted her since her father promised her to him.
Three nights ago, he looked like the kind of bastard who could take on the world.
Now he just looks old, tired, and broken.
For the first time since I’d met him, I couldn’t see the predator anymore.
Just another man who’d gambled everything on the wrong thing and lost.
She finally says, “Goodbye, Stripe.”
He doesn’t open his eyes. “Goodbye, girlie. I hope you have a good life with the Rager.” There’s something truly gut-wrenching about the tone of his voice.
We walk out into the hall. The second the door closes behind us, I ask, “That was fuckin’ intense. Are you okay, darlin’?”
“Yeah,” she says, sounding surprised. “I think I really am okay.” She slides her hand into mine. “Stripe really doesn’t understand, does he? None of them do.”
“No,” I tell her, and I mean it. “They don’t get it and I’m not sure why.
Maybe it’s a lack of a decent upbringing or education.
Sometimes, I think they don’t get it because they don’t want to.
If they don’t make an effort to understand, they don’t have to feel guilty about all the depraved shit they do. ”
“Yeah, I get the feeling you might be right about that,” she replies thoughtfully.
I wrap my arm around her and begin guiding her towards the elevator. “You know something, sweetness? It really doesn’t matter. Stripe, Brave, Spark, and all the other brothers are your past. They’re no longer allowed to be within a hundred miles of you.”
Her face lights up and it’s nice to see her grow more relaxed as we get closer to the parking lot. This is the best possible outcome that we could have arranged for her.