Chapter 14 #2
Oscar nodded, satisfied, and looked around the room for the next thing to investigate.
Stepping away from Keys, Oscar approached Ghost. Rose made to follow him, but Keys stood and caught her arm.
His expression encouraged patience. Rose bit her lip, trusting Keys but also extremely nervous about letting her son approach the ginger biker on his own.
Like he was doing a full inspection of Ghost, Oscar circled him. Ghost stood still, likely not wanting to spook the boy. “What’s that?” Oscar asked, pointing at the rockers on the back of Ghost’s cut.
“It’s our club’s symbol,” Ghost told him.
Oscar came around to his front. “Like a team?”
“Sort of like a team, yeah.”
Oscar turned to Keys. “Do you have one?”
Keys showed him the back of his cut. “I do.”
Oscar came back towards Rose and Keys, which honestly made Rose let out a sigh of relief. Reaching up, Oscar touched the bottom patch on Keys’ cut with one small finger before tracing the skull at the center. “Can I have one?”
Turning back around, Keys explained, “You and your mom will both get one. Hers will be leather like mine, and yours will be made of denim, like your jeans.”
Rose’s expression must have shown doubt at this, because Ghost closed the distance between them. “Keys’ claimed you, MV. I might be,” he glanced down at Oscar and corrected himself, “peeved at the situation, but it makes you no less ours.”
Before Rose could respond, Scissors stepped forward from between the throng of bikers crowding in the middle of the room, and Rose felt her stomach sink.
She’d completely forgotten that Scissors and Sissy had come to Mount Grove for the funerals.
It hadn’t seemed an issue because Rose wasn’t attending.
But the funerals had been a few days ago, why was she still here?
Scissors was not a small woman, her movements determined and focused.
Her eyes were fixed on Rose with a furious expression that Rose honestly could not fault her for.
Behind the Black woman stood her wife, Sissy, who had gone still in a different way.
Her hand was over her mouth. Her eyes were wet.
Neither of them knew what MV looked like, but they’d both been present when Kitty had broken the news to Poison that Rose was still alive. And everyone in the room was aware that Poison was currently searching for Rose, despite Rose asking her numerous times not to.
“MV.” Scissors said her moniker like an accusation.
The room went very still again, the tension returning tenfold.
Rose swallowed hard, and then nodded. There was no point in denying it when the truth was going to come out one way or another. “Yes.”
Scissors’ jaw tightened and her nostrils flared. She turned her accusatory gaze on Keys, who, true to his word, stood tall at Rose’s side. “You want to tell me why Poison’s sister has been living in your building for weeks while my president has been tearing this country apart looking for her?”
The silence that followed that question held weight and teeth.
Ghost’s expression shifted as the enormity of what Keys had done came to light. “Poison’s sister?”
Oscar looked up at Rose. “Mommy,” he said quietly, picking up on something in the room he didn’t have words for yet. He moved to put Keys’ legs between him and Ghost. “Are we in trouble?”
Keys’ arm encircled Rose’s waist as he brought his other hand to Oscar’s back, a show of unity to everyone in the room. “No, bud,” he told Oscar without looking away from Ghost. “You’re not in trouble, but I am.”
A sinking feeling pulled at Rose’s stomach. She knew the Via Daemonia weren’t as strict on their punishments as outlaw clubs were, but there was no doubt in her mind that something nasty was coming Keys’ way. Just as she knew it was all her fault.
Ghost’s voice cut through the room. “Church. Now,” he declared before storming off. It was not a suggestion.
Rose started to shake as one by one patched members followed Ghost up that staircase, feeling very much like they were the jury in Keys’ trial.
Keys shifted to face her without taking his hand away from Oscar. He tipped her chin up and kissed her in full view of his entire club and the ol’ ladies present. “BangwI' SoH. Qapla’,” he professed openly in Klingon. My love. Success.
“JItlhej. Not mev bangwI’.” Rose held his gaze, trying to remain strong for him. I am with you. My love never ends.
Keys’ expression shifted into something softer than the room deserved. He pressed his lips to her forehead once, briefly, before following his club brothers upstairs.
Bear was one of the last ones to leave, his eyes flicking back and forth between Keys’ back and Rose. “Nerds are weird.”
* * *
Church had never felt smaller. Keys had sat at this table for seven years.
He knew every scratch on its surface, every chair, every face that belonged in this room.
He’d been present for decisions that changed lives, for arguments that lasted hours, for votes that nobody liked but everyone respected.
He’d watched one president step down and another pick up the gavel.
But not once, had he ever sat at this table and felt like the walls were closing in on him as he did now.
Ghost took his seat at the head, Lucky on his right and Bulldog on his left.
Like the other officers, Keys had an assigned seat, and as he walked around the table to it, he wondered if this was the last time he would ever be able to claim that specific seat.
Scar had started as the club’s enforcer, but now he was just a member.
Not that Scar was “just” anything, but Steel had not offered him his former position back when he returned to the club.
Keys was proud to be the VDMC’s tech. He’d held the unofficial position for years, but one of Steel’s last orders before he abdicated his position was to bring Keys on as an officer. It was one of the happiest days of his life to add that patch to his cut. Would Ghost take it away now?
Scissors took the chair closest to the door, arms crossed over her chest and jaw set. The fury in her eyes as she glared unblinkingly at Keys told of someone who had held it together in front of a four year old and was no longer required to do so.
Around the table, the others took their seats.
Nineteen, when there should be twenty-three.
Lionheart might have only been a prospect when they lost him, but he was still remembered for his sacrifice.
Harper would not be here if he hadn’t placed her life above his own, and neither would Harper and Lucky’s son, Conner, whom she’d been unknowingly pregnant with when she, her parents, Bear, and Lucky had been held captive.
Steel would always have a place at this table, despite no longer being a member.
Ghost had made that very clear when he’d taken up the mantle.
Ranger’s seat was empty between Demo and Bear, while Grumpy’s usual seat at the end of the table remained just as untouched.
Both absences were like salt to an already open wound.
The eyes of his friends, his brothers, stared at Keys. Most of them weren’t even angry. Worse, they held disappointment.
The door closed, slamming like the lid of a coffin.
Ghost did not flinch as he ordered, “Start from the beginning, and don’t leave a fucking thing out.”
Taking a deep breath, Keys did. It was a long fucking story, but he needed his club to understand why he went to such lengths, why he’d hidden so many truths from them.
He started at the beginning, that first phone call when Rose was still MV.
How their friendship had formed, bridging a bond between them of undeniable trust that soon formed into something more.
He explained about Rose’s past, too, though he used real names rather than the euphemisms she’d used in the Tale of the Misunderstood Princess.
He explained who Kennedy was, as well as who he was biologically to Oscar.
Keys continued on, explaining the Riley brothers’ roles he’d assigned to them and how he’d been sending them for months to protect Rose between her moves.
How devastated he’d been when Rose, his person, had ended things, fearing stepping out of the shadows to be with him.
He told them of his plan, and not just to protect Rose but to avenge her, to draw the roaches out from their hidey-holes and squash every last one of them.
He didn’t lie, embellish, or evade. There was no reason to, not now anyway.
By the end of his story, they knew about WITSEC, the foiled kidnapping plot against Poison, the Jamboree, and Corrigan, too.
The only part that he left out was what had happened between Rose and him the night before, after Scar and Ghost had left his building.
The room absorbed it in waves. After he finished speaking, Keys barely had a chance to catch his breath before the first accusation came his way.
* * *
The door upstairs slammed closed with a finality that made Rose jump.
It felt so wrong allowing Keys to face his club alone.
She’d been hoping they would be able to present their case together, but the moment Church was called, Rose knew that was no longer a possibility—if it ever was one.
Still standing in the entry where Keys had left her with Oscar’s hand in hers, Rose took a quick inventory of those left in the room.
Thanks to her surveillance of the VDMC, she had no trouble picking out who was who.