Chapter 2
Reaper
The boys looked over at me, wondering why the fuck I was so quiet. Truth was, I had no idea. Usually my monday morning church services were filled with shit, but since I’d taken the last week to ride around Western Sydney to clear my head, I hadn’t really caught back the fuck on.
Weak.
My father’s words filtered through my mind, unwelcome as they always were.
“Mav?”
“No movement on the guns, they’re caught at the docks. I have the twins working on it. Vegas told me that money is good from all businesses. No issues with the shared districts with the Ironborne, but we all know that’s never going to last. It’s relatively quiet.”
“Anything else we need to know?”
“Prospects are working on the protection of some of the businesses. I think we should talk about making Brandon patch over. He’s done well for us the last two years.”
I nodded. “Agreed. He’s good. Let’s put it to a vote.”
Moving around the table, each member voted yay to make our prospect a patched member. I cleared my throat.
“It’s agreed. Brandon will patch over in a few weeks. Our rally is in a month. Have all the boys attend this year. Close the clubhouse. Have the patched members take over for the businesses. I want all of us there this time.”
“Agree,” my Sergeant at Arms, Chaos, said.
“You all know what to do. Get to it.”
I slammed my gavel down and concluded our service. The boys streamed out of the room, except for my VP, Maverick. I remained sitting, knowing there was something he didn’t want to bring up in front of the boys.
Which was never good.
“What is it?” I asked, once we were clear.
“Trey. Do you happen to know where he is?” Maverick asked. Groaning, I rubbed a hand down my face at the sound of my son’s name.
“What’s he done now?”
“It’s not clear but he’s skipped town, from what I can tell. His name has been popping up on alerts all over town.”
“Who?”
Maverick sighed. “Ironborne.”
“Drugs?”
“No, it looks like it’s gambling.”
“Fuck,” I grunted. You try hard to look after your kids, give them the freedom to explore who they are, and you get one who can’t look after himself to save his life. In this example, he truly was trying to get himself killed.
“They offer a threat or deal to us?”
“No,” Maverick answered. “They turned his apartment upside down, but it looks like he’s disappeared.”
“He has a girl,” I offered. “I’ve met her a couple of times, she’s even come here for parties. Name’s Rowan. Find her and ask her about it.”
“And when I find him?”
“Allow him to deal with it himself,” I told my VP, my oldest friend. He’d known my boy since he was a kid. “Until he can’t, then let me know. He needs to answer to his own shit.”
Maverick nodded. “I already have Trojan looking into it.”
“Good.”
Maverick left the room, leaving me to think about my boy.
The son I never wanted, and yet the one who had changed my life the second he was born.
I’d do anything for him, but I also didn’t want to be my own father.
I didn’t want him to hate me. I wanted him to do things on his own, but the second he needed me. I would be there.
I always was.
Even if it meant I had to stop fantasising about his drop dead gorgeous girlfriend, Rowan. How my boy landed such a stone cold fox was beyond me. I should be happy for him. He got a real one. A woman who would do anything for him, one who would be loyal…not like the two I ended up with.
She was too young.
And yet, there had been nights I’d spent thinking about her, stroking my dick, and coming way too fast thinking about her on her knees for me. Not to mention the amount of times I’d picked a club girl to bury myself in, and only did it from behind so I could imagine it were her.
I know, I’m a fucking animal.
I deserved to be shot or put down for fantasising about her, and yet I couldn’t help it. She was fucking stunning. Perfect in every way.
And so unbelievably out of bounds.
A guy could dream, right?
Rowan
Beep!
Beep!
Fuck, why did hospitals have to be so fucking loud? I thought we were meant to rest and relax, but in the last few hours I’d been poked, prodded and woken more times than I can count on my hands. I get it, I had internal bleeding, blah, blah, blah.
My eyes opened to a new nurse smiling down at me. I tried to smile back but my face hurt everywhere.
“How we feelin’?”
“Oh yeah, peachy.”
She chuckled softly. “You’re lucky, darlin’, we got to you in time to stop the bleeding. Another hour, and we’d not be talking.”
I didn’t know what to say back so I stayed silent, just groaning as I tried to sit up. She helped me to sit up as much as she could, checking my vitals.
“The police want to talk to you, and since you’re awake now, I can’t stop them.”
“That’s fine. I know the process.”
She nodded, giving my hand a squeeze. I looked down at my arm, noticing the dark purple bruises littering the skin.
Fuck.
Two police officers walked in after the nurse left and I bristled, waiting for the interrogation. I wasn’t new to this. I was living with a bikie’s son. We got interviewed a lot, and he’d coached me on how to talk to them.
“Miss Martell,” the younger one said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I know you must be in a lot of pain. We just have a few questions.”
“Ask them.”
“Do you know who did this to you?”
“Nope,” I replied. “They had masks on.”
Even if you hated them, you didn’t rat on the Ironborne or the Shackled Sons. It just wasn’t done.
“Did they say anything to you?”
“Nope. If they did, I don’t remember.”
He nodded. “Do you know why you would be targeted?”
“No idea,” I replied quickly. Probably a little too quickly. “Anything else?”
“Miss…”
The older one stepped forward. I recognised him. He’d spoken to me before about Trey’s drunkenness previously. That had been a bad night. I’d thought Trey could have killed me. Instead, he snapped out of it at the last moment, and made it up to me for weeks after.
Nothing had been the same after that.
We’d separated into different rooms and lived as roommates, but for all intents and purposes, we were still a couple.
I still attended things with him, and he did the same for me.
I helped him through his different addictions he got pulled into, and in turn, we’d become close.
Closer than before, just not sexually, which had driven me crazy.
“If this was…”
“Let me stop you there,” I said as I put my hand up. “This wasn’t Trey. He wasn’t home.”
“It looks like he left town a couple of days ago with a large duffel, on a plane to Western Australia.”
That fucker.
“So you already knew it wasn’t him.”
He nodded. “Yes, but he could still be the cause of it.”
“I have nothing to say, Officer.”
He nodded again, probably because he knew it was a lost cause to come and talk to me, but when he came closer, I stiffened. It hurt my body to do that which told me just how fucked up I was. He pulled something from his pocket, and handed it over to me.
Looking down, I saw the card he’d handed me and scoffed.
Radha Lewis, Domestic Abuse Counsellor
“No thanks,” I spat, offended that he thinks I need help like this. “I’m good.”
“Just take it,” he said, stepping back. “In case. No one needs to know if you ever use it.”
He backed up and left the room. Only when my door closed behind him did I relax back into my pillows. Fuck I was hurting…everywhere. I flicked the card onto the table at the end of my bed and smiled when I saw it land in the middle of the table with just one weak flick.
Yeah, I still got it.
Closing my eyes and relaxing back, I let the morphine do its job.
“Wake up, bitch!”
My eyes opened immediately and I shot up, only to have a sharp pain rocket through my entire body with the action.
“Ah shit, fuck, sorry,” my best friend, Frankie said, easing me back into the pillows. “It was funny in my head.”
“Your head is funny,” I shot back, breathing through the pain.
“Well getting beaten to crap didn’t take away your annoying personality,” she sighed, plonking herself down in the visitor’s chair next to the bed. “So…are we going to talk about this or are we sweeping it under the rug?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Frankie rolled her eyes. She never liked Trey, even back before the bullshit he got involved in. She was my ride or die, and I was hers. Even Trey couldn’t get between that, as much as he did try.
“Bitch, your apartment is ripped to pieces, your body and face look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a boxer on death row, and Trey is nowhere to be found. Tell me it wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t,” I said, as I looked in her eyes.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked, her tone now serious.
“Leave it, Frankie.”
“You know that ain’t going to happen. Do I need to call all my cousins down here, and we find the punk? No one can disappear from my family, believe me.”
I chuckled, surprised it didn’t hurt as much as I was expecting. If anyone could find someone who didn’t want to be found it would be Frankie and her cousins. I loved that woman, but she scared me sometimes when it came to tracking me down.
“Tell me.”
I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t let this go until I gave her something. “Trey’s gotten into some trouble with the Crew. They came looking.”
“And that bastard skipped out?”
“Yeah, I guess he didn’t think they would hurt me. Raf is leading the charge.”
Frankie’s face dropped. Fear wrapped around her like I’d only ever seen once before. I knew bringing her ex-boyfriend up was a bad idea, but I didn’t want her to find out any other way.
“What are you going to do, Ro?” she asked me, her earlier bravado gone.
“I have a plan,” I told her. “But I don’t know when they’re going to release me from here.”
“What is it?”
“I go to the one place they won’t ever try to get to me.”
“Ro…”
“It’s the only place the Crew or even Raf would dare not to cross. I’ll be safe.”
“They’re bikies, Ro.”
“Trey’s dad is the President. He knows me, and I know one of the girls who works at the clubhouse. She’ll give me a job so I have a reason to stay there.”
“Yeah, but even Trey doesn’t tell his Dad shit. He’s not a good guy.”
“He’s always been nice to me. Trey doesn’t tell him things because he’s a fucking addict and his dad would lose his shit if he knew what was happening.”
“And he’s not going to ask you why you’re all bruised and banged up or why you suddenly want to work for the club?” Frankie mused. I hated her logic sometimes, but I knew she was right.
“He’s the prez. He’ll be busy.”
She sighed, knowing I had made my mind up. “I don’t like this, Ro, but I’ll support you. You know that. I’m still going to try and find Trey. He needs to take responsibility.”
“I know,” I admit. “He will come back. He always does. I think he just got scared. He’s not in his right mind.”
Frankie sighed, but I could hear the resignation in it. “Fine. I brought you something to cheer you up, but with the way your jaw is black and blue, I don’t know if you’ll be able to eat it.”
“No way!”
I sat up, ignoring the sharp pain that shot up my back to grab the box from her.
“Girl, you need to relax.”
“I can’t relax when you bring me pastel de nata. Is this your avó’s doing?”
“You know it is,” she sighed. “Woman won’t even make me one. The second she heard you were here, she was packing up her knitting, and heading into the kitchen.”
Oh I loved Frankie’s family. They were so much more welcoming than my own. Her grandmother was so warm and lovely, always feeding me well after I was already full. I pulled the box open and breathed in the delicious custard and pastry treat. My mouth was salivating at the sweet treat.
“I love her. You told her that, right?”
Frankie rolled her eyes. “The nurse looks like she’s about to have a conniption. I better go.”
“I’m surprised she let you bring this in here.”
“You know Tiago. Most women can’t get past his…stupid face.”
I almost inhaled the flaky pastry too fast and choked, turning to see Frankie’s cousin Tiago – the lady killer, as we called him — flirting up a storm at the nurse’s station.
He’d always been a good looking guy, but when he learnt how to charm a girl, we saw a steady stream of girls fall at his feet.
It was too bad I wasn’t into him. It would be so easy to tame that boy into accepting me into the only family who had ever shown me warmth.
The custard of my treat went down smoothly, followed by the pastry and I was in heaven. It was so worth the pain.
“You call me when you need something, yeah?” Frankie asked. “Anything you need. I got your back, bitch.”
I waved her off before she got down on her knees to show her fealty. She would too, just to be a bitch. She blew me a kiss from the door and went to rescue the poor nurses from Tiago’s charm.
Now that she was gone, I missed her. She had made the pain disappear for a moment, but she was right. I needed a plan, and my plan had a lot of holes. I didn’t know Trey’s dad all that much, we’d only met a few times, but he’d always been nice to me. Always.
I knew he loved Trey. He sent him money all the time, but he kept his distance, and I think it’s so he didn’t get in trouble with the Shackled Sons or their enemies.
Too late.
He walked right into enemy territory, and now he fucking owes them money. What were you thinking, Trey?