Chapter 2 – Rory
Walking into the Burning Hounds clubhouse alone was a new experience for Rory Donovan, but he had no one to invite to accompany him.
Although his cousin, CJ, had eased up on his anger and hatred, Rory still wasn’t CJ’s favorite person.
Devon had slid back into his hole now that their secrets were outed, while Ryan, like everyone else, gravitated to CJ.
The bartender spotted him before he reached the bar.
“You’re Johnnie’s kid, aren’t you?” he asked, his name patch identifying him as Jax, an enforcer.
Rory swore he’d heard Mom giggling about a Hound named Jax.
At the thought of his mother, Rory stiffened.
A month or two ago, he’d been firmly on her side, but she’d disappointed him.
No, she’d torn him to shreds when she promised to take him to see Gypsy and then baled with no explanation.
He finally understood his father’s motivations and why he’d turned into such a fuckhead.
It was all on Mom. Sometimes, Rory felt as if he hated her.
“What are you doing here?” Derby’s voice traveled to Rory from behind.
Rory turned, meeting that motherfucker’s gaze and scowling.
Lighting a cigarette before addressing Rory again, Derby smirked at him. “Don’t want to piss off Outlaw, so I’m warning you once. Keep your disrespect to yourself.”
“Don’t you mean my dad?”
Blowing smoke from his mouth, Derby grinned. “If that helps you sleep at night, who am I to burst your bubble?”
Before Rory responded, Derby nodded to a table in the center of the room. “Let’s sit. Bring a setup to my table, Jax.”
Tempering his anger and resentment, Rory followed Derby to the table that afforded the club president a full view of the room in all directions.
Derby sat, then withdrew his pack of cigarettes from his cut, and threw them at Rory. He caught the pack on reflex. “Have a smoke. It’ll relax you.”
Not necessarily. Rory had smoked more than his fair share of cigarettes since Gypsy’s death. Most of the packs he’d stolen from Dad’s stash.
Instead of immediately questioning Rory, that fucking asshole waited until Jax delivered a bottle of bourbon before he spoke again.
“Are you going to sit, Rory?”
“This isn’t a social visit,” Rory spat around a huff of smoke that burned his eyes and nose.
“It can’t be anything else.” Derby guzzled from the bottle, his gaze never leaving Rory’s face. “It especially can’t be about my woman.”
“You have no fucking right to call her that,” Rory said, low, offended on Gypsy’s behalf that the motherfucker claimed her now when he’d ignored her when she’d been alive.
“I have every right. She was with me long before you shot out of Johnnie’s cock. She didn’t want you. She wanted me.”
Tears pricked Rory’s eyes and he stormed to where Derby sat, looming over him. The president didn’t flinch.
“You okay, Prez?” one of the motherfuckers at the bar called.
Derby drank again. “Just fine. Just a young buck getting a little steam off his chest.” He pointed the neck of the bottle to the chair he pushed from under the table with his booted foot. “Sit, Rory. I’m not telling you again before I make you sit in that motherfucker.”
“You can’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
“So true.” Derby sat the bottle on the table. “Not if I don’t want my ass shot off for fucking you up. But I can call Outlaw, so it’s your choice.”
Uncle Christopher wouldn’t take too kindly to Rory’s excursion. The idea of his anger was the only reason Rory sat.
“Now, tell me what the fuck you want, before my girls come in.”
Derby showed no indication he felt the grief Rory had experienced since Gypsy’s death just days ago. He still wore the same hard disregard Rory had seen for as long as he remembered. The same callousness that had him cremate Gypsy and cancel her celebration of life.
“I want Gypsy’s ashes,” Rory announced. He’d come to confront Derby, call him a dozen motherfuckers on Gypsy’s behalf, but it wouldn’t do any good. “You don’t deserve them.”
“And you do, boy?”
Rory hoped his look conveyed his deep hatred.
His lower lip trembled. Nothing eased his grief.
He had no one to talk to and help him. He was angry with Mom and everyone else was angry with him.
Dad thought Gypsy was a pathetic joke, so he wouldn’t care about Rory’s devastation.
“I loved her. You didn’t give a fuck about her.
We were planning to honor her and you canceled it, you fucking asshole. ”
Regret flickered across Derby’s face before his expression closed and he shrugged. “My prerogative.”
“Are you sure?” An idea hit Rory and he decided to throw it at Derby just so he’d get a reaction. “Maybe you wanted to do something for her, but you knew how important it was to Aunt Meggie.”
His dislike of Uncle Christopher’s wife wasn’t a secret.
Nostrils flaring, Derby clenched his jaw and glanced away.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You cremated her and—”
“I cremated her because I couldn’t bear to see her in a fucking casket,” he snarled, glaring at Rory, pain sliding across his face as quickly as the regret had. “Just a corpse. Taken from me by a little motherfucker who died too fucking easy. It had nothing to do with Meggie.”
Rory poked out his lower lip, his upset stomach threatening to reject the burger he’d shoved down his throat before he headed to Derby’s clubhouse.
He’d rode his bicycle to the mall, locked it to a rack, eaten lunch, and then called an Uber.
He doubted Mom knew he was gone. She’d holed herself in her office and didn’t care about anything except her self-pity.
Shoving back from his chair, Derby got to his feet. “Come with me.”
Rory’s shoulders slumped and he bowed his head, refusing to move.
“Now, Rory.”
Suddenly too exhausted to argue, Rory followed the tall, rangy man through a door next to the stage with the pole in the middle. It was Derby’s office, though their destination was on the other side of the door behind the desk—the conference room.
Or what had been the conference room. At the moment, it was a shrine to Gypsy.
Pictures of her covered the table and the walls.
Her ‘Property of Derby’ cut hung on a mannequin next to the chair at the head of the table.
Her favorite boots stood near a cabinet with an elaborate urn surrounded by more photos and some of her jewelry and hair clips.
“If you open your fucking mouth about this, I will break you in two,” Derby warned in a thick voice.
Swallowing, Rory walked around the room, stopping to gaze at a photo or pick one up, pausing at her cut but not touching it because it would be disrespectful. He didn’t hesitate to kneel and hug one of her boots to his chest, bursting into tears.
“I’m so sorry, Gypsy,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” If he would’ve opened his fucking mouth, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten killed. She’d still be alive and miserable, searching for someone to make Derby jealous and keep his attention.
A hand settled around his shoulder. Derby was kneeling next to him. Rory glanced up, surprised to see the tears sliding down his cheeks.
“I wouldn’t have been able to hold my shit together, kid.
The minute Meggie and Bunny cried, I would’ve lost it and remembered all the times I should’ve been nicer to Gypsy…
” He sighed. “Emotions are so fucking…” Another sigh.
“Fucked. It was years since Gypsy and me got along, where I wanted to show her off or…anything.”
“Gypsy said you always cheated on her.”
He nodded. “I did. That’s why Meggie hates me.”
Rory swiped his cheeks. “No, she hates you for always trying to make Uncle Christopher cheat.”
“It’s a combination,” Derby conceded. He stood and held his hand out to help Rory to his.
“Outlaw protects her pussy as much as she polices his cock. I didn’t want Gypsy around Meggie because she’d come back with ideas of love and romance in her head.
Outlaw didn’t want Meggie around Gypsy because of the way Gyp pitched pussy. He thought it might rub off on Meggie.”
“My aunt will never cheat.”
Walking to his seat next to Gypsy’s cut, Derby nodded again. “I’m sure he knows that, but when a man loves a woman as much as Outlaw loves Meggie, rationality goes out the fucking window.”
“I love Gypsy like that.” At Derby’s smile, Rory flushed. “Loved,” he amended. “Did you ever love her at all?”
“I didn’t realize my feelings for her until Outlaw called and said Wally, Jr. killed her.”
Rory sniffled and wiped his cheeks. “That motherfucker attacked my little sister, too.”
“He wanted any girl or woman associated with the Death Dwellers, Rory,” Derby reminded him. “How would you have felt if your mom or your sister was killed? Meggie or Rebel? Bunny?”
“It doesn’t make Gypsy’s death any easier—”
“No,” Derby agreed. “But she didn’t die in vain. Her death protected two women, Meggie and Bunny, who loved her and would’ve given their lives to protect her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Meggie,” Derby told him quietly. “I…she would’ve stood up to Wally, Jr., and tried to get Gypsy away. Bunny would’ve, too. Then that motherfucker would’ve shot the fuck out of both of them…all three of them if they were together. Would you have preferred that?”
“Of course not, but I didn’t want Gypsy dead.” Rory set Gypsy’s boot next to the other one and made it to a seat at the table, close to Derby’s chair. “You sound as if…as if…” He didn’t know. It just wasn’t something he liked.
“As if what? I don’t care? I’m brushing off her death and going on about my life? Gypsy and I were apart more than we were together in the last year and a half. She wanted what I couldn’t give her. Monogamy.”
“Because you didn’t want to,” Rory said bitterly. “I’ll bet you didn’t even think she was pretty anymore.”
“Not compared to what she once was,” Derby said. “She was so busy trying to police me, she forgot about herself. Who wants a fucking woman like that?”
Rory started to cry. “You didn’t deserve her.”
“And you were too young for her. I couldn’t believe she stooped that fucking low.”