Chapter 10 #2
Melanie wouldn’t have been carrying. Firearms weren’t allowed on campus, and even if they were, she wouldn’t have had time to draw. She’d been caught out in the open with no cover, the perfect target.
Griffin Shaw was the most wanted man in the underworld now, but it was hard to hunt a man who had been trained by one of the best espionage agencies in the world.
It wasn’t just the Via Daemonia after him either.
Non Cras was hunting him, as were the Mountain Mutineers.
Jack, the other Jack, had called to personally convey his condolences and to apologize for pulling his Mutineers off Melanie months ago.
Steel didn’t blame Jack, though. Melanie’s protection hadn’t been his responsibility; it had been Steel’s.
Word spread. A chapter of the Royal Bastards in Atlantic City, New Jersey, had reached out.
Their President, Aero, had offered their hand in not only friendship but also assistance to hunt Shaw down.
It wasn’t just Tri-State area clubs calling Ghost either.
He’d gotten messages from clubs from the midwest and west coast too.
The Fallen Spades MC in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, had a connection to both the Royal Bastards in Atlantic City and also a chapter in Los Angeles, California.
Like a wildfire, news that a former President’s daughter had been gunned down at her college was causing a nationwide uproar.
Kids were off limits. Kids were to be protected.
The Brothers of Chaos out of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, offered to ride north when needed.
Both chapters of the Steel Archangels MC in Forest Creek and Junction Creek, Wisconsin, had called in their support.
As had the Knights Wrath MC from Toketee Creek, Washington, and a new club from Watson, Oregon, the Norse Rebels MC.
Numerous Saint’s Outlaws chapters, including Ravell, Pensacola, and Lake Haven, reached out.
Both Las Vegas and San Antonio chapters of the Lotus MC rallied, along with the Queens Wraiths MC from Rockfall, Minnesota and the AZ Demons from Hillvale, Arizona.
Blood and vengeance were riding high through the MC world.
The news even traveled across borders, reaching Canada, Alaska, and Mexico.
They all wanted to help. They all wanted a piece of the action, a part in the hunt.
Ghost had not burned any bridges, but he also had not encouraged action.
They would take information, not body parts. This was the Via Daemonia’s battle.
As their sister club, Non Cras was the only one who had a stake in this fight.
Sissy was Scissors’ wife, Lucky’s daughter, and Melanie’s cousin.
All of them—Poison, Scissors, Wendigo, Phoenix, Viper, Tabs, and Gypsy, along with their Knightmares, Kitty, Ghost, Sissy, Benjamin, and Waya—were already riding northeast to be at the VDMC’s side.
Since leaving last year, only Scissors and Sissy had been back over the holidays.
Now they were riding like the hounds of hell were on their wheels.
It had barely been a week since Melanie had been taken from this world.
The club was wearing black bands on their left biceps, and they were preparing for war.
All while Steel stood here in this frozen room, looking down at his daughter’s corpse.
She would never laugh again, never sing, never dance as badly as her mother, never make Bambi eyes to try to get her way…
She would never find love, never settle down and raise a family, never celebrate another holiday, a birthday, or a milestone…
She would never graduate college and start her career, never fix a broken system or fight for an unwanted child, never feel the satisfaction of knowing she’d righted a wrong…
She would never smile again.
Steel knew from watching the college’s surveillance video that she’d been hit in the chest. Two bullets, both piercing her heart. It wasn’t an instant death. She would have laid there as her murderer sped away, knowing she was going to die. Alone, scared, and unable to do anything to save herself.
In the movies and television shows, bullets tend to stop when they enter a person.
And while some do, that was not the case with Melanie.
The bullets had exited her and entered Rodney Baldwin’s guts.
He might have had a chance of survival, but they were on a sidewalk.
Bodies didn’t dramatically settle on the ground.
When they dropped, they tended to drop. When the bullets had hit Rodney, he’d gone down on the set of stairs leading up into the dorm building.
His neck had been broken by the force of the fall.
Shaw had gone after one life and ended up taking two. Rodney Baldwin was dead, all because he’d had the poor timing to bump into Melanie and had offered to walk her home. He’d died for his chivalry.
The white sheet that covered her from the chest down concealed her body’s fatal wounds, but Steel needed to see. He needed to know. He needed to memorize.
The coroner’s assistant stepped forward, making a protesting sound as Steel reached for the sheet.
The man had been respectfully quiet up until that moment.
Steel’s gaze, though, made the man freeze, halting his protest. Perhaps it was the deadness, how Steel was still physically alive but no heart beat inside him.
Some might take issue with Steel revealing his barely legal daughter’s chest as she lay cold and lifeless on a metal slab with not even a pillow to cushion her head.
Steel didn’t give a fuck though. Not everything needed to be sexualized.
He would do the same if it were his son who lay in his daughter’s place.
Two holes still adorned her body. She hadn’t been transferred to a mortician yet.
There had only been a slight delay in standard funeral proceedings due to the police investigation.
It wasn’t a mystery how she died, though evidence had still been collected.
The funeral home would come to collect her tomorrow to prepare for the service.
Shaw had gotten her heart. Tap, tap, ripping and tearing the organ apart.
It would have still been futilely pumping as she hit the ground in a desperate bid to continue living.
She never would have stood a chance. It wouldn’t have mattered if a doctor had been present or if someone had called 911 sooner.
Her fate was sealed the moment Shaw had pulled that trigger.
Steel carefully pulled the sheet back up, this time going as far as to bring it over her head. The action reminded him of countless bedtime stories, and checking for monsters under the bed, and tucking her in, and nighttime prayers.
A single tear escaped, dragging itself slowly down his weathered cheek, through his closely cropped beard, over his chin, and down, down onto the pristine white sheet.
Jenna was not okay. She’d crossed the threshold of no return.
The sudden and extreme flare-up she’d experienced when Jack told her what had happened to Melanie had not been a pseudo-exacerbation.
It had been the real deal, and so severe that Tessa had had to sedate her intravenously.
She hadn’t been knocked unconscious, and it sure as fuck did not stop the pain.
Due to the respiratory concerns of her condition, she had to be hospitalized and monitored closely.
Ollie and Aaron were discharged the following morning. Aaron’s surgery was a success and he had a brand-new green cast for his heroics. Ollie had chosen a rainbow-colored cast. He was going to be wheelchair bound for the first few days and then could use crutches.
Carter and Lucy arrived with Drew, and then Jordan had appeared. He’d been at a concert the night of Ollie’s accident and Melanie’s murder, which was why he hadn’t answered his phone when Lucky had called him.
Louisa, Harper, Tessa, Abby, Jasmine, Cage, Paige, Sophia, Tally, Dosia, and Calliope did not leave her side for a moment while she was hospitalized.
Jenna loved her fellow ol’ ladies. They could never replace her sister, Caroline, but they were her sisters, nonetheless.
Despite being male and a member of the club, Cage had become an honorary ol’ lady.
It had started out as a joke but now had become the norm.
He was even in their Ol’ Ladies Only group text chat, and he didn’t mind when he got mixed in with the collective wording of ‘the ladies’ or ‘club sisters’.
Normally there was talking and jokes and laughter and wine when they were all together. But now no one seemed to know what to say, and the silence was both painful and a relief. None of them knew her pain, and she prayed, none of them ever would.
No mother should have to suffer this.
But the silence was shattering. It made the pain worse and her grief stronger. She prayed, Lord did she pray. She tried everything, made every bargain with the universe that she could, but nothing worked. Her baby was still gone.
The worst part, though, was Jack’s absence. Her flare-up continued even after she was discharged. Lilly arrived, and Carter, Jordan, Ollie, and Lucy had not left her side either. She was surrounded by her family and friends—but not her husband.
He would stop in to see her like she was an old friend getting over the flu. He made sure she didn’t want for anything and was as comfortable as she could be. And then he was gone again. Going somewhere, doing something, that was not being with her.
Jenna had once believed that nothing could ever pull Jack from her side.
Even when he’d been deployed to the other side of the world from her, she felt closer to him than she did following the death of their daughter.
He wasn’t Jack right now, not her Jack at least. He was cold, distant, and he refused to touch her.