15. Vandal
VANDAL
Six hours later, I still can’t get how pretty Daisy looked in that sundress out of my head. But unfortunately, the reel is interjected with the soundtrack of her telling me how I can’t even look after myself and asking me if I’d been drinking.
Which is ironic seeing as I was on a bunch of pain pills when I saw her.
And since I came back to the clubhouse after seeing her, I drank enough that Knox benched me from even attempting to ride out with them tonight.
Now all I’m left with is the regret of feeling like every last thing has slipped out of my fingers.
Because I’ve tried to quit.
Four times.
Thought it would be as easy as just not drinking or not taking pills. But nothing prepared me for the way it felt. How my skin itched and the world spun and how every hurdle sent me hurtling to the nearest bottle.
My gun sits on the table next to me in my room at the clubhouse as I nurse a glass of vodka. The number of times that SIG has saved my life is countless. And there are many bodies out in the world with bullets in them from that specific gun.
It doesn’t leave this room much anymore, because I’m one ballistic test away from being linked to too many murders. But tonight I’m looking at it like it might be my own salvation. I pick it up, the weight cold and heavy in my hand.
It’s even colder when I press it to my temple.
I close my eyes and take a breath as I wonder what would happen if I squeezed the trigger.
For a fleeting moment, it’s who would miss me, but quickly switches to the logistics of cleanup.
And how Havoc would blame himself. He’s already beating himself up.
He was meant to come to Mom’s with me that evening I was attacked, but Knox asked him to do something, so he canceled.
As my hands shake, I force myself to visualize him walking into the room to find my dead body. But it’s the image that he has Daisy and Elsie with him that forces me to put the gun down.
I don’t want any of this to touch that lovely little girl and her mom who…
“Fuck,” I mutter, dragging my hand over my face.
What the hell am I thinking? Just when I think I’ve hit the bottom, I fall a few flights more.
I empty the chamber and bullets, shove the gun back into the box it came from, then slam it into my drawer and lock it.
I place the ammo in a drawer on the other side of the desk and lock that too.
Maybe keeping them separated will be enough of a pause if I ever feel like this again.
On unsteady legs, I wander back to the bar. The clubhouse is a cornucopia of everything I want. There’s more alcohol than there is water in the Bay of Biscayne. The medical room is a buffet of pills, and if I could get my limp whiskey dick to pay attention, I could fuck any number of women.
In other words, it’s everything I need and more right now. I tap the bar top and order a beer from the prospect behind it.
“Motherfucking cunts,” Knox swears as he storms into the clubhouse followed by the rest of the club. North marches in behind him, face like thunder. Sunny’s hands are shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched.
Everything says the pick-up of the weapons went wrong.
And even though the clubhouse is swimming in alcohol, there isn’t enough to fill the pit inside my soul that says something went wrong and I wasn’t there to help.
Because I’m this club’s protector. I have their backs. I take the falls.
And now I can’t.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why I thought a bullet to the temple was the answer tonight.
“What happened, Prez?” I say.
Knox ignores me as he storms by, heads into church, tugs out his chair, then picks it up, and throws it against the wall.
“Fucking Alvarez,” Havoc says, glumly, as he squeezes my shoulder.
Alvarez.
Tell me what you know, Vandal. No one in your club is coming for you. Haven’t even noticed you’re missing.
That guy’s slimy voice is ingrained in my brain forever. Even now, I roll my neck, bringing my shoulder to my ear to try to block the sound of it.
“He was there?” I ask.
Havoc shakes his head. “They got there before us and took everything. Let’s go.”
I get up from my seat at the bar and follow him into church. We follow Lock, who has equally slumped shoulders. And Sunny, who isn’t smiling or joking.
Ridge gets to Knox’s chair first and rights it. It’s left dents in the wall. Suppose if I’m no good for a ride out, I can take up fixing shit in the clubhouse.
Reaper slaps Lock’s back when he folds his arms on the table and drops his head to them. Lock knows better than any of us what losing that delivery means. He’s already thinking in terms of profit and loss and payouts that many of the guys were waiting for.
“How the fuck did they know?” Knox asks. The man looks close to popping a vein. It pulses on the side of his forehead as his jaw grinds. It’s rare that a raw fury gets the better of him. He’s usually measured, even in the roughest of situations.
“It must be a rat,” Reaper says.
“Again?” Sunny asks. “We only just got rid of one.”
“Can someone fill me in?” I ask. I hate drawing attention to the fact I wasn’t there, but maybe if I knew a little more, I could be part of the solution.
North looks to Knox, who tips his chin to give him the go-ahead.
“When we got there, the boat was still tied up, and the two guys were having a cigarette. They’d gotten in an hour earlier and were met by the Outlaws.
Men dressed in our fucking leather cuts.
With our names on them. They said they shook Knox’s hand.
They said that was the name on the guy’s cut. ”
“Fuck,” I mutter. Ballsy move wearing patches that don’t belong to you.
Bikers will enforce the meaning of their patches with a passion and violence most people don’t understand.
You don’t get to wear colors you didn’t earn.
You don’t get to pretend to be a brother if you didn’t prove your worth.
It’s the biker equivalent of stolen valor.
“They took the whole shipment?” I ask.
Knox looks up at me, eyes narrowed. “Yeah. They took the whole fucking shipment…along with our fucking credibility.”
I hear the undertone, whether he means it or not. Which is, Shut the fuck up, Vandal. You weren’t there. You didn’t do shit. You have no opinion on what happened tonight, so stop fucking questioning what went down.
I look around the table, at my brothers’ desolate faces. There is none of the usual gallows humor. But somehow I can’t stop myself from asking more. “Did you try to follow them or get a lead on them? Maybe you could have caught up with them?”
North raises an eyebrow. “How do you suggest we should have done that, Van? They’d been gone thirty minutes by the time we got there. Could have been anywhere. You want us to split up and peel off in ten different directions, then take them on solo once we caught up to them?”
I shake my head. “We know they’re based in Miami, so their safe routes would lead from there. You could have—”
“Van,” Knox says, sternly. “I get it. You want to help. But suggesting we didn’t make the right call is fucking insulting, brother.”
The because you weren’t there is silent and implied…again.
The room drops into silence for a minute. No one speaks. Sunny fidgets. North drums his fingers on the table. Then Knox stands, takes a deep breath, and leaves the room. None of us move. Knox hasn’t called this impromptu meeting to a close.
The itch is back beneath my skin. I need an escape from the pressure pounding at my skull. I’m not sure what’s worse, the thought that I wasn’t there to help my brothers, or the fact that if I had been, I still wouldn’t have been able to fix it.
When Knox returns, he’s got a bottle of whiskey and a stack of glasses. He lines them up in silence, then pours one glass after another in a straight line.
Then he personally hands them out around the table. I take mine with a nod. But as if sensing my thoughts, especially the ones in my room earlier, he places his hand on my head for just a moment.
For an equally short moment, I embrace the feeling that Knox is the father I never had.
“Tomorrow, we turn over every fucking rock to find out how they knew,” Knox says as he hands the final glass to Ridge. “Because if we don’t close that off, then we still leave ourselves open to someone else stepping in. But for tonight, I’m proposing a toast, to the death of Alvarez.”
“Death of Alvarez,” I mutter before I take the whiskey and knock it back in one large mouthful. It barely registers given the amount of alcohol I’ve been consuming lately.
“Put a hold on the transition of hangarounds to prospects until we’ve figured this out,” Knox says. “I need to call King and let them know that the weapons aren’t headed their way.”
“Not gonna look good on us,” North says.
“You think?” Knox asks, the sarcasm thick.
North raises his hands. “Just thinking out loud, Prez. We should figure out a reparation for our brothers.”
Knox shakes his head. “Shit happens. They know that. Plus, they took a shit ton of weapons from the raid we did on Alvarez’s delivery.
It was always a possibility that they’d try to come for us again.
Always thought they’d bring the military-grade rocket launcher and aim it straight at the club door, though. ”
I think about the raid we did on Alvarez’s delivery. We’d had seven days to figure out how to put an end to the war he was building between us. I try to think about the problem logically. “Wait. Alvarez had time.”
“What?” Knox asks.
“You said the captain of the boat told you he thought he was meeting the Outlaws,” I say. “Alvarez’s men needed time to mimic our cuts and get them made. There’s a wholesaler somewhere who made them, unless any of Alvarez’s men are good at embroidery.”
“That’s a good point, Van,” Lock says. “Could have been the one we use for our patches…or maybe they had the designs recreated somehow if they had a photograph of it.”