Flip Trick

  I catch her eyes narrow when she moves her head. “No, I really don’t, but if it’s money you want, I can give it to you. If you let me go now.” This has to have something to do with Maddox. Maybe he pissed someone off in a fight or something, who knows.

  She snorts. “Amethyst, I am your grandmother.”

  My mouth drops open. “What?”

  I fall onto the bed behind me, wincing again from the pain in my head. I press my palm to it, bringing it back down to see blood on my hand. “Oh.”

  Her eyes lift to my head and then come back to mine. “I can get someone to fix that if you want.”

  My lip curls. “Thanks, but I think I’d rather just take my chances.” My stubbornness may just be the death of me. Maddox was right. I swallow, gulping past the pain his name alone rises inside of me. I don’t want to think of him right now.

  She laughs, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. “You know, you’re so much like your mother.”

  “You would know?” I ask, feeling dizzy. Sweat trickles down my face.

  “Well, I guess I wouldn’t really.” She leans backward. “Not anymore.”

  “I’m your grandmother, Amethyst, and your mother hasn’t been entirely honest with you through the years.”

  “That, I believe,” I murmur, then close my eyes and try to calm the pounding of my head.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  “Did you hear me, Amethyst?” she says. She? A voice?

  Who is she? Oh, wait. “What?” My eyebrows pull together.

  “Liza is your sister. She was raised in the MC, with me and her old man. She’s ruined, I no longer have use for her, unfortunately.”

  “Who?” I ask, confused. “Why does my head hurt?”

  I look around aimlessly. Smudged maroon walls, white trimmings. Four-post bed.

  My eyes go to the strange woman on the seat. Her head tilts, confusion warping her ugly features. “Amethyst, I just told you three times. I’m your grandmother.”

  “My grandmother is dead. Where am I?” I ask, getting to my feet. Everything starts spinning so I sit back down. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Silence.

  “Listen,” I say, resting my head on the side of my palm. “I need to get back to school. I have to study, and I have this new dorm chick who I don’t really like because she’s frilly and annoyingly rich and pretentious. I need to leave.” I stand, but everything in my head tips upside down and I crash to the floor with blackness taking me over.

  LIZA

  I may have not been something that my mom wanted as a young girl. I probably wasn’t pretty enough or wasn’t Amethyst enough, but obviously, I wasn’t enough. Because my father wasn’t Jonathan Kelly, that means I didn’t quite make the cut. Attending Columbia was always what I wanted to do, I didn’t mean to run into Amethyst. I didn’t mean to even start being friends with her. I knew she was attending because Gran had told me. I had every intention of staying well away from her. I hated her. I hated her so much it burned through my skin and almost killed me. As I got older, that hatred grew with me. Why wasn’t I enough for my mom? I hated her more than I hated Amethyst. Amethyst I had envied, but our mom, I had despised.

  Talon and I happened, and we happened fast. I met him my first day of Columbia and we hit it off instantly. He was everything that the men I was surrounded with weren’t, but he wasn’t a pussy. He could hold his own, and I’d later find out just how dark his bedroom fantasies were. He was big, tanned, muscled, and had a foul mouth on him. He was everything I wanted without my even knowing it. We started dating, but I told him from the get-go that I wasn’t looking for a man. We were in college, there was no way I was going to end up like half the old ladies at the compound who are locked down with a bunch of kids they initially didn’t want, just for the love of dick. He countered my offer with an open relationship, so I upped his offer by asking if swinging was on the table—it was. Swinging was our Sunday fun day activity, because Sunday is the Lord’s day, so on Sundays, we sin. We started playing around a lot, but inside, my feelings for him grew, and his for me. We could never let each other go.

  But the night Maddox and Amethyst ran into one another, I almost walked away for good. I disappeared that night and went back to the compound to gather my wits. I told my gram that Amethyst might start having a thing with Maddox, Talon’s brother. Gram told me to just go with it. She wouldn’t know who I was—ever. Gram told me that my mom didn’t want me, but that doesn’t mean that I had to hold that hate toward Amethyst, so I went back to Talon and officially met Amethyst. At first, I thought she was weird, uptight and a little snobbish. She wasn’t popular, or anything like that, well, not in an obvious way. She never noticed it, but everywhere she went men would look at her. Women would be snide to her. She wasn’t popular, no, but everyone knew who she was. No one spoke to her though, no one approached her, and I knew why, it’s because Amethyst was elusive. She didn’t have a face that welcomed you. She had a face that made you second guess your existence because she was that fucking perfect. Down to her swollen lips, everything about her was carved to perfection. I was average, so not only did she steal my mom, my life, and the looks, but she obviously had the kind of confidence about her that you can only get from a mom who loves you and a dad who adores and protects you.

  My dad protected me in a different way.

  It was two weeks, and a lot of conversations later that I felt that fire that burned inside of me slowly start to simmer. She wasn’t really a snob, or up herself, she just didn’t care about what was going on around her to pay it any attention.

  Three months later I noticed she was kind, loving and attentive. She adored Maddox and he adored her. She was happy, and annoyingly so, I found that made me happy. I found myself becoming somewhat infatuated with her. How she walked, how she tilted her head back and laughed when Maddox would say something dumb. The way she wiggled her eyebrows in a nerdy way, but it came off as seductive. How not only did every man want her, but every girl hated her, while still respecting her. I was obsessed with her. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to be my sister. I wanted anything and everything she would give me.

  When she and Maddox broke up after Cass came back was the first time I felt fiercely overprotective over something. I never cared enough to give it before, not even with Talon. It’s why our relationship worked so well, but when Maddox left her, I wanted to kill him and bathe in his blood. I wanted to keep in touch with her, but I didn’t think she ever really warmed up to me, or just didn’t care. I bet she didn’t even know my favorite color, but I knew hers, and her birthdate, what she had for lunch the day before and exactly how long it takes for her to eat an apple. I became ferociously obsessed, following her every move on social media. When Wolf and Leila’s wedding came around, I couldn’t wait to get some time with her, hopefully tell her about us, about how we were sisters, but then she dived back into Maddox and then the drama with Travis. When I caught Maddox and Tiffany sucking each other’s face, I had to fight every single instinct inside of me that wanted to knock her the fuck out. I wanted one of the brothers to slit a Chelsea grin across her smug face while I watched. I hated Tiffany but absolutely despised her after that. Thankfully, she wasn’t around much after that because Lei woke up.

  I cough, vision coming in and out. “Wake up!”

  I wake, shaking my head. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but my family will come for you!” I scream, ignoring the blood that’s seeping down the front of my throat from my mouth.

  When Amethyst left after that, I felt empty and moped around a lot. I would soon realize that I was actually in love with Talon, and I lost myself in him. She wasn’t around much when she and Maddox were fighting or separated, or both, so there were only a few times I really got to see her until she and Maddox happened again.

  This morning, I was taken. I knew it was coming eventually, I lived a life that wasn’t sheltered like Amethyst’s life. The roof tha
t kept me warm at night had holes as big as tires. I was somewhat warm, and sometimes sheltered, but there was always that drizzle of rain or that cold whisk of winter’s air that would shiver over me. I wasn’t untouched or protected like she was.

  The men who took me, I notice are from our rivalry MC club. They’ve been at war with my grams and the SAMC for as long as I can remember. Last night Talon and I got into a fight. A big one, about Amethyst. Maddox had told Talon about her and I spilled everything. I told him everything about how I became obsessed with her, wanting to be just like her. We fought, then we fucked, then we fought again. Then he tied me to the bed and made me sit and watch while he fucked another girl. I kneeled, gagged, mascara running down my face, ropes tied around my wrist while he fucked this girl senseless all while watching me. I cried because I loved him, and we hadn’t swung or been with other people in almost a year. This felt like cheating, and it was. He broke my heart when he fucked her savagely, but he shattered my soul when he made love to her.

  After she left, he told me that he and she had been seeing each other for a while now and that I had neglected him by becoming obsessed with my long-lost sister, so in short, she essentially took my one true love too.

  She took everything from me, yet I still would give anything just to have her notice me. To like me. For us to even just be friends, but that would never happen. Not ever. Now I don’t even have Talon.

  “I don’t know what you want.” I tug at the ropes around my wrists. Somewhat similar to the ones Talon had me in last night.

  Talon.

  Did I love him more than I loved Amethyst? No.

  Yes.

  No.

  It doesn’t matter, because now I don’t have either of them. Why was I still thinking of Amethyst in this very moment?

  I’m dirty and unwanted. No one has ever claimed me. My mom, someone who is supposed to be wired to love me by nature herself couldn’t even love me, that’s how unlovable I was. That’s how dirty I was.

  The man laughs. I notice who he is. Gunner Lomoas, the president of Joker’s Love MC. He’s dusty and old, lines penetrating his olive skin. “Aw, sweetcheeks, we don’t want anything.”

  “Listen, my family is going to come for you…”

  “Your family?” He laughs, then stands and shoves a smoke into his mouth. His boots kick up the dusty floorboards, and it’s then that I finally look around. I’m in a basement. “Your family are who put you here, sugar.”

  I’m confused, and my face no doubt displays that.

  He continues. “Your grandma, the evil fucking witch that she is, ordered us to take you.” He blows out a thick cloud of grey smoke and takes a seat on the aged chair in front of me. “To kill you.”

  I swallow. “That’s not true.”

  He chuckles. “Baby girl, it’s true. She wanted us to kill you, or, make you disappear.”

  I shake my head, unable to comprehend what he’s saying as truth. There’s no way she would, she’s my grams. She was the only person I knew wouldn’t disown me like a piece of shit. “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “Listen.” He butts out his smoke. “She did. I have a feeling you don’t know your grams very well.”

  My head bows, tears stream down my face, smudging the dirt from my face. I have no one and nothing to live for. “I trusted her.”

  He leans back in his chair. “Doll, how are you only just waking up to see that Satan’s Angels MC are grub. They’re despicable and the shit on the sole of my shoe. The reason why we’ve been rivaling with them for so long is because they’re uncontrollable.”

  I swallow, letting the tears from my eyes fall down my cheeks. The will to live is lost. I have nothing. No one and nothing. I mean nothing. Not even to people who I thought I meant something to. I’m damaged, broken and the darkness shades my vision so thick that I can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  “Just please make it fast,” I whisper, choking on a sob. I sniff my nose and look up to him. This man who I was raised to fear and to kill if I ever got the chance, blinks back at me.

  “I won’t make it fast, Liza.”

  My stomach feels hollow as those words break out of his mouth. “I understand.” And I did. They’re outlaws, they don’t do anyone any favors.

  “Because I’m not going to kill you, kid.”

  “What?” My head snaps up, my eyes connecting with his. “What do you mean?” Sweat drips down my temple, my eyebrows tugging in.

  He sighs, tossing his cigarette onto the dusty floor and stepping on it with his old military boot. The door opens to the side and someone stands there, but I don’t look because I’m too busy watching this man. This feral man who I had heard had done ghastly things to people, is suddenly not going to kill me. Is he going to rape me? Is that it? It’s no surprise though. As a woman, we are always conscious of rape. We walk down the street at night and do you know what we’re wondering? That’s right. We’re wondering if some sick son of a bitch is going to rape us.

  “Liz?” That voice.

  I turn to the door, my lips trembling. Maybe I’m imagining everything now.

  He steps in closer and that’s when I see him. Is he real? Or am I drugged too? “Talon?”

  He leans down, pulling me into his arms. “It’s me, baby.” He kisses my head and I’m so shocked that I choke on my words. What’s happening? He pulls me to my feet then picks me up, cradling me like a baby. He glares at Gunner. “We good?”

  Gunner nudges his head. “We’re good. Make sure you put in a good word to Maddox for me.”

  Talon sneers. “Sure.”

  Then he carries me out of the room. I close my eyes and tuck my head into his warm neck. I don’t want to see where I am, I half don’t think it’s real. Maybe I’m dreaming, and God is playing a sick joke on me. Talon doesn’t care about me. I feel the sunlight hit my skin and the scent of fresh cut grass and dried leaves hit me all at once. I squeeze my eyes closed from the bright onslaught of the sun. A car door pops open and Talon gently places me into the back.

  “Liza?” It’s Maddox.

  My eyes open when the car starts off. Blue and pink hues throb in and out from the assault on my eyes. “What, Maddox?” I barely croak out, still overwhelmed with everything that’s going on. My gram sent me there to get murdered, but why? I thought she…she raised me. My dad is a sack of shit—everyone knows that. He barely had anything to do with me growing up, so my gram raised me. I thought she loved me. So many memories I have with her, did she fake them all? Did she fake the soft caress her eyes would give me or the strength her arms gave?

  I wipe away the tears. Again. I don— “Amethyst has been taken by Paulette, Liza.”

  I freeze, looking toward Maddox. “What!” My heart pounds in my chest.

  “Yes, do you know where they could be?”

  I nod, ignoring the fact that maybe Talon doesn’t want me, that he probably just wanted me to tell them where Amethyst was. My heart sinks but panic sets in. “I know where they are.”

  MADDOX

  “Stop here,” Liza says, gesturing to the side of the road.

  “This the compound?” I ask, confused by the location. We’re in fucking suburbia. Middle-class family homes. There are playgrounds outside some houses.

  Liza shakes her head, “No.” She looks up at the house, her eyes broken. Liza has always seemed happy, lively, a lot to give and nothing to ask kinda girl. Something happened to her back there, and we will get to the bottom of it, but all I can think about right now is Amethyst. “It’s my dad’s house. They,” she clears her throat. “They use this house as a halfway house. Somewhere where they don’t need to bring heat to the compound if anything goes sour. No evidence there and such.” Her hand goes to her chest and her breathing breaks out harshly as her attention comes to me. “God, Maddox, we need to go in there. Now.”

  I nod my head, then look to Wolf who is beside me, and my dad who is in the passenger seat. “Let’s go.”

  She stops me, ju
st as were all spilling out. “Maddox, they’ll be armed.”

  “Yeah?” Wolf says, and she gets out of the car, shutting the door behind herself. “So are we.”

  Wolf goes to hand me an AR, and I glare at him, and then look to the gun, before looking back at him again. He takes the gun back. “Good point.” Gives it to Liza. “Ever shot one of these before?”

  I’m about to take it off her when she grabs it skillfully and cocks it.

  “I take that as a yes…” Wolf mumbles, grinning at her.

  Talon comes up behind her and swipes her hair off her shoulder. “We’ll talk tonight, ok?”

  She gives him a hard smile. “Ok.”

  Just as we’re about to start walking up to the house, police cars pull up behind us with SWAT stamped across some of the vans. Leila jumps out of the car and runs toward us, wiping the tears from her face. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t let you piss your life away! I called the cops in. I love Amethyst, but you all need to learn when you shouldn’t be taking things into your own hands!”

  Wolf shakes his head, lowering his arm as the officers start screaming at them all to drop their weapons.

  I growl at Leila. Her head bows. “I’m so sorry, Mad, but I can’t. I love Amethyst and she will be safe, she’s too smart not to be, but the police can handle it now.”

  I growl again.

  Talon steps toward her, his lip curled in a sneer. “You promised, Leila…”

  They all drop to the ground, Wolf included.

  “I know.” She fiddles with her thumbs. “But my baby sort of will need her dad and her uncles not in prison.”

  Wolf’s trademark somber scowl slowly lights up. He beams up at her from the ground, just as I drop to my knees. She’s pregnant. Good for them.

  “Holy shit,” Wolf mutters, just as the police and SWAT pass us, guns raised and head for the house. Camera crews are all pulling up with the paparazzi. Wolf continues. “I can’t be a dad.”

  “Both of you shut the fuck up,” I snap, having had enough of their shit.