“You found something, didn’t you?” Zach asks.
“Sure fucking did, brother.”
I grin and hold my fist out for him to bump. It’s been a long fucking time, but he grins and bumps my fist with his.
“Man, I enjoyed that.”
“Me too.”
It’s been too long since I had a scrap and being able to walk away, I think we did very fucking well.
“Take a look at the guy.”
I toss him my phone and speed up to miss the light change.
“No fucking way.”
The colour drains from his face and the rough tone fades from his voice as he takes in the new president of the Black Crows.
“This can’t be right.”
“I’m betting it is and Harper has a lot to answer for when we get back. Let me talk to her first before you take this to Cas, he’s a fair man but with the attack on the club and a death threat on Leo’s head, he might not believe anything she says from now on.”
“She’s his daughter, he won’t do much to her,” he points out and I realise he’s right.
“Still, I’ll talk to her before I go to him.”
I need to know what she’s playing at before anyone else.
Harper
I’m starving and working out if I actually need food to survive. I ate this morning, I could go till tomorrow staying in my room. At least I won’t have to bump into Cas, or Alannah, or his sons. But then, my stomach growls, screaming it’s not waiting another minute and I inhale deeply, and slide into my boots. I open the door and JJ is standing there with his fist up, ready to pound on the wood.
“I swear, I see you more now that we’re not having sex than when we were.”
I was meant to be sarcastic, but it falls flat when I can feel his anger blasting me from two feet away.
“Who attacked you?”
I used to love a good fight with JJ, I could hold my own in a shouting match with him and I could always keep the tears back until after left me alone.
I’ve pushed him before and he always kept the lightness in his tone. There is no light in him tonight.
“I don’t know.”
Another lie, they come so easily these days. Everything is based on lies, I was born in a lie, no wonder they slip off my tongue so fluidly.
“Last chance? Who the fuck hurt you? Who was the guy with the crow tattooed on his back?”
He’s so cold. My shoulders sag. He knows and yet he’s going to make me say it.
“Tell me the truth, last chance.”
They will blame me for sure, Ellis came to the club to see me. I can’t tell them.
“Fine, I’ll tell Cas and he can drag the truth from you.”
How can he be so low? He’s already heading towards the stairs before I can move and catch up to him. He can’t say anything. By the time I catch up to him, he’s halfway down the stairs.
“Please, don’t,” I beg him.
“You won’t talk to me, I have to, he’s my president and he needs to know.”
That may be, but with Lily broadcasting he’s my real dad, I can’t bring him anymore headaches.
“Don’t make me say it if you already know.”
He softens, looking a little guilty and doesn’t try to walk off, but it’s too late.
“What do I need to know?”
We both look down and Cas is standing at the foot of the stairs watching us.
Panic starts to rise dramatically, and my hands shake. I don’t know what happened today or how JJ knows about Ellis, but I really don’t want to relive this. However, it’ll be better for me to tell my side before JJ tells them who knows what.
“One of us has to tell him.”
“Someone better tell me something, I’m running out of patience here.”
I tell myself it will be better coming from me if I must talk to him, so I step down the rest of the stairs and look up at Cas, the man who fathered me, and never knew about me. I don’t share any features with him, none that I recognise.
“I know who attacked me,” I brave it up and tell him.
His jaw tenses and then he exhales and says, “Then sit your ass down and spit it out.”
JJ is at my back before I can move and nudges me forward to the table I see Cas always sitting at when he’s around.
He takes a seat to my left and Cas sits to my right. “Harper has more information for us,” he tells someone over my shoulder, and I look around to see it’s my uncle. He doesn’t acknowledge Cas and sits down opposite us. He stares, like everyone is, waiting to hear what I have to say.
“So, who was it?” Cas comes out and asks, getting straight to the point.
“Before I tell you, you have to believe I didn’t know until I was at the motel.”
Christ, my heart is racing hard and it’s making me feel dizzy.
“Know what, sweetheart? Start talking, please,” Slade urges.
Dropping my eyes, I say, “Ellis, he’s the president who attacked me.”
I can’t bear to watch them change in front of me. Only Slade knows who he is.
“That name means absolutely nothing to me,” Cas sighs. “I need more than that.”
“Are you serious?” Slade asks next.
I nod as JJ passes him his phone. Before Slade turns it so I can’t see the screen, I catch a glimpse of Ellis’s tattoo and him posing for the picture and then it’s gone.
“Will someone fuckin’ tell me who this prick is?” Cas yells, holding his hand out for the phone.
“Ellis was a porter at Blue Waters.”
“So what, he got himself a job just to get to her?” Cas wants to know.
“Seems like it, but that’s not all,” JJ warns.
“Of course it isn’t, it never fuckin’ is,” Cas sighs.
“He showed up here the day before Harper was taken.”
A frostiness descends around us as Cas takes in his audacity and I’ve never been so scared of him. He looks lethal.
“Are you telling me that he walked right into my club, under all our noses and used Harper to do it?”
The uproar begins, and brothers fly out of their chairs and gather around closer. Their disgust and rage is so palpable, I can feel it. It doesn’t matter how close JJ sits next to me, I’m not sure he can hold back every brother here.
“You brought him into our club?” Ricky growls at me and I shrink into my seat.
“No!”
“Hey, she didn’t know who he was until it was too late,” JJ snaps, jumping to his feet.
Closing my eyes, I regret everything that led me here to this moment. I didn’t ask for my mom to feel safe coming to her brother in a biker club. I didn’t ask for JJ to take it upon himself to defend me when a couple of months ago he didn’t care what I got up to.
“Cas, I swear to you, I didn’t know who he was before. I don’t know who the two guys were who grabbed me, but the third guy who attacked me was Ellis. He wanted me to be his old lady and deliver the message on his arm, but when I refused, that’s when he said I had to bleed when I gave you the information on Leo.”
He softens, and I partially relax.
“Did anything else happen? This is the time to get it out if it did.”
“No, that’s it.”
I realise no one was listening, they are more interested in arguing over Ellis and what they want to do to him. Cas sighs and the weight of the club is heavy on him. He nods once and jerks his chin towards the stairs.
“You might want to go spend the evening in your room. I’ll calm the brothers down.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet, if I find out you’re keeping anything else from me it won’t matter if I’m your dad, I’ll be worse than Ellis and I won’t even have to land a finger on you.”
I’ve come to realise threats and violence are what threads through these clubs. When we first got here, the club wasn’t like this, but the first thing to come out of someone’s mouth if something was wrong
was a threat.
Pushing out of my chair, I head for the stairs not interested in what the rest of them are arguing about. I know it’s JJ’s hand clamping around my upper arm before I’m spun around, and I see the concern on his face.
“Don’t listen to what any of the brothers have to say, they’re just pissed because of Ellis. Once they’ve cooled down, they’ll know this isn’t on you.”
I soften because his first thought was to come after me. He’s changing so much, yet he’s still him. I don’t think it’s possible to fall any harder, but I do.
“Thanks.”
I’ve never thanked him before. He nods, and I choose to leave it on a good point.
“Goodnight, JJ.”
I make it to the third step before I hear. “Sleep well, Harper.”
JJ
It’s becoming a habit watching Harper walk away from me. Her back, as curvy and appetizing as it is, makes me feel like I’m not going to see her face again. I wonder if that’s how she felt all those times I left her when she wanted me to stay.
Anger is whipping around me and for the love of god, I can’t place any anger towards her. Sure, I was pissed when I first saw that photo, but seeing her and the pleading in her eyes, I can’t bring myself to blame her for hiding him from us. It sucks but I get it.
Cas still has my phone and puts it down. Once Harper is out of my sight, I turn on my heels and push through the mutterings of violence and threats of death.
I scoop my phone up from the table and the screen lights up with the photo of Ellis. It’s strange, his face is the same face he wore when he showed up here, but the grin for the camera changes his appearance completely.
He wouldn’t have shown Harper this smile, she would’ve seen the evil lurking behind it for sure. A bad feeling sweeps over me as it registers that we’re not dealing with someone who will takes shots for shots. This grin tells us more about him than anything we could find on his history that Slade can pull up on his computer.
Why would he warm to Harper? He went a long way to get a job at her facility and he even took risks walking into the club to see her. It’s like he’s in love with her. I’m not feeling this at all. I can’t believe Lily thought he was good for her daughter. Pathetic. I can’t believe I thought he was good for her. Double pathetic.
“Mother chapter, in the back room, now,” Cas yells and brothers start moving.
I’m already taking my seat before most of the brothers walk in and take their seats. Ricky wheels Pope in and I look away. He freaks me out, not his ever-loving and soft personality, it’s his frailty that scares me. Up till a few years ago, he looked the same as he did in all the photos my mom has, slight greying taking hold over the years, but he walked around, he rode his bike no matter how long the ride was. Now, he stares at his bike and I haven’t seen him take a step in a few months now. Old age crept up and kicked his ass, very fucking fast, especially after Sally died a few years ago. When she went, his health declined.
One day he was up and the next, he was down. Cas bangs the gavel on the table and everyone falls silent.
“As much as I wish Harper told us everything when she first came back, she didn’t, and I don’t want to hear any of you have said anything to her.”
I wasn’t expecting that and by the looks on my brothers faces, nor were they.
“To be fair, brother, she could’ve saved us a lot of time and resources if she had been up front with us,” Dad puts in.
“To be fair, brother, she’s taken quite a fuckin’ beating because of one of us, and she chose a beating over him. She could’ve played it differently and got away somehow but she didn’t.”
Dad shakes his head, not agreeing with him.
“You’re going soft, Cas. Don’t forget there’s a threat against your boy’s life, anything she could’ve told us, she should have.”
“The threat was there before he got to Harper,” Leo pipes up. “Plus, she’s his daughter, he’s not going soft.”
A stiff moment passes between father and son and Leo is the first to look away. The softness around Cas fades and a hard wall comes up.
“Regardless,” he snaps, clearly not happy. “We’ve heard it all from her, now I want to know what happened today. Zach, JJ, care to share?”
Cas looks between us and I speak up first.
“You wanted information on the tattoos, and we got them,” I shrug.
“What he means to say is, he walked into the studio and scoped out the photos on the walls while I fucked about with the cute receptionist.”
“What about the cracked knuckles?” Slade asks, looking over his son’s hands.
“They didn’t like JJ take the photos, one wrong word led to another, and then another, and then we had to defend ourselves.”
So matter of fact, and I hold back a grin that he isn’t giving way that it was me who started the fight.
Dad cocks his eyebrow, staring at me and I shrug, again.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he sighs.
“Harper is back and she’s safe. It’s now time we concentrate on Ellis, now we know who he is,” Leo says, and Cas smothers a smile taking a drag on his unlit cigarette.
“Find out everything on him, I want everything there is to know,” he orders Slade, just like Lily asked him to do.
“Done,” he grunts, not making eye contact.
“Now, it’s time we discuss the twins patching in.”
For the first time in too many days, I’m genuinely feeling good. Ricky raps his knuckles against the table and hollers and Pope slams his hand against the wood.
“About damn time, brother.”
“Rick, go get your boys. It’s time to vote.”
Ricky is out of his chair quick time. Patching sons into the club is a big thing to the old guys and Pope would’ve patched in the twins when they learned to walk if he could.
I don’t know what he would’ve done if Kyla had all girls, as much as he loves and dotes on Victoria, it’s the twins who are the pride in his heart, as fucked in the head as they are.
They bundle into the room with cocksure grins on their faces, and both hold their heads high as they stand between their dad and grandpa.
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to have grandparents, somewhere you can go when your mom and dad piss you off or having extra set of parents who want to spoil you with gifts and their time.
My grandma on my dad’s side was a junkie whore by all accounts, who left my dad when he was a kid and my grandpa on my mom’s side was the notorious president of the Raging Riders motorcycle club, who made my mom’s life a misery and was then killed by Leo’s great uncle Michael, who in turn also died that day by Pope’s hand for his betrayal to Alannah. If you don’t keep up, you’d get lost in the memories.
“Mason, Myles, you’ve been prospecting for us for…not that long,” Cas smirks, and carries on. “You think because your granddaddy and your dad are patched in brothers, you have your feet straight in the door, but I’m here to tell you that’s not the case.”
The mood in the room dips dangerously low in the space of a breath and the twins lose the smugness.
“Cas,” Pope warns, and Cas holds his hand up for silence.
“Your grandpa has been in the club for over fifty years. He came here as a twenty-something and he sits here today alive and in his seventies. He’s done things for this club that would curl your dicks in fear and he’s taken responsibilities that he hasn’t been able to carry out for a long while. Your dad was the first guy I patched in after I became president and he has never let me down or his brothers.”
I didn’t know that, to be honest, I don’t listen to the old timer’s stories anymore. I lost interest when the tales didn’t include me or my parents.
“Do the brothers have your loyalty, do you have their backs, do they have your hearts if they bleed, do they have your tears if they die?”
Leo and I glance at each other, we didn’t get any of this shit. I
suppose it’s the shit with Ellis that is bringing this out.
“Fuck yeah,” they both say.
“Do I need to ask how far you would go for someone sharing our patch?”
Each twin’s mouth curls evilly and that’s a good enough answer for Cas. He stands and walks around the table and stands before them.
Holding each of their cheeks in his hands, he keeps his back to the rest of us as he speaks.
“Do my brothers think Mason and Myles deserve to wear our patch?”
Pope is the first to vote. “Aye.”
Closely followed by Ricky. “Aye.”
Not one nay hits our ears and Cas keeps his hands on the twins’ faces.
“From this day on, you are Lost Souls and you will have one job that you will carry with silence and secrecy, that the club depends on, a job your grandpa and your dad will show you.”
Pope is the first to cheer, quickly followed by Ricky. The twins manage a fist bump and a quick hug before brothers stand and congratulate them. I’m happy for them. I pull my ass up out the chair and haul myself around the table once Leo and Zach are done with them.
“Congrats, brothers,” I grin, slinging my arms around each of them. I pull them in and press a kiss to each of their heads.
“Get the fuck off,” Mason hollers with a huge grin on his face.
Squeezing them one last time, I let them go and step back. “There’s no stopping us now, not with the patch,” Myles says, keeping his voice low.
All I can do is smile, I’m genuinely happy for them.
“Drink as much as you want tonight, fuckin’ celebrate until you pass out, but be fuckin’ ready to hunt tomorrow.”
And then he brings the gavel down and ends the meeting. The twins accept more congratulations and take the slaps of happiness on the back as brothers head out to the bar and I’m no exception.
However, I head for the stairs instead of the bar and no one notices. The twins won’t care, as long as they have someone to drink with, they don’t care who.
Unlocking my door, I glance up the hall and stare at Harper’s door. What I wouldn’t give to be in there with her. Deciding to leave her alone tonight, I open the door to my room and close it behind me, blocking the sound of the music being turned up downstairs.