“What did he have to say about that?”
“He didn’t show much how he felt but I could tell he wasn’t happy.”
“He has Oak, you know. He shot up my club and is making demands all over the show.”
“I heard, he isn’t going to take my refusal well. I wanted you to hear it from me that our business is safe but you are not. From what I’ve heard about him, he’s gunning for you and won’t stop until you’re all in the ground.”
I shrug my shoulders, offering no committed answer and move on.
“He’s nothing but a dead nuisance walking, when we get the chance, we’ll take him out.”
“I’m not the only business man in the city he could get work from, I have my own competitors to deal with. You need to sort this, Cas.”
“With all due respect,” I spit, with no fucking respect at all, “You don’t need to be telling me what to do, we’re working on taking him out. Now, all we need to discuss is when we can get rid of the shipment we’re still sitting on.”
“That’s the other reason I wanted to see you today, if it isn’t too much hassle for you, I have a buyer waiting for you to deliver it.”
Great, another hurdle to handle at the moment.
“Set it up, I’ll arrange the run when I get back to the club.”
With everything being said and dealt with, I stand and Sparky joins me.
“By the time the next shipment comes in, I want this Danny issue resolved.”
I walk out ignoring his demand and get outside with Sparky hot on my tail.
“I’d love to drive my fist into his face.”
“Yeah, brother. So would I,” I agree, “We’ll ride back and deal with the shipment and then put all our focus on Oak.”
“He’s been gone a couple of days now…”
“I know, Sparks.”
With the shipment being dealt with, at least Oak won’t be coming home to find everyone in jail.
Chapter Sixteen
Oak
She’s so beautiful. She owns a beauty that a man can never get used to or get over. Her hair shines under the sun and even under the moonlight. Her skin is as soft as silk. The twinkle in her grass green eyes. The soft, plump lips that kiss me tenderly and proves she loves me. The admiration and trust she holds for me, knowing I will protect her and love her.
I could watch her forever but I can only see fear in her eyes tonight.
“I’m scared for you, John,” she murmurs, lying beside me.
“Don’t be, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”
I’ve promised her this a thousand times, hopefully this time she will believe me.
“I told you the club would bring you down. These men who have you here are going to kill you. I told you the club would get you killed.”
A tear rolls down her cheek and I brush it away. Leaning over, I place a soft kiss where her tear fell and savour the moment.
“You’re wrong. If they kill me, I’ll die for the club, not because of them.”
She never could understand that.
“After all these years, you’re still so damn stubborn and loyal,” she smiles, sadly.
“And you’re still so beautiful,” I reply, forcing the sadness around her away.
“I’m old now, John. My beauty faded with the years that have passed. You remember my beauty because I was young when you last saw me. It’s been too long now.”
“Don’t fuckin’ talk stupid, woman. Your kind of beauty never fades. You’ll always be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She sighs wistfully and places her warm hand on my cheek.
“It still wasn’t enough though, was it. You still chose the club over me.”
“Don’t, Shell. Not now.”
“I’m not, I knew you were a Lost Soul through and through. I walked away because I loved you and you let me go because you loved me. That’s real love, knowing you can’t force the other into a life they’re not happy living in.”
“I’ll always love you, sweetheart.”
Her thumb smoothly sweeps across my cheekbone and she smiles.
“I’ll love you till the day I die, John Johnson…”
Her eyebrows knit together and she starts coughing, she begins choking and water spurts from her mouth.
“Shellie!”
I jump up and try to help her but more and more water pours out of her.
Only I come to, and it’s me choking. Water is being poured over my face and when it stops I look around the room and back down to where I was lying. The space beside me is empty, she was nothing but a dream.
“Wakey, wakey.”
Hands wrap around my neck and it isn’t long before my vision starts spotting and my lungs are burning for air.
Faintly, I hear laughter around me but I can’t see anything clearly.
“Do you want to hear a joke?” Danny asks, releasing my neck.
The coughing and sputtering takes longer to get rid of and I have no energy left. Slumping against the wall, I watch Danny rock back on his heels, staring at me. Enjoying the power he has over me.
“How do you bring Lost Souls to their knees?”
I keep my mouth shut, not giving into his cockiness.
“Shoot at the fuckers.” He laughs.
I don’t personally get it so I take it this is him telling me what he’s done.
“Cas sees how serious I am now,” he says, completely assured with himself.
“He will never take you seriously because he doesn’t respect you. He’ll treat you like the spoilt, jumped-up prick that you are.” I mock him.
“No, he sees I’m someone to contend with.”
This causes me to laugh. Christ, I haven’t had nothing to deep, belly laugh about in fucking ages. I should thank him for brightening my day.
“You need medication for those delusions of yours. You’re nothing but a boy trying to match the men. Cas would do you in his sleep and wake up fully rested the next morning.”
“Is that right? How come he hasn’t come to save you yet?” he quips.
He’s trying to goad me now, trying to provoke me and it isn’t going to work.
“Cas is doing what’s right for me, not for you. You are nothing but a boy on borrowed time. It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself or how many boys you wrap yourself around, Cas on his own could take the lot of you out, let alone having the club behind him.”
“I guess only time will prove you wrong,” he growls, not liking hearing what I really think.
Swinging down, his fist pummels into my jaw and the already weak and painful left side can’t take much more.
“Pass me that bat,” he shouts to one of his men.
Woozy and feeling sick, I dread the next few minutes. Bracing myself as the bat flies across the basement and into Danny’s waiting hand, I will myself not let him see me weak.
Going back to a time when pain was nothing but something to wait for in the future, it’s a party around the back of the clubhouse, when we used to make a mint from charging people to party on our land.
We had our own corner and the fire pit never stopped burning, not from Friday night till the early hours of Monday morning. Far and wide all you could hear was music and laughter. None of the violence that has become a normal way of life. No one cared about anything apart from having a good time. Nowadays, it’s all violence and watching your back.
The pain becomes too much and no amount of good times from the past can distract me from the bat smashing my ankle. It shoots up my leg like a torpedo and I yearn to have my hands free and hold onto the broken bones.
Dropping the bat onto the ground, it rattles and echoes off the walls until Danny brings his boot down onto it and the basement goes quiet.
Holding my breath and biting down on the inside of my mouth, I push the pain away as I stare into the eyes of this prick and watch as he waits for me to show him weakness.
“I will break you, Oak,” he vows, digging a pack of smokes ou
t of his pocket, “you better hope your club get to you before I come back down here.”
“I could be here for months and you still wouldn’t break me,” I promise him.
The motherfucker laughs and leaves me watching him slowly walking up the stairs. I wait for the door to slam shut and the locks to turn before I release my breath and hiss. I can’t move my ankle at all, trying to lift my leg, it hangs limply. I am literally waiting on Cas and the club to get me now, there’s no way I’m making it out of here on my own.
Chapter Seventeen
Cas
Slade is already sat in the backroom on his laptop, continuing his search into the Devil’s Bastards. His eyes are bloodshot and hold heavy bags underneath.
“Did you get any sleep?” I ask, taking my seat at the head of the table.
“A couple of hours, there has to be something I can find on them but I’ll be fucked if I can find it.”
This isn’t what I wanted to hear, Slade always comes through for us, he just needs more time that we haven’t got. Danny can’t be that smart to hide every track he makes.
“Keep at it, brother, you’ll find something.”
“I hope so, because he needs to be taken out, Cas. He shot up our club and our families are here.”
“You don’t need to remind me, my wife and son were here too,” I growl.
Our conversation ends as brothers begin to walk in and Slade closes his laptop. I wait for Ricky to shut the doors and take his seat before I speak. Every brother looks tired and frustrated.
“Before we get to Oak, Denzel has his buyer waiting for us. Realistically, I want every brother here, but we need to get rid of the guns or Oak won’t have anyone to come home too if we’re caught with them.”
“What do you have planned?” Ricky asks.
“In two days, I’m praying Oak will be home. If he is or not, half of us will ride and deliver the weapons. It will leave everyone here weaker but not completely unable to hold our own if needs be. As my VP, Sparky will lead the run and I expect you to deliver and get back here as fast you can. Half of Noah’s men will go with you too and the other half will stay here.”
“What are we going to do about Noah and the guys? They don’t belong to a club now, and they don’t seem to want to leave.”
“We could ask if they want to join us?” Sparky hedges, “We’ve known them for years, they ain’t going back to the DB’s and they won’t like having to find anything to do not involved with a club.”
I look around the men at the table and not one of them look like they disagree.
“I agree, anyone here who don’t?” I ask, just to clarify.
“We could do making up more numbers,” Slade says.
“Then it’s decided, Noah and the guys will become Lost Souls. Now, back to Oak,” I begin, getting to the main reason I wanted everyone in one room.
“I want everyone on alert and ready to ride at a second’s notice. Slade will find something we can use soon enough and when he does, we leave.”
I bring down the gavel harder than necessary and the meeting is over. Out in the bar, Noah and the men he turned up here with stop their conversations and Noah stands when I stop by his table.
“I have a question for you and for the men who came with you, we know what being a Devils Bastard meant to you and now you’re not affiliated with them, we want to know if you’ll join us and wear the Lost Souls patch?”
“Are you serious?” he asks, in shock.
“Deadly.”
I don’t have the time or inclination to joke about at the moment and I never joke about inviting a man into our club.
“Then I can say for all of us, fuck yeah, being a Lost Soul will be an honour,” he smiles, his mouth stretching wide.
Holding his hand out, I grab onto it and pull him against me, slapping his back.
“Welcome, brother. We’ll celebrate when everyone is here.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Turning to Dex, I make it official by calling out, “Go into the store room and get fourteen Lost Souls patches,” turning back to Noah, I say, “Rip your DB patch off and burn them, they’re not the club you were once affiliated with and any connection you had ends now.”
I find Alannah in Michael and Kitty’s old bedroom and she’s bent over rooting through a large trunk. She doesn’t hear me coming and I grab on to her hips and bang into her from behind.
She lets out a short gasp and chuckles, straightening up and turning in my arms.
“Noah and the guys are Lost Souls now,” I tell her.
“It’s more men to bring Oak home.”
“Yeah,” I sigh, “I need you right now,” I growl.
“I’m right here,” she whispers.
Lifting her so she can wrap her legs around my waist, I walk us to the bed and fall down on top of her, pushing my growing erection against her. Old photographs are scattered everywhere and while she grips onto my hair and plants kisses down my neck, one photograph catches my attention and Big Ron is all I can see.
I locked that night away many years ago, surprisingly, no one mentioned him much after his death and the war we fought with the Raging Riders made it easier to forget him.
Pulling away from Alannah, her face is full of confusion and I reach over to grab the photo.
“Where did you get all these?” I ask, scanning over the other photos.
“They were all in the cupboard, I was planning on sorting through them and putting them into albums.”
I stare at the picture and my mouth goes dry.
“What’s wrong, Cas?”
“Nothing, I’ve got to go.”
Struggling to breathe, I run down the stairs and burst out the front door. I haven’t given him a seconds thought. I’m the president of the club he was loyal to and it’s because of me he isn’t here today.
Going back to the night that changed my life, I think back on the ruthless determination I possessed to get what I want. Taking his life was easy then, he was an obstacle in my way and I made him disappear.
To bring Oak home, I have to find the ruthless kid in me to get shit done. Heading for the backroom, I stop in the bar when I see Slade has moved to a couch.
Crushing the photo in my hand, he looks up from his laptop and stops what he’s doing.
“What can I do for you?”
“Get me a list of Danny’s family, I want parents, brothers, sisters, everyone and their addresses.”
“His family?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Cas, we don’t go after family,” he says, catching the attention of brothers close by.
“He’s taken our family, we’ll see how long it takes him to bring our brother home when we take one of his.”
Chapter Eighteen
Oak
Hours pass and the pain radiating throughout my body becomes a never ending sharp ache. When I woke up there was a plate with a sandwich on it. I don’t trust them to eat it and the thought of having to chew with my busted lip and fucked up jaw puts me off. My ankle doesn’t hurt as much when I don’t try to move it but it’s not having a drink in nearly three days that’s worse. Yet, the pain of being beaten takes my mind of the drink as well. It’s like a vicious circle.
Closing my eye, the other still swollen shut, I remember my dream about Shellie. It’s like she has come to haunt me. Lord knows I have missed her, more and more as each year passes. Her words are coming back to haunt me now.
The first time I met her, properly one on one, I took real notice of her. I’d seen her around the club from time to time. It was on Mark and Rayna’s wedding night, after the Raging Riders had shot at us. I had finished disposing of Benny’s body with Michael and went up to my room I was staying in at the main house. Mark had told me that Rayna had put a girl in my room after she had cleaned her up and made sure she slept but I was so tired I had completely forgotten until I closed the door behind me and saw her sleeping in my bed.
S
he looked afraid even in her sleep. The night had left me shaken, a young girl like her, I imagine it would be hell of a lot more frightening.
I didn’t want to disturb her, I slumped down to the floor and sat with my back against the wall. I watched her toss and turn for most of the night. I was tired but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. The sun was slowly rising on a new day when her eyes fluttered open, and when she saw me watching her she jumped so high I thought her head was going to go through the ceiling.
“Hey, I’m one of the good guys, you don’t have to be scared of me,” I told her.
“I know who you are. Those bikers came and didn’t stop shooting,” she said, quietly.
I got up and sat beside her on the bed. She didn’t move away like I thought she would, she edged closer to me and wrapped the cover over her shoulders.
“They’re gone now, it’s all quiet.” I assured her.
“It doesn’t feel real, you know.”
“I understand, if you want, I can offer you something real.”
It was the only thing I could think of to help wash her worry away.
She nodded and her hair fell from behind her ear.
“My real name is John.”
“Why does everyone call you Oak?” she asked.
“Because of my size and strength, you though, you can call me John.”
Her smile shone through the predawn darkness and set my heart on fire.
“Thank you, I’m Shellie.”
“It’s nice to meet you, darlin’, but if you don’t mind, I’m fuckin’ tired and I don’t wanna have to sleep on the floor after the night I had. Do you mind if I lay with you?”
I wasn’t really asking, I laid down and two seconds later, she curled up next to me. And as they say, the rest was history. She became my old lady and I loved her and protected her.
If I go back to the night and every night after that, I can still feel her in my arms. They way her head would fit perfectly between my arm and my chest. I can still feel the heat from her skin burning onto mine. I remember everything about her if I let myself reminisce.