“You look just like me and I know what I looked like pregnant. Which one of them boys is the father or don’t you know?” She laughs in my face when I don’t answer. “I’ll be going but here’s my number. Call me when you’ve made a decision. A simple signature and I’ll be gone. Otherwise, I might just have to make Fortune my home for a while.” She runs a hand over her blouse and down to her hip. “And then we’ll see how good of a hold you have on your men.”
I bolt out of the garage and run to the library. Inside I find my former boss, Pippa Lang. Pippa’s only a few years older than me but she’s smart and has more mothering instinct in her pinky than my mom has in her entire body.
“Hey, Pippa, you got a minute?”
She takes one look at my disheveled mess of a self and holds open her office door. “I was just taking lunch. Why don’t you put the sign up?”
I reach under the circulation desk and pull out the “Be back in 30 minutes” sign. I hustle into the office and collapse in a padded chair.
“What’s going on?”
“My mom showed up. Did you hear?”
“It’s all over town, almost nothing else people can talk about.”
“I was so conflicted at first, because she’s my mom and I missed her so much. But she took off and never looked back. Now I find out that while she’s been gone my father has been paying her a monthly fee to stay away or something.”
“Oh my God, that’s terrible. Was he blackmailing her or what?”
“No, I don’t think so. She’s not nice, Pippa. And that’s kind of an understatement.” I explain to Pippa about the money situation. “What should I do? I kind of don’t want her to have a penny of it but I also don’t want her around here. She’s poisonous.”
“You don’t think Easy and Michigan would cheat on you? They adore you.”
I wave my hand. “No, but she could just cause trouble by stirring up gossip. You should’ve seen her at the garage. She came in wearing this real short, ruffled skirt and bent over to hug me while Judge was standing right behind her. I think she gave him a little show.”
Pippa leaps to her feet, “I’m going to kill that bitch.” About halfway out the door she turns back. “Sorry, I’m so sorry I called your mom a bitch.”
“That’s okay.”
She comes back into the office and settles into her chair. “What do you want to happen?”
“I want Father to go away. I want her gone. I want to be able to start my family clean and new. It’s not like those two are good examples of parenting, you know? I don’t want my kid to be around a man like my father who is cold and mean or around my mother who looks out more for herself than anyone else.”
“Michigan and Easy could make both of them go away.”
I give a half hearted smile. “How?”
She stares hard at me and the light bulb turns on. Sucking in my bottom lip, I think about what she’s not saying. What they would do if I asked. “I can’t ask that of them. And besides, my mom doesn’t deserve it.”
I don’t know about Father. I’m still pretty conflicted about that.
“So, don’t ask, but they want payback and I don't think your father going to prison is going to be enough. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“I—I don’t know,” I stammer.
“When you hook up with one of these guys, you have to understand that they play by their own rules. They love you but they’re going to do things that other people have taught you are wrong. You either have to close your eyes and ears or you openly embrace them.”
As I walk back to the garage, I replay our conversation. She’s right. When you climb in bed with a Death Lord once, it’s just for fun. When you become their old lady, when you wear the claiming cuffs, when you take them as your own, you have to accept the lifestyle that they chose before you came along. And you can’t change them and frankly, you don’t want to. Because underneath the violence, the sex, the hard play is loyalty—not just to their brotherhood but to you.
I know deep in my bones these men will never turn away from me, never leave me. They will cut off their hands before they hurt me. And all I have to do in exchange is love them unreservedly. I can do that. No matter what, I can do that.
Chapter Eight
Michigan
There are approximately twenty bikes in the courtyard when Easy and I pull up to the granary outside of town that serves as the Death Lords clubhouse. I’m an enforcer for the club which means if someone steps out of line, I reel them in. If someone presents harm to the club, I put the hurt on them. Most of the time that means erasing their existence, but sometimes we just scare the ever-loving shit out of people. Whatever works, by whatever means.
I’m the gun, the hammer, the fist, and when I walk into a room with my cut around my shoulders, people quake. I do not quake. Ever.
But if I were honest, my palms are feeling a might slick today because what happens during church today could mean I’m saying goodbye to those who’ve stood as my brothers for the last several years. They are the only family I’ve ever known; the one I didn’t even hope that I’d have.
But with Annie and Easy, I’ve got a different viewpoint and unlike most conflicts in my past, it’s not one where death wipes the slate clean.
The crunch of gravel reminds me that I’m not alone. Easy, my fellow enforcer and brother Marine, walks beside me.
“You ready, brother?” he asks, holding his fist thumb up. I knock the bottom of my fist against his.
“Ready.”
If anyone should feel conflicted, I guess it’s Easy. He grew up here in Fortune. He was a prospect of the Death Lords before he joined the Marines and patched in almost immediately when he separated from the military. He dragged me with him and we became enforcers together.
It hasn’t been a hard job and there’s been no task unwelcome. We’ve done everything and more that the club has asked of us, from carrying out beatings to drug dealers and dirty cops to putting down a former club member gone feral and a few other worthless human beings. I killed way more people in the Marines and by my way of thinking, there were just folks who needed killing and I didn’t mind being the one to send them away.
There’s a man who needs killing now and if I didn’t have the club to worry about, he’d have been dead the minute he stepped outside of the jail.
Inside the long room at the back that holds our service, the majority of the Death Lords are already seated with Judge, our president, at the head.
I take a seat at the other end of the table and Easy stands b
eside me. He’ll do the talking.
“Why don’t you present the situation to the brothers,” Judge invites.
Easy nods. “Thanks for coming. As you all know, we’ve claimed Annie Bloom for our own. She was beaten within an inch of her life by her father, Pastor Bloom. He’s been let out on bail awaiting his trial. Michigan and I don’t think he deserves another day of freedom so we’re telling you that he’s going down. The question before you isn’t whether we’re taking Pastor Bloom out, because we are. The question is whether you want our cuts before we do it.”
The collective air around the table is sucked into the Death Lords’ guts as Easy’s announcement takes them by surprise. They were thinking they were going to vote on Pastor Bloom, not on our throwing our patches away.
“Before we vote, anyone got anything to say?” Judge asks.
Mech, one of the older members who works at the shop, rubs his chin. “I got no problem with the killing. Just don’t want any blowback to the club.”
I see nods all around the room. The club comes first. I open my mouth but Easy stays my hand. “We got you, Mech. Thing is it wouldn’t make a difference if we killed the son-of-a-bitch today or three years from now. Everyone’s going to look to the club so the best we can do is make sure that Michigan and I have a good alibi.”
“You got one in mind?” Mech asks.
“A couple of years ago, I helped Mayor Heinz out of a little problem. He has agreed to play a few hands of poker with us and swear we were there the whole time.”
Mech shrugs. “Then I don’t know what we’re even having the meeting for. Clean your house. It’s all good with me.”
“I say that the two of them fuck another woman at the mash and that woman can be their alibi,” offers Brownie.
I shut that shit down immediately. “No, even if it was just for show, it’d hurt Annie. I don’t want that kind of talk about her.”