Thirteen
Kitty
“Momma!” I shouted an hour later as I walked into my mother’s house. Typically, I would have been happy to be back home, but I wasn’t. I was on a mission. I was tired of all this bullshit. Seeing my husband on that table gutted and dying was my limit. Enough was enough. Caroline may have started this war years ago, but I was going to finish it. All those brothers, fighting and dying for what? They didn’t even know what they were fighting for. They just went blindly into the fray while all of us at home prayed they made it back alive.
I was done praying. I should have known if I wanted something done right, I would have to do it myself. Most of the brothers in the club failed to understand that just because a woman wasn’t born with a penis, that didn’t make her helpless. In fact, it made us more intelligent. More cunning, more devious. I refused to apologize for any of that. It was who I was. I learned from an early age that information was power, and while the brothers were fucking their way around the club, I was gathering everything I could for this particular thing.
I know that when Pops died, there would be nothing I could do to stop Caroline. So, I waited and bided my time. I let the bitch think she’d won, and boy did she gloat and prance around like a fucking bitch in heat. I was done paying for the decisions of the former members. When those decisions interfered with my family, I knew it was time to act.
Caroline may have thought she won, but a war she never counted on was coming her way.
Right now, I needed to set everything in motion, and to do that, I needed to talk to my mom. I needed information she had, and I was in no mood to deal with anything else. “Mom! Where are you?”
Walking past the living room and into the kitchen, I spotted my mother sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea. When she looked up at me, I gasped. Quickly putting Hailey in the highchair my mother kept for her when she spent time with her granddaughter, I rushed to her, kneeling in front of her.
“Who did this mom?”
“It’s nothing, Kitty,” my mom said, flinching as I gently touched her cheek.
“It’s not nothing. You have a black eye and a busted lip. Now tell me, who did this?”
“Let’s just say Caroline hasn’t lost her soft touch.”
“That bitch.”
So, the first punch had been thrown. I should have known Caroline would strike first. She always did. She never was a patient woman. Always had to have things now.
“Kitty, she said some things. What is going on?”
“The past has come home, momma.”
“I figured it was something like that,” my mom said, getting to her feet. My mother wasn’t like other women in the club. Yeah, she may have started out as an innocent bystander, but she never really was one. According to my dad, he fell in love with her at first sight. Well, that’s what he always said. From that moment he saw her, he claimed her, then married her, and she became the woman she was meant to be. A wife and mother. My mom was the best at both. She was loving, gentle, kind, and the best mom any kid could ever ask for. Given different circumstances, my mom should have been living in a suburb somewhere with a doting husband and some community group she volunteered for. Instead, she lived just south of Golden Skulls land in a home my dad worked tirelessly to refurbish. Too bad he never finished it, though. Instead, he died, leaving mom to raise Lucas and me.
My mom did her best, and that was all anyone could ask.
“Mom, I need you to take Hailey and go to Aunt Ida’s for a bit. Can you do that for me?”
“Sure, but why?”
“Dylan got hurt. It’s bad Mom. I can’t let this continue. I’m done watching brothers die for something they didn’t even do.”
“Will he be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Kitty,” my mom said, coming over to hug me. For the life of me, I wanted to stay in her arms. She always made me feel safe and loved. When I was little, I believed my mother's arms were magic. That as long as I was within them, nothing could touch me. That my mom had some protective force field that prevented any kind of pain or heartbreak. I loved her hugs, lived for them. “Is Healer taking care of him?”
“Yeah,” I said, sitting down as she released me. “So is Dylan’s, Aunt Roxy.”
My mom smirked. “So, Reaper knows then.”
“Not all of it,” I said, which was technically the truth. Well, I didn’t know how much Roxy knew, but eventually, everything would come out. I was going to make sure of that. For as long as I could remember, I’d watched brother after brother get killed, and for what? For some belief that they believed in. Well, not anymore. The code the Golden Skulls lived by was crap, and now it was affecting my personal life.
“How is Roxy? I’ve missed her.”
“She’s the same. You know Roxy.”
“Yeah, I do. She was always sweet to me. She never really liked Caroline much. I also know she is going to go ballistic when she learns the truth. How is Reaper handling everything?”