“First Isaac and now fucking Eli,” I said. “Can’t catch a fucking break. Sometimes I feel like I would have been better off staying locked-up.”
“I feel ya, man. Same here. This isn’t just biker shit anymore. This is cartel shit. Bigger, badder…deader,” Bear said. “And I can’t put Grace in lockdown. I know she’s more a mom to you than your cunt of a mother ever was, but Pop’s ass is all sorts of chapped lately. He don’t want no one in the MC bringing civilians into the club, especially during lockdown, but we need to find somewhere safe for her to stay for a while.” Bear looked up at me and as he spoke I realized what he was trying to tell me. “I ain’t got anyone close enough to me that warrants killing, who isn’t in the MC, but you sure as shit do.”
Pup.
“Fuck!” I shouted, realizing I couldn’t bring her home. I turned and punched the wall, making a dent clear through the drywall to the cement stucco on the outside of the house. Pain shot up the bones in my arm all the way to my shoulder, but pain was a better feeling than the feeling lying just underneath it. The feeling of failure. “It’s my fault Prep’s dead. Should have never let him start the Granny Growhouse shit. Should have…” I ran my hand over my hair. There was too much to list. Happiness, sadness, and regret filled every inch of space within the last few months of my life. There was so much I would go back and change. I thought all that was missing from my life was Max. But now it was Max, Pup…Preppy.
And no matter what I did, who I killed, Prep was never coming back.
“What’s the plan, man?” Bear asked.
“We’re going to get to him before he can get to us…tonight,” I said, cracking my knuckles. The time for a pity party was over. I had more people to kill.
“Ballsy move, man.”
“Maybe, but I have to find out where Pup is first. I may not be able to get her the fuck out of there, but I have to get to her. Tell her what’s going on.”
Bear nodded. “I can find out where she is. Get her a message to her,” he offered.
I shook my head. “No, this message needs to be delivered personally. It’s the only way she’ll listen.”
“I can understand that, cause if I were her, I’d want to chop your fucking balls off by now,” Bear said. I flashed him a look to remind him he was stepping close to the edge of whatever patience I had left. “I’ll find out where she is,” Bear mumbled, pulling his phone from his pocket. He stubbed out his cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill and lit another one. “All this shit, it’s fucking ballsy, man. You got a head injury or something?”
I stepped onto the deck and leaned over the railing, breathing in the salty night air. “Yeah, as I matter of fact, I do. I suffer from the same condition Pup does.”
“And what’s that?” Bear asked, following me out and leaning up sideways against the railing.
“We both forgot who the fuck we were.”
Bear dialed a few numbers; I could hear the ringing through the speaker as he held it up to his ear. “You remembering now?”
“Yeah, I’m remembering now.”
“And who exactly are you?” Bear asked.
“I’m the fucking bad guy.”
Chapter Two
Doe
Shock.
Mouth gaping. Can’t find the words. Overwhelming. Stunned.
But shock was the word that best describes how I felt in that car.
I had a million questions and couldn’t find my voice to ask a single one.
And I certainly couldn’t bring myself to make nice with the two men who called themselves family. They were just strangers, who, when I wouldn’t go with them willingly, brought out the big gun.
A little boy with blonde curls and icy blue eyes that matched mine.
A little boy who’d called me Mommy.
My life since waking up without my memory has been a cluster-fuck of unbelievable events strung together in one monstrous knot. Every time I was stupid enough to think I could untangle it, the knot just wound tighter, until it consumed every ounce of available space around me, wrapping itself around the potential for anything good to result from my being alive.
Strangling it to death.
It was shitty of them to bring the boy. It was only because of him that I sat in stunned silence, unable to ask my usual million questions. Too afraid to scare him or say the wrong thing and traumatize him for life.
The silence in that Town Car was deafening; so quiet that I’m sure if you listened close enough, you could actually hear my state of shock. The sound of the tires spinning against the asphalt as we accelerated onto the highway was a welcome reprieve.