I grabbed Bear by the shoulders, catching him before he reached Chop. He shook me off but stopped. I looked around to the various bikers standing straight faced, watching our confrontation unfold. “I’ve known most of you my entire fucking life,” I said. “I’ve know all of you bitches longer than most of you have known each other. I’ve never asked you for special favors. I’ve never asked you for anything I’ve not paid back tenfold. But my girl comes here looking for help, and you turn her the fuck away because Prez here is pissed that I didn’t patch in when he wanted me too?” I shook my head and looked at Chop. “If this is how you treat someone you’ve known for decades then I made the right fucking decision by not patching in. You’re mad at me because some blood was spilled on your doorstep? Be mad at me. But it’s not your fucking blood that got spilled. It was mine. My friend. My family. So you can take this self righteous brotherhood and go fuck yourself with it. Because I know what brotherhood is.” I took one last glance at the men around me. “When any of you have ever needed something, I’ve never turned a single one of you motherfuckers away from my doorstep. Preppy knew what brotherhood was. Bear knows what brotherhood is. You?” I pointed to Chop. “You don’t know shit.”
“You better watch your fucking mouth, boy.” Chop seethed. He pointed to Bear. “Whatever his girl’s got troubling her doesn’t concern you, or us for that matter. Neither does he.” Chop turned his attention to me. “You had a chance to be a Beach Bastard, boy. Lots of chances. But you didn’t want this life. You turned your back on the chance to have the loyalty and protection of this club.” He turned back to Bear. “Yet you still give it to him like he walks around wearing a god damned invisible cut!” He looked me up and down like I disgusted him then turned back to his son. “He don’t deserve your loyalty, boy. Your brothers could’ve been meeting their makers because of him and you either don’t fucking get that or you don’t fucking care, and honestly, I don’t fucking know which one pisses me off more!” Chop stepped up into Bear’s face. They were shoulder to shoulder, staring into identical blue eyes as they both puffed out their chests and shifted their weight from side to side.
“Isaac was here because someone in our club let him in. One of our brothers, one of the people I’m supposed to be the most loyal to, made sure that Isaac was in place to take us all out. Not just King or Preppy, but me too. Whoever let him in was one of our own brothers and he didn’t give a fuck that the end result was supposed to be a bullet in my motherfucking head.” Chop opened his mouth to speak but Bear wasn’t finished. “And don’t you dare fucking speak to me about loyalty. Just ask Mom. Oh wait, you can’t. She’s fucking dead because of you.”
“You ungrateful motherfucke—Chop wrinkled his nose like he was about to breath fire from his nostrils.
“Are you questioning my fucking loyalty to this club!? I have taken bullets for you. I have killed without question. I’ve been nothing but in, a hundred and fifty percent, since the day I put on this cut. It’s you who needs a reality check, Pops.” Bear took a step back. “Prep, King, they were more family to me growing up than you ever were. And if you really want to talk loyalty, then let’s talk loyalty. Because if Prep were still here, I would take that bullet for him. I would gladly give my life for his. And now King’s girl is in trouble, might already be dead, and I would step into her place in a heartbeat so that he wouldn’t have to live without his girl.”
Chop took another step forward, his forehead almost touching Bear’s. “I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about your fucking brothers.”
“So the fuck am I, old man,” Bear said, sidestepping his father and heading toward the gate. “So the fuck am I.” Bear nodded to me. “Let’s fucking go.”
“It’s your decision boy,” his dad called out. “But if you leave right now, then you leave your cut here. I fucking mean it.”
Without hesitation, Bear shrugged out of his cut and held it up, exposing his bare chest and the double gun holster that his vest had easily hidden. “Fine by me, Pops. ’Cause this thing we have here?” Bear looked around to the balconies which were now full of spectators. “This whole thing is supposed to be about family, but as much as I want that to be true…it isn’t. Hasn’t been for a real long fucking time.”
“The only real family you got is me, boy,” Chop hissed, his face reddening as he focused on the cut in Bear’s hand.
“That’s where you’re wrong, old man. ’Cause whether he wears a fucking cut or not, King is my brother. And if you can’t respect my family…” Bear looked up to the biker filled balcony. Then he walked over to a broken plastic chair leaning haphazardly against the chipped stucco. With one last reverent glance down at the scrap of leather that meant everything in his world, he set his cut on the chair. “Then I can’t respect yours.”
“Let’s go, man,” I said to Bear. I’d been around the Beach Bastards since I was fifteen. Long enough to know I needed to get Bear the fuck out of there as fast as fucking possible. Not just because time was ticking for Pup, but because I knew that once your prospect time was up and you were patched in as a full member of the Beach Bastards, there was no walking away from your brothers.
There was no abandoning your cut.
You were either buried in it…or buried without it.
And if you were buried without it, your death wasn’t from natural causes.
I had to get Bear the fuck out of there before they remembered that.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
King
At ten fifty-five pm Bear, Jake and I were on our stomachs underneath the tall roots of the mangroves on the back property line. The houseboat in our sights.
That’s where the senator was torturing my girl.