“I’m not,” I contested. “I’m just doing my job.”
“I thought the same thing and kept doing my job. I ran drugs, guns, women…whatever made the most profit and never looked back. I forgot about the love I had at home and what it felt like to go home to a warm body. I pushed the thoughts of how fucking good it felt to crawl into bed and have the sweetest woman wrap her legs around me. She didn’t know what I did, and if she did, she didn’t care. I could’ve killed a man, sometimes did, and she still welcomed me home, into our bed, night after night.”
“So how did it all change?”
“I started pushing her away. Cain made a deal with the G-Man and we moved more drugs, became the biggest operation on the east coast.”
“The G-Man is the guy Jimmy Gold was working with to push Pastore out, right?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, taking another shot. “Anyway, there is only so much bad shit you can do before it catches up to you and changes who you are. It didn’t bother me at first, I had shoeboxes full of money and in my head I was doing it for a good reason. I would buy Christine her dream house, make sure my woman had everything she wanted, the best of everything. I told myself I was doing it for her, making up for the douche bag I was on a daily basis. I didn’t have a conscience I only had a goal, but I didn’t plan on being the reason two seventeen-year-old kids died,” he confessed.
I stared at him dumbfounded for a moment, realizing Blackie had lived a whole lot of life and I really had no idea how deep his wounds went.
“It changes you,” he repeated. “Knowing that two kids, who had their whole lives ahead of them died, so you could make a quick buck—it fucking wrecks you, man. That was the beginning of the end for me and Christine. I stopped going home, started staying here every night. I couldn’t look at her; I couldn’t let myself have something as good as her when all I ever did was take the good from other people.”
He sighed, pushing away the bottle of alcohol.
“She thought I was cheating on her and that’s when Brantley came around. He was a rookie then, looking to make a name for himself and thought he’d start by taking down the Satan’s Knights. He’s smart, I’ll give the son of a bitch that. He looked for the weakest link, found it was me, and used my wife as bait.”
I didn’t know what to say and wasn’t sure I could find my voice even if I had the words to give him. So, I gave him my ear and let him continue with his story because he was a drunk, immune to alcohol. It doesn’t give him peace anymore, and he’s running out of ways to escape his grief.
“He gave Christine all the attention I wasn’t giving her anymore, made her feel things I gave up on making her feel, and promised her all the things I couldn’t. He used her, played on her broken emotions and convinced her I would wind up dead because of the club. I found out they were having an affair, put two and two together and confronted her but she had already made a deal with him. She would get the drugs from me and prove I was dealing the shit that killed those two kids,” he said, solemnly. “Instead of giving me up she gave up her life.”
He covered his face with his hands and I reached out and patted him on the back. He let out a groan and dropped his hands before piercing me with his tortured eyes.
“Jack’s been trying for a long time to get this club on the right track, to give us some peace. He thinks he can turn us into a legit club and make us proud to call ourselves the Satan’s Knights—but he’s in over his head. We’re in too deep, and every time we think we are pulling ourselves out of the hole, some other fucking threat comes along. Whether it’s a man in a fur coat or a fucking Chinese emperor, there will always be a fucking cancer that will drag us down.”
He held up his tattooed hands, turning them over and displayed his palms.
“See these hands? They have a lot of blood on them and that’s all I see when I look at them, all the blood and all the faces of the people who bled from these hands.”
“Blackie…” I started.
“You got something good with Bianci’s sister, stop trying to prove yourself, man, you paid your dues. Now, take a step back and don’t let that girl doubt she has you because when you don’t have her anymore you’re going to feel it,” he vowed.
“It’s too late for that,” I said, looking away from him.
I meant to get drunk tonight, to forget that I had handed Lauren and Pea over to Anthony, making her brother be the one responsible for her safety and their well-being. But, sitting here with Blackie, listening to his story only affirmed that I had made the right choice by ending things now. I didn’t want to be sitting here one day, the way Blackie sat here, and think of all the ways I failed her. I didn’t want to look at my hands and see her blood.
I made my choice.
I had to own it.