“The Judge,” Deuce pressed. “Who killed him?”
Tiny’s features pinched and twisted. “You don’t understand—it ain’t as easy as all that. Things weren’t never black and white. Preacher, he was different back then, and this was…”
Tiny threw his hands up in the air helplessly. “You don’t know how bad he beat himself up for so many things. But he didn’t know! He didn’t know until later, until it was too fuckin’ late and everybody was already long gone.”
As Deuce tried to make sense of his nonsensical declaration, Tiny collapsed back onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands. His next words were muffled and full of grief.
“He never forgave himself.”
“Who did it?” Deuce slammed his fist on the arm of the sofa and Tiny’s head shot up, his eyes filled with tears.
“Did the club vote?” Deuce demanded. “Did the fuckin’ gavel go down? That means whatever went down was club business, and seein’ as how our clubs are—”
“West.”
One-Eyed Joe’s boots pounded an agitated rhythm as he crossed the room. And damn, the man could still glare. Even with only one eye. In fact, it was the eye patch that made him look even more menacing—like an angry old pirate.
“Leave him be,” Joe snarled. “It ain’t his story to tell.”
“Yeah? Whose fuckin’ story is it then?” Deuce straightened to his full height and folded his arms over his chest. He matched Joe’s one-eyed glare with a two-eyed scowl that usually sent his own boys running for cover. Joe, however, didn’t bat an eye. He wouldn’t though, not with a man like Preacher for a brother and boss.
The stare-down dragged on for several more tense seconds until Tiny let out a nervous laugh. “You two ain’t gonna fight, are you? ‘Cause I don’t wanna get kicked out of the hospital.”
Stone-faced, Deuce turned to Tiny and stared him down until Tiny had enough smarts to look away. How the rest of the Demons could stand the blubbering idiot, Deuce had no idea.
“They were my parents, too.” Some of the anger faded from Joe’s expression. “So I’m thinkin’ it’s my story to tell.” Joe gestured with his chin. “Walk with me.”
Neither Deuce nor Joe spoke as they headed down the hall. The elevator ride to the main floor was tense and silent, punctuated by Joe’s irritating tendency to suck loudly on his teeth. By the time they’d reached the first floor, Deuce pushed ahead of Joe and practically burst outside—only to be greeted by stale, pungent air and the obnoxious sounds of too much traffic.
“I know my niece has got you on a tight leash, God love her.” Smiling and shaking his head, Joe offered him a cigarette. “But brother, you’re gonna need this.”
Eyeing the cigarette, Deuce hesitated. His cravings had never really gone away entirely. And now, stuck in this concrete hellhole, dealing with Preacher’s bullshit, they’d doubled.
“Fuck it,” he muttered, and lit what was undoubtedly going to be his very last cigarette in life after Eva smelled it on him—and promptly killed him.
“How much do you remember of that summer?” Joe asked.
Deuce shook his head. “Not a whole fuck of a lot.”
He’d racked his brain, trying to remember anything else other than what he’d already told Eva, but it was half a lifetime ago. The older he got, the more everything began to blur together—murders included.
Joe stared out across the street, smoke filtering slowly through his nostrils. “Some of us thought it might have been Reaper,” he said quietly.
“He didn’t kill women,” Deuce replied tonelessly, hoping he didn’t sound as if he were defending his father—a man he’d hated all his life, a man he’d personally paid someone to kill. He was simply speaking the truth. Reaper West had treated the fairer sex like shit on a shoe, but had only ever killed people he’d considered a problem. Seeing as how Reaper hadn’t thought much of women to begin with, hadn’t had a use for them other than to fuck them, he wouldn’t have thought they were worth the trouble or the resources.
“They were good people.” Joe faced Deuce. “My old man started the club to help vets get back on their feet, you know? And my mom, hell, she woulda given you the shirt off her back and whatever else you needed. That woman had a heart of gold.”
Deuce scarcely remembered them. He’d met The Judge way back when, but it had been during a time in his life when his main concern had been trying to survive having Reaper as a father. That unlucky lot in life had included incessant name calling, and dodging punches or taking them so his little brother didn’t have to.
Joe flicked his cigarette away, earning him a nasty look from a passer-by—a young man wearing skinny jeans with thin red suspenders and a matching red bow tie.
Jesus Christ. Deuce really, really hated New York City.
“Did anyone ever tell you how it went down?” Joe asked.
“Heard some shit through the grapevine, nothin’ solid.”
“It was some real sick shit.” Joe tapped another cigarette out of his pack and lit it up. “They were mutilated. Sliced and diced. Blood everywhere. My old man… a few of his fingers had been cut off. And my mom… she… she…”
Joe’s mouth snapped shut and his lips pressed together, and Deuce turned away and got busy enjoying his cigarette.
Growing up, Deuce didn’t have the sort of close-knit family Joe had, but he’d improvised well enough. Once upon a time he’d had a little brother he’d loved fiercely, and other men he’d looked up to and depended upon. He knew what it felt like to give a fuck about someone and then to lose them one day unexpectedly.
Loss didn’t care how much time had passed. It didn’t care that you were getting on in years, half staring down the barrel of a gun yourself. Loss like that stuck with you, all the way to the bitter fucking end.
Eventually Joe let out a long, hard sigh and scrubbed a grease-stained hand over his face. “Preacher always thought it was the Italians. That was their thing back then—cuttin’ off the fingers from any poor son of a bitch who took somethin’ that didn’t belong to ‘em.
“But for me… man, that shit didn’t ever add up. Back then the Demons were good business for the syndicate. We did all their grunt work, got our hands dirty so they didn’t have to. Didn’t make sense for them to cut ties. And The Judge? He woulda never bit the hand that fed him. He didn’t work that way.”
A sad smile twisting his lips, Joe nodded to himself. “My old man was loyal to a fuckin’ fault.”
Letting out another hard sigh, Joe looked at Deuce. “Truth of the matter was, none of us knew who the fuck did it… or why.”
“But you found out, didn’t you?”
“Preacher did.”
“And?”
Joe smiled cruelly, his one eye gleaming with renewed retribution. “You know my brother.”
Snorting, Deuce shook his head. He sure as shit did. Preacher was a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of guy.
And Deuce had two bullet wounds to prove it.
Part Two
“When I do good, I feel good.
When I do bad, I feel bad.”
- Abraham Lincoln