“Does this mean war?” I asked.
Reaper stroked his long goatee and shot a sideways glance at Grease. “Not convinced it was them chinks. Was thinking maybe it might be a rival MC.”
I frowned. “Anonymous MC sticks to Langley, I didn’t know you had beef with them.”
“We don’t.”
I blinked at Reaper, my mind whirring until click.
“You think it was The fuckin’ Fallen?” I demanded, taking a step forward so I was in Reaper’s ugly face.
He shrugged. “Was a while back now but I’m sure you remember your Uncle Crux there murdered three’a my brothers in cold blood.”
I remembered. I was a girl so I could never be a true member of The Fallen but I was their Princess, and though I was sheltered from the outside world’s atrocities growing up, I knew all too well the mayhem of MC life. My great uncle Crux had been, to put it fuckin’ mildly, a psychopath. He killed indiscriminately just because he had a thirst for blood and violence the way an alcoholic does for booze.
He’d even killed members of his own fuckin’ chapter.
So, my dad killed him and took his chrome and iron throne.
To some, that might make their father into a murderer. For me, it made him into a hero.
I didn’t say any of that to Reaper. I was careful with him. He was too happy to have a member of the Garro family within the Berserker fold, and he often pressed or tried to manipulate me for inside information.
He was a thug with a loyal following. It was easy to deceive him.
It was Wrath, standing quietly just behind him that posed a challenge.
“The club’s business is their business, what do I know about it?” I suggested with a shrug. “You know how it is even better than I do.”
“Yeah,” he said, squinting hard at me. “Just wonderin’ if maybe your daddy picked up his old uncle’s torch against us. Think it’s likely?”
Digging.
I wanted to roll my eyes but to a biker like Reaper that meant blatant disrespect that he would rectify with his fists.
“Let’s think of it this way, The Fallen’s got a good thing goin’ with their product and you got a good thing goin’ with your gun trade, you think they want to start a war over somethin’ they don’t give two fucks about takin’ on themselves?”
Reaper stared at me with his beady eyes for a long minute, but I didn’t flinch.
“Bitch has got a point, Prez,” Wrath said quietly.
“Yeah, maybe,” he muttered, but I could tell by the way his eyes shifted to Grease, who was bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, that they were itchin’ for something, and I had a powerful inkling that that something was Fallen men blood.
“Let’s get this done,” Wrath suggested, clapping a huge hand over Reaper’s shoulder. “The brothers are ready to celebrate Cricket’s death back at the clubhouse.”
“They’ll wait for my fuckin’ say so,” Reaper barked, his hackles raised by any semblance of someone taking control other than him.
He hated Wrath for his smarts just as much as he was grateful for them. It was a fine balance and one that Wrath miraculously kept in check.
“Whatever you say, brother. Just got my eye on the weather. Looks like rain and it’ll be one dud of a sendoff if we can’t even light this fuckin’ thing.”
All four of us looked up at the June sky curling at the edges into clouds the colour of charred paper. Reaper grunted, his concession to Wrath, and then stomped off towards the waterline.
“Let’s do this,” he yelled out, and everyone that had been chatting immediately fell into a massive semi-circle around him.
Most clubs have their own funeral rituals, usually something authentic to their origin or culture. The Fallen tosses coins into the coffin to pay the deceased’s way with the ferryman just as they did in ancient Greek times.
Berserkers were a little more intense, almost to the point of being heathens.
I watched as ten of the strongest brothers grunted and hefted the canoe heavy with Cricket’s corpse into the air on their shoulders. As one, the crowd around me began to hum and stomp their boots into the damp sand. I added my voice to the keening swell of sound and if mine was tinged with pain and edged with anger, no one noticed.
The canoe-bearers walked into the cold Pacific without a shiver, the men at the front up to their cuts in the freezing brine before they let the canoe go with a sloshing shove.
The crowd stopped their humming as the brothers returned to shore and Wrath handed Reaper a massive, modern crossbow. The Prez twisted to Grease who dumped the tip of a cloth wrapped arrow into a jug of gasoline and then lit it on fire with his lighter. The sound it made was loud in the dead silence, the hiss of a snake about to attack.
I watched without breathing as Reaper adjusted his stance and let the arrow fly high into the sky. Less than a second later, it thwacked straight into Cricket’s gasoline coated chest and roared into flame.
I stared into the inferno and silently damned Cricket to the furthest reaches of Hell, condemned to a fruitless, endless task like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the hill again and again. It was only fitting given that’s what I’d done for the last four years, struggling to push the weight of his crimes against me, against our love, off of my heart.
“He loved you,” said a deep voice, rough in a way that spoke of a pack of cigs a day. “Used to say, ‘got me the prettiest girl in the whole wide world.’”
I couldn’t fight the shiver that yanked on my spine. “Sorry for your loss, Wrath.”
His breath was hot on the skin of my neck and I could feel his body curved over me, shielding me from the others while simultaneously intimidating me with his size. He was an idiot if he thought his sheer mass would scare me. Clearly, he hadn’t met my father.
“Never understood why he went on about your looks,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Sure, I’ve no doubt you’d look fuckin’ fine takin’ my cock, or any man’s, but I also thought Cricket was missin’ the point of ya.”
I swallowed thickly but infused my voice with my signature sarcasm. “You sure know how to compliment a woman.”
“That point being, the brain in that pretty head. See, I’ve got these questions that’ve been needin’ answers since you took up with my cousin. Like why the fuck would an MC princess hook up with a man from a rival MC? Why would she stay loyal to him when he started takin’ that beauty and desecratin’ it with bruises? Why would she love him when he didn’t even get the point of her beyond the pretty set of her face?”
“Seems like you’ve spent a fuckuva lotta time thinking about me, Wrath,” I murmured, tucking my chin into my left shoulder so he could see the curve of my cheek, the red of my lips curled up and the way my eyelashes fluttered like fans. My ass pressed back slightly into the seat of his groin and I was triumphant to find his cock lay hard against his thigh. “Maybe these are questions you’re asking as a man and not a cousin.”
He breathed hard in my ear as I ground down on his erection then stepped away. His hand lashed out quick as a flash to wrap hard around my wrist and jerk me back into him. “Maybe, I am. But remember this, Harleigh Rose, man or cousin, I’m always the VP of this club. You’d do best to remember that you’re playin’ games with a brother who’s not afraid of violence and murder.”