“Oh, thank god,” Reina cries into the line. “Blackie, I don’t know what to do. They arrested Jack and Pipe…they arrested everyone!”
“Reina, Reina, slow down.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“First of all, where are you calling me from?”
“It’s secure, Jack gave it to me earlier when he left me at your house and took Lacey to be with you.”
“Why did he leave you at my house?”
“To throw the cops off in case they came looking for you guys,” she exasperates. “Listen, that’s not important. They arrested him! He was at the hospital with the rest of the guys showing their support for Wolf and Maria, and they arrested them. Anthony Bianci is on his way here to take me down to the precinct, but the lawyer is already down there, and Jack is refusing legal counsel.”
“What are the charges?”
“I don’t even know. Everyone was talking so fast. Something about two counts of murder and guns. I don’t know,” she stammers. “Blackie, he’s off his meds. The fact he’s refusing to speak to a lawyer scares me.”
Beads of sweat start to flare at my temples.
“Listen to me, you need to get in touch with one of the guys,” I say pressing my hand to my forehead. “Linc and Stryker were the last to leave here. Maybe they didn’t go to the hospital.”
“What am I telling them? He’s not going to talk to them.”
“Reina, I fucked up,” I confess, pulling my hand away from my face. “I dropped my gun and I don’t remember anyone picking it up. I don’t know if I blacked out or what, but you need to call one of the guys and send them back to the paper factory to retrieve it before the cops do. If they get their hands on that gun that puts us at the scene. Do you understand me?”
“What if they already have it?”
We’re fucked if they have the gun.
Completely fucked and there’s no one else to blame but me.
“Blackie, are you there?” The desperate way she calls my name snaps me back to reality and instead of playing the martyr, I focus on what I can do to help the mess I’ve caused.
“You said Anthony’s picking you up? Have him call Wolf.” The man’s got an alibi, so they probably didn’t arrest him and if they did, they have to let him go. If anyone knows what to do, it’s him. He might not have his patch or want much to do with the club these days, but brotherhood is embedded in his soul and he won’t let this ship sink.
“What’s he going to do? Jack doesn’t know, but I reached out to Wolf a couple of weeks ago. I told him he was losing his mind, and I asked him to intervene.”
“What? Why wouldn’t you come to me?”
“Blackie, you forget that I was the one locked in a basement with you when Jimmy Gold took us. I was the one watching you spiral out of control and I know the signs. I know that you’re struggling with your own burdens.”
An addict always thinks he’s got control of his situation, but the people closest to him will always see through his façade. They will look at him with his plate filled to the top and shake their head because they know it’s only a matter of time before he drops it.
“Anthony’s here,” she says. “I have to go. Look, I’ll tell Wolf about the gun.”
“Reina, I’m—”
“Sorry,” she interjects. “Yeah, I know, Black.”
Reina disconnects the call and I toss the burner phone across the table. There’s no denying the hostility in her voice. It’s not like it’s not warranted. I’ve disappointed a lot of people in my life and my apologies have become worthless to everyone except Lacey. It’s only a matter of time before she steps in line behind Reina and realizes I’m a fucking lying sack of shit who only serves to break her heart.
If the cops have that gun, I’m finished. That puts me and my club at the scene and no one is going down for my negligence. Aside from my prints being all over the piece, a forensic report will conclude the bullets that killed those Mexicans came from my gun. They’ll try me on two counts of murder and I’ll never see the light of day. I can fight it. I can hire a whole fucking team of lawyers, but the odds aren’t in my favor.
They never are.
“Blackie?”
Lacey’s voice drags me away from my head and I turn to see her standing in the bedroom doorway looking all kinds of beautiful and so out of my reach.
“What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”
Pain.
We define it as physical suffering. We measure it on a scale from one to ten, ten being the most excruciating. But the pain I’m feeling, that physical suffering that’s tearing through my heart, it can’t be measured.
“I’m fine,” I lie, my throat clogged with emotion.
“Well come back to bed,” she says softly. “It’s lonely in there without you.”
If only she knew how many lonely nights she could possibly be in store for. I bet she wouldn’t ask me to come back to bed then. Instead, she’d take a page out of Reina’s book and give up on me. She’d tell me to save my apologies, that the damage has already been done.
“Blackie?”
“I’m coming,” I reply, rising to my feet. Keeping my eyes on her, I memorize her features as I make my way to the bedroom. She takes my hands and guides me back to bed before crawling in next to me. I commit her sweet scent to my memory and wrap my good arm around her soft body. My hand finds her flat belly and I close my eyes trying to picture what I’ll miss. It isn’t long before she falls back to sleep and I’m left staring at the ceiling fan.
I don’t see the paramedic, though.
This time it’s me hanging from the center.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Blackie
We never just tell a single lie. We always start with two, the one we tell and the one we tell ourselves to justify our wrongdoing. This morning I woke up and decided to be an overachiever. I spewed about a half a dozen lies before lunch and decided not to tell Lacey I dropped the gun or that my prints were all over it. I also didn’t tell her, her father was arrested and refusing legal counsel. I justified it by telling myself she was in a fragile state of mind and the less she knew the better off she and the baby would be. Well, for the time being at least. I couldn’t and wouldn’t let anyone take the rap for what I did, and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to let Jack stew in a cell without his meds. No, the man wasn’t going to lose his mind on account of me. I was going to have to turn myself into the authorities.
However, I didn’t expect that time to come so soon. Anthony Bianci showed up with Wolf’s son, Nico, an hour later and threw all my lies into a tailspin. Luckily, Lacey knew not to ask questions when it came to the club, so she wasn’t all that suspicious when I suggested Anthony and I talk outside. We left Nico in the cabin with her and slid into his SUV. There, he caught me up to speed and explained the reason for his visit.
The club made bail but there was still APB out for me and the lawyer they retained wanted me to surrender, arguing the longer I remained a fugitive the deeper I dug the hole for myself. Realizing I was going to have to come clean to Lacey, I started to lose my own fucking mind. However, Anthony wasn’t done laying into me and went on to reveal Jack had summoned Wolf while he was locked up and ordered him to call a vote to have him removed as president.