A bike is parked outside his house when we arrive. I wonder if it’s his or if it means we’ll get two for one with this.
Without bothering to knock, I kick the door down and force my way in. The asshole is sitting on his couch watching fucking TV while smoking a joint, like it’s any old fucking day rather than the day he took Max’s life.
His eyes come to mine and flare with hostility. He doesn’t have a chance to move before I’ve reefed him off the couch.
“Hey asshole,” he snarls. “He fucked with my sister. He deserved everything he got.”
I pull him close to me so our faces are inches apart. “Wrong. You killed the wrong man. You killed my brother.”
The hostility in his eyes turns to panic. “Fuck.”
I grip his shirt hard so I can shove him with force against the wall. When he lands on the floor with a thud, I crouch in front of him and punch him. I then yank him back up and let King secure his hands behind his back, and allow another club member to gag and hood him. I then drag him out to our van waiting in his driveway.
Except for the grunts coming from the motherfucker we just nabbed, we drive in silence to our storage warehouse where I haul him inside and thrust him to the ground. Ripping the hood off, I grasp his hair and stretch his head and neck back. Bringing my mouth close to his face, I growl, “It was too fucking easy finding you, Ricky, and that’s a damn shame. I would have preferred to fight harder for you; would have preferred to get my hands dirty. So we’re gonna do that now before we get to the part where I gut you.”
His eyes go wide and he madly shakes his head while trying to speak. The gag prevents him from forming words I can understand; all I hear are garbled grunts.
King reaches for Ricky’s hands and pulls him up. He holds him in place for me and I punch the fuck out of him. Repeatedly.
As I settle into a rhythm, my mind fills with images of Max sprawled on the ground, dead. I see the blood. I see his lifeless eyes. I see the life he never got to finish. The marriage he never got to have. The future torn from him.
My punches become more brutal.
More relentless.
I need him to feel what I feel: pain like I’ve never known.
And he does. By the time I’m finished getting my hands dirty, his body is limp in King’s arms and he’s almost unconscious. His cries of agony stopped a good ten minutes ago, but I kept going. I needed to keep going.
He’s almost as lifeless as Max was when I stop, breathless, sweaty, and covered in his blood.
King lets Ricky fall to the ground. “Time for a break, brother. We’ll get him strung up ready for you.”
I step outside. I’ve lost track of time and day; all I know is what’s behind me and what’s directly in front of me. Max’s death and my vengeance. Nothing else matters right now.
When I go back inside, Ricky is hanging from the roof, face down, gag removed. This is one of King’s preferred ways of inflicting torture. For the first time in my life, I understand King’s need for it. Max’s death has stirred the demon residing in the black pits of my soul.
I grip Ricky’s face and crush it between my fingers. The pressure rouses him and he jerks before crying out in pain.
Bringing my face close, I rasp, “Keep screaming. It’s the best fucking sound I’ve heard in my life.”
He tries to move out of my hold, lurching to the side.
I grab him again when he swings back. Holding his face with one hand, I punch him with my other fist. He screams again and my demon howls with pleasure.
We play this game for a while. Until I need more to sate my beast.
Reaching for a knife, I slice his clothes off, and inch by inch, I carve up his skin.
I lose myself in the process.
I slice him up as a movie reel of the life my brother never got to have plays in my mind.
He stops breathing long before I stop stripping him of skin and limbs and blood.
And when I’m finished, I collapse onto the pool of his blood and let my torment consume me.
Max is never coming back, and knowing that is the worst pain I’ve suffered in my life.
Birdie is at the clubhouse when King, Ransom, and I arrive back there just after 8:00 p.m. I changed clothes after I finished with Ricky, but after digging a hole and burying the motherfucker, I’m dirty again. Birdie takes it in, but doesn’t let it stop her arms coming around me.
My mind is a mess.
Tangled thoughts I can’t stop.
Max’s lifeless body.
Blood.
Regret.
I can’t fucking silence the thoughts.
“Baby,” Birdie murmurs, trying to get my attention as my arms hang by my side and my mind twists in another direction.
How am I going to tell his kids that their father is dead?
Why the fuck didn’t I just stick to our original plan for today?
He wouldn’t have been anywhere near the clubhouse if I had.
“Winter,” Birdie says, her voice growing more insistent, her hands coming to my face. Gripping my cheeks, she forces me to look at her. The tears and devastation in her eyes grip me harder than her hands are. “What happened?”
Her words are strangled. They punch me in the gut and I feel it physically as if she did punch me there. I clutch her arms like she can stop me from doubling over. “He came here to spend time with me and got in the way of something he shouldn’t have been anywhere near.”
Fuck.
I suck in air as the events of today crash down on me.
As they smother me with grief.
It’s overwhelming.
Too fucking much to accept.
Max is dead.
Birdie’s tears stream down her cheeks. A fucking waterfall that I lose myself in while trying like fuck to avoid the pain slamming into me.
“I can’t believe it,” she sobs. “He was right there… at home, with me, this morning…. We made plans to see a movie tonight, to make you come with us. He told me about how much he loves Georgia and all the things they want to do in life—” Her words cut off as she gasps. It’s like all the air in her lungs evaporates. Her hand flies to her mouth and she covers it as her wide eyes stare at me in horror. “Oh God, he’s never going to do those things. Oh, Max….” She buries her face in my chest, clinging tightly to me.
My heart wrenches as my arms wrap around Birdie.
I want to help her through this; I want to comfort her. But there’s nothing left inside me to do any of that. Max’s death has sucked everything from me and all I can do is stand here and hold onto my wife and hope like fuck she has something left to give. She’s gonna need to be the strong one tonight; she’s gonna need to be the one to get us through.
We hold each other for a long time before she pulls me into my room. Stripping my clothes and boots, she curls up with me on the bed. Her arms stay around me and we simply lie together. She doesn’t utter a word; she allows her touch to speak for her.
Hours pass and finally, I say, “It was my fault.”
She cups my face as she looks up at me. “No, it wasn’t.”
“I told him to come here. If I hadn’t done that, he’d still be alive.”
She moves so she’s on top of me. “Baby, no. You can’t think like that. You didn’t take that gun and shoot him. It’s not your fault.”