20
“Everybody back in Chambers,” Marek shouted, and while he didn’t sound angry about what just went down, his tone was filled with impatience.
“Can I check on Maddie quick to make sure she’s okay?” I asked as I walked up in front of him, hoping he would at least let me see how she was doing.
“Hurry up.”
I rushed off without another word. If anything, I wanted to tell her I’d be in a meeting and for her not to worry. I hated that I had to be separated from her for who only knew how long. She’d consumed my thoughts, my worry for her physical and emotional well-being something I wasn’t used to.
That’s not to say I was a self-centered person. If anything, people who knew me would say I cared about others as much as the next compassionate person, but to worry so much about a relative stranger was new for me.
My knuckle hit the wood of the door once before I entered. Maddie lay in the middle of the bed with her eyes closed and her arm thrown over her face. When she heard me enter, though, she scrambled to sit up but didn’t quite make it. She clutched her head and eased back down, blowing out several quick puffs of air.
“Are you okay?” I was next to her two steps later.
“Just dizzy.” She averted her eyes, looking everywhere else but at me until I cleared my throat. Only then did her gaze land back on me. “Your mom… she said I might have a bladder infection or a…” She shrugged, looking puzzled, clearly not remembering what the other option was, but I wasn’t gonna fill in the blank because I didn’t want her to think my mom said anything to me about her possible situation. “She said dizziness could also be a symptom.”
“Well, she should know what’s wrong soon. Then she can give you some meds.” Silence ensued after I spoke. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. If she mentioned the Reapers, I’d be pissed off. Not because I didn’t want her to be able to confide in me more about her awful time with them, but because I wanted to kill every last one of them as it was, I couldn’t imagine how much more furious I’d become if she elaborated on her time there with them.
“Can I take a nap? I’m not feeling very well.” She tucked her dark hair behind her ear and looked up at me with such innocence all I wanted to do was wrap her in my arms and promise her the world.
“Of course. I actually came in here to tell you that I have to go to a meeting. If you change your mind about the nap, you can either hang out in here, or if you get hungry, you can always go to the kitchen to fix yourself something to eat. I think there’s stuff for sandwiches.”
“Okay” was all she said, pulling on the bottom of her T-shirt.
I stood next to her for another ten seconds without speaking. Out loud, that was. Internally, each of my questions mixed with the next until I didn’t believe I was even forming coherent thoughts.
“Lincoln!” Ace shouted from down the hall. “Let’s go, brother!”
“That’s my cue.” I smiled at Maddie before slowly turning around, leaving the bedroom and wondering if she’d ever get to a place where she trusted me implicitly. There was no time to dwell on such things now, however. Marek had called us all back into Chambers.
Dropping my phone on the table outside the room, I walked in and took my seat. I was the last one to sit, and both Prez and my ol’ man didn’t seem to appreciate it much.
“Now that we’re all here,” Marek started, “there’s some stuff we need to discuss, and although I never intended on bringing this up ever again, I now see it’s a necessary evil.” I heard the older guys grumblin’ under their breath, but their words weren’t coherent enough for me to understand.
Leaning toward Brick, I whispered, “Have any idea what he’s talkin’ about?”
He shook his head, replying, “I’m as confused as you are.” We were far enough down the table, Marek couldn’t hear what we said, but when his eyes landed on me, I straightened in my seat and acted like I wasn’t having a side conversation, no matter how brief it was. Whatever reason he called us all back in here, I was smart enough to know it was important.
Our leader rubbed his hand over his bearded jawline, his expression flattening. He appeared to be conflicted over whatever was about to come out of his mouth, but he continued regardless.
“When most of us weren’t much older than you guys,” he said, jerking his chin in the general vicinity of us younger members, “our club was run completely different.” Oh… more generalities. “We were involved with running drugs for the Los Zappas cartel.” I wasn’t gonna lie. I almost choked on my spit when I heard him say that, not used to him giving specifics, other than the small bit he spewed in the basement about Tag’s father and what he did to Sully. “At one point, we were responsible for two-thirds of the cocaine supply smuggled into central Cali. And even though we had many people in our pockets to help keep the profits high and the risk low, there was still a risk, which came back to bite us every now and again. The stress of it all became too much, too many of our lives at risk to justify continuing for much longer. The head of the cartel, Rafael Carrillo, owed me a favor for saving his life once, so after some negotiation, he allowed us to walk away without repercussion. But it wasn’t easy to cut ties and go legit. We had to take care of some stuff before everything finally fell into place.”
I saw Tripp and Hawke shift in their seats, seemingly uncomfortable with Marek’s retelling of the past. Or was I reading them wrong?
“The war between us and the Savage Reapers dated back to when Stone and I were kids, when our fathers were in charge, and it seemed to all come to a head a few years before we finally ended it for good.”
“What happened?” Ace asked, and at first, I wasn’t sure if Marek was gonna take offense to the question or not, but I had to admit that I was just as curious. Thankfully, our prez answered without reservation.
“Those fuckers were gettin’ greedier and more careless. They’d show up at our establishments and threaten to take us out one by one. They wanted to replace us and take top position with the cartel, but what they didn’t know, and what we would never tell them, was that we planned on exiting anyway. And while we dealt with them here and there…” He stopped speaking, blew out a breath, and elaborated. “And by dealt with, I mean killed. We ended them before they could end us, although sometimes we weren’t as lucky.” His eyes found Cutter briefly before continuing. “The breaking point for us, the moment we knew we’d have to end as many of them as we could, came when they left Tripp for dead outside our gates. Shot four times and clinging to life.”
“Seems like only yesterday,” Tripp said, a half-smirk appearing on his face. “Thank God Addy was there to watch over me.” He looked to Stone, and his grin widened, but instead of my ol’ man barking at him because of his comment, he simply shook his head.
“Mom helped?” I asked, looking at my dad before Marek. I’d heard comments here and there, but no one ever went into any details, and because I knew they’d never elaborate, I figured it was pointless to ask, after the first ten times, anyway. Come to think of it, it did seem like my mom and Tripp had a special relationship, nothing inappropriate, but if she was the reason Tripp didn’t die, then I could see why they appeared to care for each other.