Holden, on the other hand, was brooding and mysterious. He had a little bit of that bad boy edge that usually was a major turnoff for me. Then he hugged me, and that bad boy mojo he was rocking melted away like smooth chocolate. I don’t hug strangers, but I let him hug me, and damn it, I enjoyed every second of being in those tatted arms.
The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the fact that he reminded me of Midas, and it brought back ugly memories I tried to suppress. Now all I can think about is the day I found out that Midas was dead . . .
Midas had been missing for almost five days before we found out what happened to him. Switchblade and Guerrilla marched into the club that morning announcing they had found Midas’ bike chopped up on the other side of town. The parts they did find were covered in blood—Midas’ blood. Along with parts of his bike, Guerrilla also found Midas’ cut. It was draped over his arm. There was a clear bullet hole blown through the back, and blood soaked through the leather fabric, leaving the skull with horns even more angry and red.
The second I saw the familiar leather; I fell to my knees, immediately wrecked with uncontrolled wailing sobs. My father and brother tried to comfort me, but I was curled into a fetal position on the ground, wading around in my own tears. My dad literally had to scoop me up and carry me back to the house. That’s where I laid for ten whole days, waiting and waiting to hear if he was alive or if they had found his body.
Switchblade and Guerrilla were sent out by my dad to gather information about Midas’ disappearance, and it wasn’t long before they heard chatter that Midas had been assassinated by none other than Diego Montez himself, in an attempt to obtain information about the club’s drug trafficking we were rumored to be doing. It was all hearsay, but poor Midas had been spotted riding into town by himself, and the Saints jumped him. When Midas wouldn’t give them the intel they were looking for, because really there was nothing to say, they shot him—killing him in cold blood. The rat who outed Diego, never told Guerrilla or Switchblade where they hid Midas’ body, so they shot him dead. “The only good rat is a dead rat,” I remember Guerrilla saying.
Even after Midas’ death, my dad was still reluctant to jump off that proverbial ledge that kept the Armada on the right side of the law. Guerrilla, enraged and wanting revenge, wanted to hit the Saints hard and take them all down, starting with Diego, but my dad wouldn’t allow the club to go to war. It didn’t matter that Midas was an unfortunate casualty; back then, all my dad ever wanted to do was keep the peace between his club and all the other clubs in town. Two years later, my dad started showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. When he disappeared one day after a ride and came home and didn’t realize that Jimmy and I were his own children, we knew it was time for him to step down from being club president—his mind just wasn’t there anymore.
Jimmy and I put him up in a swanky assisted living center, but besides the club’s old Sgt. at Arms, Tank, my dad’s best friend, I’m the only one who ever goes to visit him. Jimmy hasn’t been to the assisted living center since the day we moved our dad in.
Once my dad was out of the equation, the club was quick to elect Jimmy as club president, and Switchblade as his new VP. Everyone thought that Tank would be elected into the president position over Jimmy, but he retired the minute my dad’s patch was removed—Spike, Gonzo, and Hook weren’t far behind him. Guerrilla and Trigger were the only old school members of the club that stuck around. Trigger promised my dad he’d keep an eye on me and Jimmy which is why he stayed, but I’m pretty sure Guerrilla thought that since all the old-timers were gone, that he’d be a shoo-in to take over as President. He didn’t consider all the young blood supporting the club. Nobody fucking even nominated him. I guess they thought that if my Dad was a good president and Jimmy was already his VP, that Jimmy should be next in line. I’m not even sure why Guerrilla’s still here. He’s nothing but a fucking drunk that treats women like shit and the club even worse. I’m convinced he was the one doing all the drug trafficking that got Midas shot, but I’ve never had the proof to back up my assumptions.
Now the club is full of nothing but shady individuals, and that clean, perfect image my dad had worked so hard to keep together, had been shredded apart by my brother and his delinquent goons.
Around the time Jimmy was patched in as president, is when I started to rebel. I decided to take Midas’ death into my own hands and went on my super-secret squirrel mission to infiltrate the Saints and find out who killed Midas myself, since my brother and the rest of his club didn’t seem to care anymore. I picked my way through the scraps, working my way up the food chain until I found the head and made my move. It wasn’t long before I had Diego’s full attention. Between my good looks and Diego’s roving eye, I was in his bed within a week of hanging around his club.
It took me a while to become his number one fuck, but now here we are, I’m his queen and pretty soon I’ll be bathing in his blood.
“Are you coming?” Holden asked me. Breaking me out of my hazy memories. I stood frozen in place for far too long. My thoughts running away like children playing hide ‘n’ seek. Trapped in a revolving door by the things that haunt my dreams.
“Yeah,” I mumbled reluctantly, following him inside.
Jimmy was standing behind the bar pouring himself a few shots of whiskey. His left eye looked like shit, and he had an ice pack ready on the countertop. He caught my eye as I entered, and I noticed an instant look of regret consume his face when he noticed the purple bruise forming on my cheek. He felt like a jackass, and in all honesty, he was a jackass—a big dumb jackass.
I walked over to the bar and immediately began getting glasses ready for the non-existent customers I would be getting later. I wasn’t stupid. This bar didn’t make enough money on Armada sluts and club members alone. Jimmy was obviously making money somewhere else, but he wouldn’t tell me how or where he was getting it.
“Your cheek looks bad,” Jimmy remarked, as Holden slid into the stool in front of us.
I turned toward my brother and glared at him, “Well, your eye looks like Barney’s wrinkled butthole!”
Holden’s laugh bellowed throughout the room, but my brother was taking a sip of his whiskey when I said this and ended up spitting it out all over the bar top.
“That’s our good whiskey, jerk.” I threw him a towel which wrapped around his face. “Clean your shit up.”
When he removed the towel, my brother’s smile slid to a frown. He knew I was pissed, and I knew he was sorry, but there was no way in hell I was apologizing for the shit I said to him outside.
“I’m sorry for hitting you, Faith. You know I didn’t mean it. When you said that shit about me never being as good of a president as dad, I lost my head.”
“Well, I’m not sorry. I meant every word I said, Jimmy. Ever since you took over as president, this place has been a packrat’s nest of fuckups and druggies. You need some good blood in here—blood that hasn’t been tainted by prison sentences and shared needles.”
Jimmy looked over at Holden who was sitting at the bar and handed him the other shot of whiskey. “You been to jail?”
“Spent a few nights in lock up for a drunk and disorderly a few years back, but nothing that required an orange jump suit or being someone’s prison bitch.”