Prospects didn’t usually go on runs. We stuck to the clubhouse, did shitty chores, handled whatever the brothers wanted us to do—be it walk their monster dogs or get them a beer. Until we were patched in, we were their fucking slaves, but it was a rite of passage that we all moaned about, but we respected too.
Every single brother in the MC had walked in my boots and that united us. Would tie us together even more when we went from being a Prospect to a full-fledged member of the club.
So, my presence here was more than unusual, and the reason was the fact that my pop was banged up and had made the request of the Prez.
The reason?
My sister.
She’d run off to the Satan’s Knights a few years back, and Pop had heard whispers that her old man was beating her up. I was here to make sure that wasn’t true, and if it was, to show him how he should be respecting her.
So far, I hadn’t even seen her, which was suspicious in itself—
“The fuck?” Saint growled out, jerking me from my thoughts.
When I peered where he was staring, I saw a woman waddling toward us. I had to blink a few times before I registered exactly who it was, and when I recognized the woman as being Kenzie, I leaped to my feet and hurried over to her.
She snuggled into my arms the minute I was there, and if I hadn’t seen the makeup plastered onto her face, anyone would think she was just happy to see her bro. But no, Kenzie wasn’t a hugger. She wasn’t affectionate. Never had been. Never would be.
Yet… here she was, hugging me like she was gluing us together, and it was weird. Weird as fuck.
I patted her back, and even though I was used to hugs because Ama was very tactile—thank fuck for that—I just wasn’t used to them with my sister. Yeah, sad, I knew, but it just made this even weirder.
“Jamie,” she whispered, using my real name and not my road name.
“Kenzie, what the fuck is going on? How come this is the first time I’ve heard you’re pregnant?”
She gulped, burrowing further into my arms. “Can you get me away from here?”
I pulled back, tipped her chin up, and stared at her. She had thickly coated foundation on her cheekbones and around her eyes, and her nose had a definite bump to it that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen her.
“Is he knocking you around?” Of course, I could see that with my own fucking eyes—I wasn’t a dumb fuck—but she had to admit that to me. Had to say it to me before I could do anything to help her.
She was raining shit down on us, and she didn’t even fucking know it. Wars were started over old ladies, and this was even worse because she was carrying the fucker’s baby.
“Y-Yes,” she whispered, sounding so miserable that for a second, it was hard to connect her voice to the one I’d heard screeching at me for most of my life.
Kenzie and I hadn’t had the best of relationships growing up. She was six years older than me, liked me to know that, and had usually been the first to talk smack about me to our parents. She was a snitch, and I’d had my ass whooped too many times to count because of her, but all that shit fell away in the face of her misery and hurt.
At her admission, I squeezed her tightly and mumbled, “Come and sit with me?”
“Yeah. Hex is over there,” she murmured, pointing to the fucker who was her old man. Seeing him feeling up a sweetbutt, not having taken the fucking time or shown me the respect of introducing himself to me burned. Hard.
Nodding my understanding, I shot Saint a look and saw he was watching me. Jerking my chin at him, I beckoned him over.
“Can we go somewhere private without causing trouble?”
I whispered the words in her ear, because Black Sabbath suddenly roared through the speakers. I didn’t wince at the change of volume—I’d heard shit far louder than this, I’d been born rocking to this music, but Kenzie did. Kenzie’d been reared like me, and yet, this music had her flinching.
The hell?
What had the bastard done to my sister? My pain in the ass, sabe-lo-todo sister?
“Yeah, come with me,” she whispered back, and pushing her hand into mine in a move that made me wonder if she’d been taken over by a pod person, because Kenzie had never held my hand before, yet, here she was, dragging me through the dense crowd of partiers.
Surreal.
We passed a pool table that had clubwhores snorting blow as brothers fucked them from behind. Far as I could tell, the game was the bitches had to snort it faster than the guys could ram into them—and mess up their perfect lines.
Behind them, on a grimy wall, was a dart board that a cluster of brothers were throwing darts at. When we passed it, I saw Lucifer, Ama’s grandfather, studying us with narrowed eyes.
Because I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, and if I thought about it, I’d know it would be nothing good, I just tipped my chin at him and kept my face blank before I turned to my sister, pretending that she’d said something to me that I needed to listen to.
With Saint at my back, we headed out of the common room of the Knights’ clubhouse, and made it into a hall. There were all kinds of club paraphernalia lining it, and Kenzie didn’t stop dragging me down the corridor until she opened a door.
Half expecting this to be her place, I was surprised to see it was an empty bedroom—probably for high-ranking visitors. Prospects like myself, and Saint who, though a brother, was too newly patched to have any merit, would have to camp out in the common room for the night.
It was plain but clean, and that was pretty good from some of the horror stories my dad had told me when he was on runs up the East Coast and spent the night at friendly MC clubhouses.
“What the fuck, Kenzie?” Saint bellowed. I’d have told him to watch his tone, but I understood it. If ever there was a woman who you’d never think would allow herself to be beaten, it was Kenzie.
And I knew that made me sound like an outright bastard, but fuck, you had to know Kenzie to understand what I meant.
She was the kind who, in school, had sneered at girls if their boyfriends had hurt them. Had shouted loud and clear that she was a feminist, for fuck’s sake. Yet, here she was, beaten, pregnant, and cowed.
I wanted to fucking cry for her, truly I did, but instead, I had to fix this because if my dad found out about this shit? More than he already knew? Christ, he’d be serving a longer sentence for beating a fellow prisoner up just to burn off some of his wrath.
Kenzie whimpered at Saint’s bellow, and I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose at the sound my intrepid sister should have never had to make.
“P-Please, help me,” she whispered, her eyes too large in her pale face.
“I can’t believe he’s beating on you when you’re pregnant,” Saint rasped, his words like mine, his tone just as perplexed.
This life was hard, and not every brother treated his woman right, but fuck, when she was pregnant? That was a lack of respect just compounding a total and utter lack of respect.
If I could have beaten the fuck out of Hex without starting shit between our clubs, I would.
I fucking would.
But I couldn’t.
I was nothing, no one, in this world yet. The second I went to Hex and tried to start something, his brothers would be on me, and then mine would be on me too, hauling me back and away from the fight.
As Saint and Kenzie talked—Saint more than Kenzie who was monosyllabic which was crazy because she’d always been an outspoken pain in my butt—I figured out a play I could make.