We pull apart when footfalls pound the pavement toward us. Alec moves me off him, straightening my top and standing in front of me “Who the fuck is that?” he calls out, bending down and pulling a gun from his boot. “You’re carrying?” I gasp as Mason’s ginger mop of hair glows under the moonlight. He bends at the waist to catch his breath, and Alec slips his gun away.
“Alec,” Mason pants. “You need to get back to the club. It’s your old man. He’s going crazy.”
“Why?”
“Your mom—shit. Alec, just come to the club.”
The quiet swallows us as we walk through the club doors. The atmosphere is dense, a dark weight lingering like a storm cloud.
“Ambulance is here,” Rage tells Jimmy, his cut no longer branded with “Prospect,” but a diamond-shaped 1% patch sitting proudly above his club name.
“She can’t be here, son,” Jimmy tells Alec, his tone cautious, soft.
“What the fuck is going on?” Alec asks, all eyes on him.
“Go to Alec’s room, sweetheart. Wait there for him.” I’m hesitant, but Alec nods for me to go. I move a few steps before Jackie comes running out. “Ambulance and police at the gate,” she tells Jimmy, her voice shaking. “Jameson, you get shit sorted?”
“Everything’s clean,” the brother tells Jimmy.
“Open the gates.”
“Why is there an ambulance? Where is my old man?” Alec asks, getting agitated. His eyes dart toward the hall leading to his dad’s office.
“Alec, wait!” Jimmy barks as Alec dashes off, running toward the door.
“Fucking grab him, you dumb fucks,” Jimmy bellows as everyone jumps at once. My stomach turns, acid burning up my throat. Something terrible has happened. I can feel it in the air. It’s toxic with death, despair…
“Arghhh!” a growl mixed with a heavy, loud rumble comes from the office.
“Fuck,” Jimmy hollers, pushing his hand through his hair. The door opens, and police and medics flood in. My legs almost buckle beneath me. What the hell is happening, and where is my dad? Is he back there?
I back against a wall so I don’t fall down. Police carry out Alec’s dad, kicking and roaring. “It’s just until you calm down, Mr. Walker,” they assure him.
Minutes feel like hours as my stomach eats away at itself. I move around the room, sticking to the outskirts, staying unnoticed in all the commotion.
I reach the door of Alec’s dad’s office when Jameson places his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t want to do that, kid. It’s not good.”
He has a beautiful face and warming aura, unusual for a brother of the Royal Bastards. “I’m not a kid, and if it’s not good, Alec is going to need me. I’m going in there one way or another.”
“One way or another?” He frowns
“Around you or through you.” I shrug.
Holding his hands up, he raises a brow. “Don’t lose that spark, kid.”
Pushing open the door, my heart stops. Alec stands looming above the paramedics doing CPR on his mother. Blood coats his shirt and jeans. His hair is sticking up in all directions. “Don’t stop! Do it again!” he roars down at them. They keep looking at each other, shaking their heads no. “Again! Again!” he orders.
I move toward him. As if he senses me, he turns, his eyes made of glass, his heart crumbling like paper. “Drew…” he calls out in a broken voice, making my soul ache. I run to him and wrap him in my arms, letting all his sorrow bleed through his tears into me…
Seven
Alec
Twenty years old
A week later…
Whispers creep around me, making me angry. I hate this fucking feeling.
The fury inside me needs an outlet. It’s weird seeing these assholes in suits, but out of respect for my father, they all made an effort for my mom’s funeral. She was way too young to die. I’m so fucking bitter. The good memories now mix with the bloody images of her final moments. Anger and disappointment sear through my brain. Did she not think about how this would fuck me up!? Was I not enough for her?
Rain coats the fabric of my black jacket. Drew’s dainty hand squeezes mine.
“You ready?” she asks, gesturing toward my dad’s retreating form. I stare down the hole they lowered my mother into, her coffin littered with single red roses. “Yeah. You coming back to the club?” Her dad went on a run. Left her a note telling her to go to her aunt’s and stay away from the club, but didn’t give a reason why. She doesn’t even like her aunt. She’s a stuck up bitch.
“Of course.” Her brow creases, and she leans into me. I wrap an arm around her and sigh into the top of her head, breathing her in.
The place is packed, members from chapters all across the country coming to pay their respects for my father. It’s not about my mother. There’s an atmosphere in here, and it’s not death—it’s simmering anger, unrest. A lot of hushed conversations and shifty fucking eyes. Something’s going on. There’s more to this, I can feel it in my bones…there has to be more.
“I need a drink,” I grunt, wading through the brothers.
“Hey, darling, you okay?” Barb asks.
“That’s a stupid fucking question. Just get the man a drink,” Joe barks, then tips his own glass back. She pours me a whiskey and places a Bud Light on the bar for Drew, ignoring Joe’s continued efforts to get a top-up.
“Woman, fill my glass,” he warns, and I let out a bark of laughter when Barb gives him the finger.
“Come on. Let’s go out back,” I tell Drew, my head pounding with a headache that hasn’t left me since I came back here to find Mom dead. Self-inflicted stab wound to the stomach. How the fuck does someone do that? I didn’t believe she would be capable of it and thought my old man must have hurt her. It killed me to jump to that conclusion, but I know his temper and in a heated argument maybe… but I watched the video footage she entered his office already bleeding, the knife protruding from her stomach, her telling him she was sorry. It made me feel like a bad son for even thinking Dad could have done that to her. Shit, my head feels so muddled. “Watch it.” Rage growls as I barge into him coming out the back door.
“Fuck you, asshole,” I sneer, dropping Drew’s hand and smacking the bottle out of Rage’s. It’s fucking suicide to fuck with this dude, but I’m in all kinds of a giving no shits mood.
“Alec,” Drew breathes in a warning.
“Listen to the girl, kid.”
Fucking kid? He’s like eight years older than me—fucking nothing. He’s got a couple inches on me in height and a shit load in weight. Where I’m lean, boxing muscle, he’s brute force. I shove his chest. “I ain’t no kid, dickhead.”
He growls low in his chest, like a fucking grizzly bear.
Fuck it, I need to feel something other than this dark energy coursing through my veins. My mother’s image, bloody and fucking dead, is constant on my mind.
I swing and land a hit to his jaw. His head jars to the side, but his body doesn’t move. Motherfucker.