Zeus Garro’s kingdom was built on love and faith.
It was a funny thing, the difference ’tween them, because on the surface, they seemed kinda the same.
I was only nine, but I wasn’t dumb.
The Fallen MC was a name I’d heard even in my country. They were a name anyone heard if they knew anything about criminals and crime.
They were the kind of nightmarish bedtime story people like my parents told their kids.
If my parents had ever told me bedtime stories.
Zeus and his brothers were all so big, with hard faces, and rough voices that cussed and yelled easily, but they also smiled a ton, and touched their women and their children in good ways instead of bad.
I watched, and I watched them, all of them, but especially Zeus and Loulou Garro ’cause they were the parents of this family, of a family they seemed to want me to be a part of.
Nothing good had ever really come to me, and I was suspicious of this, of them.
Because it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know, watching them like I did, that these were good people.
So good, like I said, they didn’t seem real.
After we’d chopped down the biggest Christmas tree I’d ever seen, we’d feasted at a roadside restaurant off the highway, then made our way back down the mountain. I sat in the back of Zeus’s SUV, sandwiched between his daughter with all the blond hair and the woman called Cress, who I thought dated Zeus’s son even though he was definitely younger than her.
I didn’t get them. Their crazy, happy, rough, wild ways.
Not at all.
But I found as we rode down and they included me in conversations I refused to take part in, then as we got to Zeus’s, and they immediately found me a room, fed me, chatted with me, and then left me alone to settle in, only including me in activities as the days passed if I wanted to, I started to see the magic in their mad ways.
And I started to be enchanted with it.
I found myself mouthing silent answers to their questions, working the English words over my tongue and through my teeth without breath because I wasn’t sure I could speak them without giving myself away.
I didn’t want to give myself away.
I wouldn’t. Not ever.
The people who took me away from my home were bad people.
No, not bad people the way the Garros were kinda bad people because maybe they did illegal things. They were bad people. The kind that love to do horrible things because it makes them laugh.
I had loads of experience with those kinds of people.
And the people who took me? They were that kind of bad.
But my parents?
They were so much worse. I didn’t have the words in English to say how bad and even Spanish failed me.
No one could ever know who I really was because I could never, would never, go back to those people and that place.
My parents and my home were gone to me.
Now it was only a question of running away again, by myself, or staying with the crazy Garro clan.
I sat on the worn leather couch in Zeus Garro’s house on Christmas morning, watching as King tagged Cressida’s hand to pull her under some mistletoe for a kiss, as Harleigh Rose and Lila bent their light and dark heads together, their hair tangling alongside their giggling words, and Zeus watching it all like me from a big chair off to the side, his wife on his lap and a secret, kinda arrogant smile in his beard. The massive tree he’d felled just to please his wife was set up in the corner of the high ceiling room, shimmering in masses of silver ornaments the entire club’s group of women had come over to put up on the pine branches.
I was a kid, but even so, I knew I’d be a fool to leave a place like this.
“Yo, Dad, you gotta moment to talk about somethin’?” King asked, plunking down on a stool in front of Zeus.
He didn’t look much like his dad, but they both had pale eyes and tall, muscular builds, even if Zeus was bigger, the biggest man I’d ever seen in real life.
“Talked about it with Cress, and I’ve been thinkin’. Since I graduated, it’s been hard to decide what to do. Thought about goin’ into business, but we both know the idea of wearing a suit everyday makes me itch. Thought about teaching, but don’t have the patience for it like my woman. So…” He paused, his head once angled down at his forearms propped on his spread knees, then tipped up so he could look Zeus in the eye. “I’m thinkin’ it’s about time I prospected for you and The Fallen.”
Zeus blinked, obviously in shock. Everyone save Cressida seemed blown away by the announcement. She moved behind King, not touching him, just to be close in a show of support. I took advantage of their distraction to swipe a candy from the bowl on table.
They kept me well fed, but in case something happened, it didn’t hurt to have a stash of food on hand for a quick getaway.
“Where the hell is this comin’ from?” Zeus finally demanded. “You feelin’ the pressure? ’Cause, son, learned a long time ago, ’round the time you were seven, that you were always gonna be your own man and do your own thing. You wanna prospect with us, I’m fuckin’ over the moon, but if this is ’bout thinkin’ you don’t got my respect unless you’re patched in, you need that head examined.”
I couldn’t see King’s face, so I edged slowly to the end of the couch.
His eyes, pale like the inside of an iceberg, were narrowed. “Don’t be ridiculous, old man. You’re a fuckin’ softie under all that leather and beard, don’t think all of us don’t know it. This isn’t about you. This is about me and combining two things I love. My family––The Fallen––and business. Figure with my expertise, we could branch out even further. The country’s looking to legalize marijuana in the next couple of years, and with the Chinese emerging marketing, we gotta tap in now if we want to see some return.”
Zeus blinked into the silence that followed, everyone waiting for him to speak, and then, suddenly, he tipped back his head and roared with laughter.
It broke the tension like a fist through a glass window. Everyone relaxed, smiles and laughter bloomed, and everyone was happy again.
I relaxed a little. I’d learned a long time ago how quickly conflict could escalate.
“Well then, fuck yeah,” Zeus bellowed, laughter in his voice as he surged up, gently dislodged Lou, and yanked his son into a bear hug. “Fuck yeah, son,” he said quieter into King’s hair as he cupped the back of his head and held him tight. “Dream come true, man.”
“Yeah,” King agreed, just as soft and gruff as though something was wrong with his throat. “Dream come true, old man.”
“Lou is crying again,” Harleigh Rose pointed out. “Geez, babe, you gotta get a handle on yourself. Biker babes do not cry.”
Cressida shoved her lightly. “They do too, when there is something important to cry about.” She tilted her head and cast her gaze toward Lou. “Is there something important to cry about, Loulou?”
She sniffed, her pretty face red as she tried to hold back her tears. Something in my gut clicked, and I was moving before I could stop myself, reaching for her hand before I could tell myself I knew better, and then she was tucking me into her side where everything was warm and safe and smelled of cherries.
When she looked down at me with a trembling smile, the wet in her eyes made them so vivid a blue they looked unreal.