“What happened to your mom?”
“What happened to a lot of other Heathen old ladies. She got addicted to the drugs.” He paused. “I left, Calla. Left at ten and met Preacher. And he’d told me I could stay with him, that I didn’t have to go back.”
“But you were ten.”
“It didn’t matter. I knew my responsibilities.” And still, a big part of him wished he’d never gone back to his house that night.
If he’d just stayed at Vipers . . .
But he was worried about his sister. He was worried about his mom too, but he was also mad at her, because she wasn’t doing anything lately, for herself or for her kids for two years. Cage had stepped in to help as much as he could, but he was twelve fucking years old, and he wasn’t supposed to be mom and dad to his ten-year-old twin sisters.
Didn’t mean he didn’t try. “I’m the ultimate traitor in their eyes,” he told her. “If I’d been patched in already, it would’ve been really ugly when I left. Although it was pretty damned ugly anyway.”
“What happened?”
He took a breath and he told her his secrets.
The fire choked him. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but even though he was still in that partial dream state, he was still born and bred to an MC. He’d always been able to function easily postslumber, out of necessity. From the time he could remember, it was always, “You take care of your mother and your sisters, you hear, boy?”
And Cage had, loud and clear. Learned to shoot at six, was carrying a piece pretty much everywhere except school by eight and, now, the weapon was in his hand even as he covered his nose and mouth with a towel he grabbed from the chair as he fought his way out through the smoke.
He’d woken when the living room was already filled with smoke. When he’d fallen asleep, his mother had been asleep in the chair next to the couch. As he reached out, he realized that the chair was empty.
Had she stumbled to her room? Lit a cigarette and fallen asleep in bed? He’d caught her doing that before during the day, but that night, he’d slept deeply, and he’d woken and cursed as he yelled for his mother, his sisters . . .
Their room was next to his parents’. He could barely make it past the hallway bathroom before he started choking. The ceiling had begun to fall in and he got out of the house in time, before the entire thing burst into flames.
As he stood, feeling the heat from the fire scalding him, he remembered the tree house. He ran there.
Marielle was in the tree house. Sometimes, at night, she snuck out there to read.
“I smelled Mom’s stuff,” she said, referring to the meth, “so I climbed out. Couldn’t sleep with the smoke.”
He put an arm around her, kept her close, because it was crazy all around the house with fire and police and the Heathens, who didn’t trust the firefighters or the police, revving their bikes and trying to cover up the fact that Cage’s mom was responsible.
“You keep your mouth shut,” his father growled when he saw him.
Somehow, it was all blamed on him. An angry kid . . . playing with matches, doing drugs . . . His school record showed a history of fighting. His record was sealed, because it was from when he was a juvenile. He’d done the time because he’d been too numb to give a shit about anything else. It was easier to take the blame than to fight it. His sister could stay with his father—the one thing he could say was that he’d never hurt Marielle. Unlike their mom, his father treated his girls like gold. After Sally’s death, he kept a very close watch on her.
Even so, as soon as she turned fifteen, Cage got her out, thanks to a boarding school in Florida where Preacher pulled some strings. Marielle had gone willingly and she’d been in Florida ever since.
But lately, she’d been worried about him, had been threatening to come back. Especially when she heard about his near-death experience.
He blinked and he wasn’t smelling the smoke anymore, wasn’t in that front yard or the juvenile detention center. He was with Calla and she was hugging him.
When she pulled back, she asked, “Was any part of it good? Because why go to another MC?”
“Where else was I going to go, Calla? Foster care?” He paused. “This is a violent, addictive lifestyle. I was born into it, yes, but it’s also in my blood. In here.”
He hated telling her this shit. The look of horror in her eyes was something he wanted to wipe away, not watch grow stronger.
But he pressed on. Because if there was one important thing he learned in the Army, it was that letting someone know who they were up against and why made for a more effective soldier—and ultimately, a more effective mission.
“The Heathens are in fucking ruins. Just like my family,” he started. “The money they’re bringing in should be enough to make everything good. But it’s brought in nothing but ruin.”
“The drugs.”
“You think he’d know—no, you’d think he’d care.”
“So your father and your brother, they don’t do the drugs.”
“No, they’re smart in that regard. Most of the brotherhood doesn’t. In fact, if you’re caught doing drugs as a Heathen member, you’re out. But they don’t give a shit about their women. They keep them clean while they’re breeding, but that’s about it.”
“Breeding?”
He shrugged. “S’what they call it, babe. Not saying it’s pretty, or that I agree. If I agreed, I’d still be a Heathen. And what I went through to get out and get in Vipers? That wasn’t pretty either.”
“And no one stops them?”
“They don’t sell the meth in their own town, so everyone thinks they’re wonderful. Took that trick from Preach. Difference is, we don’t sell drugs at all.”
“Guns?”
“We ship them out of the country,” he said.
“So they’re trying to push meth into Skulls?”
“Among other things. They’ve got a prostitution ring.”
“So they drug the women, then pimp them out. I hate them.”
“Emotions will get you every time.”
“In this case, I consider them a bonus.”
He tapped on his heart. “Preacher gave me a second lease on life.”
From childhood, his few good memories centered on the bikes and the open road, anything and everything that happened away from the clubhouse.
MCs fucked you up good. But they were what he knew, and he was damned well and determined to believe in Preacher’s Vipers. Because Preacher had saved the Vipers from a fate similar to the Heathens, had shoved the Vipers out from under the weight of drugs and shifted them toward the equally dangerous gunrunning.
But gunrunning wasn’t destroying families from the ground up, not in the all-pervasive way drugs were. A mother with a gun could protect her baby; a mother on meth could not.
“Where’s your sister now?” Calla asked.
“She’s still in Florida. But she wants to come back.”
“And?”
“And I won’t let her. No one knows where she is except me, Preach and Tals. And Tenn, of course. I need it to stay that way.”
“She’s mad at you for that.”
“I think she’s beginning to hate me,” he admitted, careful not to let Calla see how much that shit broke his heart. “My family—what’s left of them—would destroy her. My mom . . . by the end, she was all fucking strung out. She wasn’t herself anymore. And my sisters were scared of her, but they needed her so much. I tried, but it wasn’t the same.”
He stopped before his voice broke. Calla was staring at him, her hand on his arm, rubbing the ink there, tracing the symbols there. And when he was able to talk again, he told her, “We might be above the law here at times . . . but we don’t pull that drug shit. I will never let that into my town.”