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My father wasn’t smoking tonight. I almost wished he was. The repelling habit was preferable to what he was doing now.
I wanted the estate back. I’d kill for it back. The first on that list? Anyone from the Devil’s Luck MC. Fuck those arrogant bastards. They were the reason Father had to bribe members of the police force into letting us use this cesspool as a home base.
The sound of fists striking flesh echoed off the naked metal walls. I crossed my arms and adjusted myself in the foldout chair, watching the beating. My white pantsuit was still pristine. No way would I get the custom outfit near innocent blood.
At least, the kid’s blood was more than likely innocent. But did that matter to Walter Bates? No.
I didn’t bother to know anything other than the bare minimum—Kyle, age seventeen—and that he was a prospect. To be a Wolverine, you had to fall to hell and drag yourself up from its pit. But if you failed, even a little?
Innocence was out of the question when it came to Walter Bates’s fists. They were split and bleeding, drenched in shiny red liquid I knew was as good as currency in this fucked- up world of ours. It dripped from Kyle’s lips, his nose, his temple. His face was swollen blue and purple. Spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He was beaten within an inch of his young life, and yet he tried to mumble, please.
My own lips quirked. Poor young fool. Do you really think Walter Bates is going to grant mercy because of that little plea?
But my half smile didn’t last long.
Father lifted the scrawny kid by his collar with his left hand—the one with the cut-off pinky—right off the floor. With his right fist, he wailed on him, over and over and over, bones already broken, crunching further beyond repair.
I shifted my gaze before Father could drop Kyle to the floor. The rest of the club lingered nearby on the makeshift furniture, smoking cigs or blunts, clouds billowing around them in a haze, playing a game of cards. They were a bunch of cruel brutes, but I had known most of them my entire life. Whether we liked each other or not over the years, they had my back, and I had theirs. It was self-preservation, of course; there wasn’t a lick of personal attachment. I had fucked a few of them from time to time, but that was always no strings attached.
Now, any of them would reel back with bleeding nail scratches across their stubbled faces if they got too close to me.
And yet here I was, sympathizing with them. They weren’t smoking because of habit. They weren’t grumbling over bad hands or accusing each other of cheating. They weren’t playing to win.
They were playing to drown out the sounds of their own prospect getting beat within an inch of his young life by their president.
More than half the Wolverines acted on testosterone and adrenaline kicks more than actual brains, but now, they were smart enough to see the cracks. Their—our—club was falling apart at the seams. And they were beginning to realize it wasn’t Devil’s Luck or anyone else in Reno that was holding the scissors—but my father.
With one final punch, Father released Kyle. The recruit slumped to the cold concrete floor like a sack of potatoes. I caught a glimpse of movement—one of the guy’s shoulders jerked in a flinch. Silence filled the warehouse louder than any scream.
Kyle didn’t move. No one expected him to because everyone, whether they were facing the beating or not, knew he was already dead.
Another Wolverine down, and this time, it was at the hands of our own president, not their sworn enemies.
I didn’t expect the chill to shiver down my spine at the sight of Kyle’s slack face beaten unrecognizable. I had no attachment to the kid, but the thought of him returning to his father—even if he was a deadbeat, according to the Wolverines’ best recruiter—dead on his doorstep stung somehow. Twisted my heart in a way it had never twisted before.
I didn’t give a shit about other people’s lives. I was raised to be heartless by my father, trained to hold a gun by the time I should have been learning long division, and taught to use my body and mind to get whatever I—whatever he—wanted. Feelings had no place in this world of blood, metal, and money.
Kyle lived with his mother until she died from an overdose. That I could relate to. But in my eyes, he was more than a runaway who wanted to risk his life for the chance to be in a bike club.
He was another broken seam. Another crack in the Wolverines’ unshakeable might. And there had been a lot of cracks lately.
They were turning into cavernous trenches threatening to swallow us whole.
My father’s shoulders heaved with panting breaths as if he had run miles. His hands were fisted at his sides, dripping blood, both Kyle’s and his own, from split knuckles. The drops pattered on the floor.
No one dared take a breath. None of his men dared stop playing cards or smoking. I uncrossed one leg and crossed the other.
But the unease was suffocating.
Father finally straightened, inhaling deeply as if the stench of blood was as sweet as spring blooms. Unbidden, my spine stiffened. I did not fear my father.
He turned, running his hand over his head as if slicking hair back with fingers through its strands as if it were gel and not the blood of a dead child. I did not expect my throat to tighten when his eyes met mine from across the warehouse—one blue, just like mine, and one milky and blind from the knife fight he had smiled through when I was only three years old—I sat straight as an army soldier, lifting my chin, wiping my expression neutral, holding his unblinking stare until his deep frown wobbled into a crooked grin.
“Someone get me a goddamn cigar,” he growled.
One of the younger men scrambled to grab and light a cigar, placing it between my father’s teeth that were splattered with Kyle’s blood—his entire face was splattered with blood, including the smooth dome of his head.
As the acrid tang of cigar smoke wreathed around Father, he waved a dismissive hand. “Clean that shit up.”