Page 22

CHAPTER

ONE

Rayleigh

Once we make our way into Brick’s office, he immediately sits on the leather couch that takes up one side of the room and pulls me into his lap, kissing my temple. Yep, I’m positive he’s gearing up to tell me something that’ll have my world tilting on its axis.

“Gonna need you to keep your cool, brother,” he says to Banshee, who sits on the opposite end of the couch, turned sideways facing us.

Banshee continues to stare at me, a myriad of emotions flowing across his face until eventually, he gives in and nods at Brick. “I’m good, Brick,” he states, his face now devoid of any expression at all.

“Okay, so while you were gone, Pops said something one day while we were in Church. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up in case what I was suspecting was wrong, so I went into your room and grabbed your toothbrush, then took a drink Rayleigh had and got the DNA from both of y’all ran to have my suspicions confirmed. Ban, I know what we were all led to believe all those years ago, but those fuckers lied to us.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper, my head volleying between the two men as they speak. “Who lied about what?” My mind’s spinning right now and I can’t stop the sensation of feeling as though I’m falling down a deep, dark, black hole.

“When we were kids, some members of the Demon Devils MC came by one day and kidnapped a little girl,” Brick quietly informs me. “All the brothers were in Church, but after Banshee woke up from being knocked out, he ran inside bellowing frantically for help. The brothers scoured the area but came up with nothing and of course, the fuckers taunted the club with pictures they sent. Those pictures made it appear as though the little girl was dead, sweetheart.”

“Who was she?” I ask, waving my hand vicariously through the air wanting him to continue instead of stalling. I need him to get on with it and stop worrying about how I’m going to take whatever news it is he’s hesitant to share.

“You,” he spits out.

One word.

One damn word that changes everything I thought I knew about myself.

The black abyss I am currently on the edge of embraces me like a long-lost friend, and for the first time, I welcome the darkness as it enfolds me, the words I’ve heard resounding in my brain.

Long minutes pass until I come to only to find both Brick and Banshee standing sentry over me, peering down at me with worry written all over their faces.

While Brick is obviously concerned, Banshee has tears freely flowing down his face which now has me contemplating what that means.

Why is someone I’ve only just met overwrought with such intense emotions?

“Ryleigh? You’re saying she’s Ryleigh, Brother?” he queries. “But how? How is this possible? Explain this to me, I saw the pictures.”

Brick’s expression turns to one of molten rage as he rounds on his brother. “What the fuck? Who thought it would be a good idea for a kid to see those?” he thunders, his fists clenched.

I’m stuck wondering about these pictures Banshee is talking about. I honestly feel as though I’ve been dropped in the middle of an episode of a reality television show or something; nothing makes any sense and the feeling of being overwhelmed has me fighting the urge to completely shut down emotionally.

“It wasn’t like that, Brick,” Banshee advises. “I overheard my parents talking after RiffRaff left and my dad mentioned pictures floating around the clubhouse that he had gathered up and brought home. Since my mom was hysterically crying, he was focused on her, so he never saw me sneak down and look at the folder sitting open on the kitchen table. Fuck!” he bellows out, pulling at his hair. A look of guilt crosses his face before he crouches next to me. “I’m so fucking sorry, Ry. I tried to keep them from taking you.”

“You were a kid, Ban,” Brick says, trying to soothe him. “Not much a kid can do against a grown ass adult. The thing is, why did they do that? Why the fuck would they want us to believe she was dead?”

“Probably to traffic her,” Banshee spits out, the veins in his neck visibly bulging. “They were into that shit, remember? Our fathers were always talking about it around us, even though I’m sure they didn’t realize how much we were listening in on their conversations.”

“Traffic?” I weakly whisper, my tone wheezy.

“But that obviously didn’t happen. There’s more we don’t know about what happened.” Brick’s fists clench and unclench as he speaks.

“Sounds like Church to me,” Banshee retorts. “Because if any of those fuckers are still out there, alive and breathing, they need to fucking pay for their sins.”

A brother.

I have a brother.

That means at one time, I had a different mother and father, ones who cared, ones whose blood flows through me.

Laura and Dave were not my true parents and that makes me thankful. I understand a little better why they acted as though I was a burden, and disposable, because to them, I was. They were probably never meant to watch me for very long, they were likely a stopping place until the next phase of whatever the ultimate plan was, was executed. But it sounds as though something happened and I ended up staying. Well, until they handed me over to Enoch in order to pay the fee for their drug debt, that is.

Thankfully, none of those three are left to personally haunt my life. It’s bad enough, my dreams are fraught with terrors as I relive my abuse again and again.

As darkness threatens to descend and wrap around me once again, I reach out and take Brick’s hand in mine. “Thank you.”

“For what, babe?”

“Giving me a family.”

Brick

Once I have Rayleigh settled into our bed, I head back through the common room and holler for church. While waiting for the brothers to arrive and for their asses to hit their seats, I grab a bottle of tequila and quickly throw back a few shots.

Directly from the rim of the bottle.

The burn is harsh but reminds me I need to tread lightly while we unravel the mysteries of the past.

After the brothers file in, I slam the gavel down and bellow, “Shut the fuck up, we’ve got shit to discuss!”

And a riddle to solve because nobody knows why.

Why did they want us to think my ol’ lady was dead?

Granted, she wasn’t my ol’ lady then, we were literally kids, but still, they perpetuated a lie so the club would stop looking for her. There’s something else more devious at play here, we just need to go through everything and figure out what that thing is.

Since everyone was in the main room when Banshee lost his shit seeing Rayleigh, I gaze at my brothers before saying, “We’ve got a bit of a riddle to solve, brothers.”

“Talk to us, Pres,” Kracken replies. “We know some shit’s gone down, so give it to us straight and we’ll get to digging if that’s what we need to do.”

“Got my laptop, brother,” Hawg advises, pulling it out and opening it. His fingers are poised on the keyboard, ready to fly across the keys and dig through the web at a moment's notice, letting me know he’s ready to start searching for whatever I need.

A wave of gratitude washes over me.

All of these men have been with me since we were the Roanoke Raiders. Hell, I grew up with most of them by my side; all of us legacies, following in our fathers’ footsteps like they did their own fathers. RiffRaff’s dad, my grandfather, Astro, was the original president, his best friend, Buck, was Bonzai’s father.

Tradition flows through our veins; we’ve been steeped in this lifestyle since before we were glimmers in our fathers’ eyes.

“So, to lay it out as concisely as possible, Rayleigh is actually Ryleigh , brothers,” I state.

“Wait, no fucking way! She was killed when we were kids,” Kracken bellows.

“That’s what we were led to believe,” Banshee says, picking up the story. “Apparently, RiffRaff asked a question about why Lorelei was here or something when he was looking at the pictures on our wall and Brick decided to do a little sleuthing. He got something of mine from my room while I was gone, and also something from Ry, I mean Rayleigh, and had the DNA run on it. She’s my sister, without any doubt, brothers. The one we were told was dead by those motherfucking slimy assholes, the Demon Devils MC.”

“Most of the brothers who were around back then are either retired now or six feet under. How the fuck are we gonna get the info we need?” Brew muses, tapping his fingers against the surface of the table.

“What do you wanna know?” RiffRaff questions, looking surprisingly lucid right now. Considering earlier he was confused; I’m taking this as a win because he’d be the one to give us answers or at least point us in the right direction.

I’ve noticed that despite the fact he’s failing health wise, and he definitely forgets shit thanks to his Alzheimer’s, since moving him back to the clubhouse property, he has periods of clarity. I won’t delude myself into thinking he’ll ever get better because that’s simply not gonna happen, but when he sounds like I remember him from growing up, it does something to me.

“Okay, Pops, so once y’all figured out it was the Demon Devils, what happened?” I query.

“We killed as many of those motherfuckers as we could find when we got the proof they sent us that they killed Ryleigh,” he replies. “Some escaped, but when those pussies ran Bonzai and Lorelei off the road and killed them, we took care of the rest. They’re all gone, brothers. Every single one of them.”

“So, you killed the women and kids too?” Kicks asks, his brow raised.

Even in our club’s earlier days, women and children were off the table, untouchable, and never part of any disagreement. We might’ve been on the left side of legal in many regards, but we have a moral compass. Some would say it’s a bit skewed, and they’d be correct in that assumption. But the fact remains, we have our code we live by, period.

“Uh, no,” RiffRaff slowly says. “They’re never fucked with, Kicks, you know the rules.”

“In that case, if any kids survived, they could end up gunning for us, searching for payback,” Banshee remarks. “It’s what we’d do, brothers, and we’ve got far more honor in our left pinky than those sacks of shit ever thought of having.”

“I’m on it, Pres,” Hawg states, his fingers flying. “We need names,” he murmurs, almost to himself.

“Brick, check the old notes from the year Ryleigh was abducted,” RiffRaff commands as if he’s still running shit around here. “We wrote down every road name of anyone we detained and interrogated.”

I chuckle but the sound is dark because their form of interrogation during that time ended up with the person being questioned becoming worm food.

“Yeah, okay, Pops.”

Brew stands and goes over to the huge safe embedded into the sheetrock and once he unlocks it, he spends several minutes going through the old binders until he locates the one he was searching for and pulls the file out.

Right now, I’m grateful as fuck we have our notes and shit embedded on an encrypted site that Hawg created because all those papers show a shit ton of felonious activities.

“Hawg, how hard would it be to add the old shit to our secured site?” I question with an inquisitive look. “Just thinking of the possible ramifications should any of it ever get out there, y’know?”

“I can scan them, Pres, then we can have a good old-fashioned bonfire if you’d like,” Hawg replies.

“Good. That’s a solid plan, let’s get on it. And you’re positive the site cannot be accessed?”

I mean, I know enough about computers to check my emails, which are mostly junk, and play a few online games, plus of course, the payroll systems for the businesses, but outside of that, I’m fucking clueless and useless.

“Fucking one hundred percent, Pres. The way I’ve got it set up is it actually bounces and pings around a few towers with no set IP address,” Hawg promises.

“You’re speaking Greek to me, brother. As long as none of us are gonna go down for anything, I’m good,” I retort, which has everyone laughing. “Yeah, yeah, yuck it up, fuckers, you know good and well y’all are as bad if not worse than me when it comes to computer shit.”

We now have a list of names of members from the Demon Devils MC that Hawg is tracking down to see if there were any survivors. While his computers are running searches, most of us are sitting in the common area drinking.

I checked on my ol’ lady after dismissing church and she’s still out, so now I need to focus on my brother, who’s had one helluva shock.

He went from being alone to finding out he’s got his sister back.

A sister who doesn’t remember him, doesn’t remember any of us. That part hurts my heart simply because I’ve felt the connection to her since the first time I laid eyes on her in that ditch, even with me not knowing who she was then. I remember as a kid helping Banshee watch over his baby sister; how she would toddle to me and want me to pick her up when she started walking.

While I definitely didn’t have any inappropriate feelings way back then, I still remember her patting my cheek and saying, “My Brick. You is mine.”

“You okay, brother?” I ask, breaking the silence as I watch Banshee down another shot. He’s shooting straight Fireball and I know his gut has to be roiling by now, but he’s a grown ass man, so I’m not gonna stop him or monitor his liquor intake.

I do motion for Stormy to come over and when she leans in, I quietly order, “Grab him a bottle of water and some aspirin, will ya, babe? And another beer for me.”

“Sure thing, Brick. Is Rayleigh okay?” she queries. I notice her words and concerns come across as being honest and sincere.

That’s something I’ll never get used to, but in reality, while all clubs are different, my grandfather and father made sure the club girls we had were decent human beings, for lack of a better way to say it. They didn’t cause any fucking drama, or go after the taken men. They respected the ol’ ladies and helped out around the clubhouse when they weren’t taking care of the single brothers.

What blows me away, though, is how they’ve really banded around Rayleigh the way they have. Maybe it’s because they’re older than she is, maybe it’s because a few, like Leathyr, were around when she was stolen from us. Even though they don’t know yet that she is Ryleigh, they still grasped that she was very innocent and naive about life in general.

I’ve been watching my ol’ lady gain confidence in herself and my concern now is how this news might send her spiraling backwards.

“I think she’ll be just fine, Stormy. Thank you for your concern.”

“Be right back with the stuff, Brick,” she replies, winking at me.