Page 55 of Sinister Red
The guys don’t blame me, or anyone but Beau, for that matter.
Spider clearly blames himself somehow, but he doesn’t blame me, and the rest of the EC is pretty much in line with that. We’ve talked about it very little, but when it’s come up, we all harbor a violent rage and some level of guilt for not being able to see past the payday far enough to see this coming, and Beau Williams has made our permanent shit list because of it.
But dealing with him will have to wait since he’s sitting pretty in Englewood Federal Correctional Institution.
He’ll get what’s coming to him though.
It may not be soon, and it may not be exactly how any of us want it to happen, but he’ll get what’s coming to him and I’m praying I’ll be there when he does.
Waiting has been brutal though.
Not just for revenge, but to finally give Tank, Gunner, and Trudy the peace they deserve.
We shouldn’t have waited, not when it’s meant weeks of their souls roaming restlessly, but Jackal was insistent that his dad and uncle would have been pissed if the boys they viewed as family weren’t there to see them off to thegreat beyond, if the nine of us weren’t all present to ride them to their final resting place. And Jackal is convinced it would have pissed them off even more if they didn’t know for a fact that the club was with someone to lead it, to protect it and keep it moving in the right direction, and left in total shambles without them to run it.
So, this morning, the entire club rode down to Berk Funeral Home and had the fucking patch ceremony right in the middle of the backyard because we wouldn’t all fit inside.
Breaker ran the show.
A man who has lost damn near everything because of this fucking club stood in front of what was left of it, in a borderline fucking blizzard, a small table in front of him with nothing but the urns of his best friends and a stack of patches, and he swore us in as the executive committee for the Wulven Kings before formally stepping into retirement.
With the utmost reverence and care, with so much goddamn love and respect, Breaker said the words none of us have ever heard before, pledged us as the WKMC ultimate authority and protection, then silently sewed our patches on—with his own two hands. It wasn’t until he got to Marbles and me that he showed any kind of emotion, but when Breaker started on our cuts with the bloodstained patches of the president and VP that reigned before us, the old man’s eyes welled with tears and I thought everyone was going to fucking lose it.
Then we went inside for the service—filling the entire house, only the closest of us directly in the viewing room—and everyone did.
There was not one dry eye in the entire place while Pope officiated, and definitely not when Breaker gave the eulogy for all three of the souls we came here to put to rest. Everyone lost it at that, and we’ve postponed riding to the mountains to spread their ashes for a few hours because of it.
And because I’m a selfish, angry asshole that’s already hurting, I’ve been sitting outside in the snow alone, smoking cigarette after cigarette, feeling sorry for myself and fixating onmypain instead of supporting my goddamn family.
I’m sitting outside as the sheets of snow fall around me, wondering what the fuck I did to piss off a God I’m not sure I even believe in enough to curse me—death is a curse that follows me, and it’s taken everything from me.
It took my chances at a normal life the second I was born, the fact that my mother coded during childbirth, then became dependent on the painkillers they gave her as part of her recovery. The death of her soul made it clear, her physical death years later at the hand of someone she found while supporting that habit by any means possible, solidifying it.
The countless men I’ve seen die—by my hand or the hand of someone I’m close to—men I knew and rode with who became fixtures in my life, or men that have threatened all of that, creating a living nightmare that I can’t escape, one that will haunt me forever now that it’s claimed the lives of the two men I considered to be father figures.
It’s almost taken my brothers more times than I can count, and this last time was closer than we’ve ever come to a loss so great I’m not sure we would have recovered from it. And we still might not because things are more fragile now than any of us want to acknowledge or accept.
And death—this fucking shadow hanging over me like a shroud—took my one shot at true happiness, true love, and with it went any dreams I might have entertained of becoming the father I never had.
It isn’t the club that Sofie should have been afraid of, it was me all along, and regardless of how angry I am or how much pain it caused me, she did the right thing by running. If she’d have stayed, not only would we have lost the baby, but I would have lost her too. There’s too much truth to that, truth that has been right in front of me the entire time, and losing Sofie the way I did is easier to deal with than losing her the way I could have.
I’m still fucking angry though.
Angry enough that loving her despite what she did, despite the secrets she kept—the one’s I had every right to know—and the way Sofie had no intention of ever even seeing me again let alone telling me shit, have made the decision to be a complete bastard to her any chance I get easier to deal with too.
I don’t know how to love someone right, don’t know how to do it in a way they deserve while keeping them safe and protected from me and everything I bring to the table, but I don’t have the first fucking clue how to make myself hate the only woman I’ll ever love either.
Hating Sofie is the only way to survive her, the only way to protect her and keep her safe, because the alternative would be damning for both of us.
I stick another cigarette between my teeth and tilt my head back, squinting against the falling snow as I watch it come down in waves around me.
Seems fitting for today to be so dreary and cold, so damn shitty, considering where we are and what’s going on.
Same as it seems fitting to have death be the signifying factor in both the beginning and end of the only relationship that meant more to me than the club, death and the Kings both benchmarks in the creation and downfall of something so perfect I was stupid enough to believe it could be forever, the funeral home I was led to for both where it started and will inevitably end just like everything else.
Because I will put the final nail in the coffin of my time with Sofie today.
I haven’t seen her yet, but I know she’s here because everyone else has seen her and told me about it, and when our paths finally cross, I’ll make sure to drive that nail in before I help Sofie bury what could have been.
