Bounty:Fury Riders MC(79)

"Marissa knew a lot more than she let on. More than I knew, for sure."

"She was your old lady! She wasn't in on anything!"

"Right. Just an old lady. Who was having an affair with Frankie."

Adam gasps. His eyes are wide, like saucers. I know my words have hit home.

"You okay?" I ask.

"I don't believe it." Something about the look on his face tells me he's  lying, though. He does believe it. He just doesn't want to.

"She told me herself. Confessed it all. That day in the woods."

"I mean … " Adam looks off into the distance. "Here's the thing, right? I knew Frankie was always screwing around."

"We all did. His dick was never dry. Girls loved him," I agree. Frankie  was a leader for a reason. He had that special something that set him  apart. Magnetism. Then, once he took his place at the head of the club,  that power was even more reason for women to hang off him. Power's a  turn-on.

"I noticed he got real secretive about his women toward the end. I even  wondered, more than once, if there was a piece on the side he wasn't  telling anybody about." He looks at me, his eyes big and sad. "It was  Marissa?"

I nod. "Yeah. For around a year."

"What? A year? How didn't I know?"

I laugh. "You? I didn't even know! Not until she told me. Yeah, I suspected something was going on. But I blamed it on … "

" … the drugs," Adam finishes.

I nod. "You knew about that?"

"Jax, I tried like hell to get her to stop that shit. I really did."

"I know, man. So did I. It was stronger than us."

"So they were together for a year, and none of us knew?" He still has  trouble believing it. I don't blame him. Aside from ratting, sleeping  with the old lady of another member-wife or otherwise-is the ultimate  treachery. You're pretty much telling a guy he's not man enough for his  woman, and you're gonna take her instead.

"So she told me."

"I always thought you two were so happy together. I did."

"Yeah?" I can't help snapping. "That's not what you told the police, is it?"

He winces. I can't help feeling smug. I want him to feel like shit over  the things he told them about me. "I meant you weren't happy in the end.  Don't pretend you were. There was a lot of shit going on between you  two."         

     



 

I nod. "That's fair. But it was all over the drugs. And Frankie. Once  she started up with him, I looked … less appealing." It stings, admitting  that. No man wants to admit he wasn't enough. Especially not me. Then I  add, "Plus, he didn't care about the drugs. Whether or not she used.  That was one of our biggest problems, the way I gave her hell over the  H. I couldn't let her do it without saying something. I loved her.  Frankie? He didn't care. She was a piece of ass."

Adam stirs defensively. I hold up a hand to stop him. "Come on, man. You  know how he talked about women. They were bitches, whores, skanks.  Pieces of ass. Think about it. If he loved her the way we did, would he  have let her keep shooting up?"

That stops him. He shakes his head.

"We were fine until she started up with that shit again. Hell, for all I  know, Frankie gave it to her." My voice is bitter. "I never saw the  hypocrisy until it was too late. All that ‘love your brother' shit. He  was a backstabbing son of a bitch. Always was."

"I have such a hard time believing this."

I nod my head. "I know, man. If she hadn't told me herself, I wouldn't believe it either."

"I don't get it. How did she know anything about the skimming?"

I hesitate. This part's going to be the toughest of all for him to  swallow, but I need him to believe it, because it's what ties the other  pieces together.

"Because she was helping him do it."





Chapter 33



"What?" His voice is deathly quiet. All I can do is nod my head while he  processes this. "How could she do that? Like, how would she even be  capable of it?"

"She might have been a dropout, but she was a smart girl in her own way.  She had street smarts. She was wise. She understood people." Adam nods,  agreeing with me. "She knew nobody would suspect her."

"What did she do?"

"She helped him cook the books, first of all. Remember when he had her  in the back office? I never thought anything about it-if anything, I was  glad she had something to occupy her time. I was naïve enough to think  it was a good thing, her having a job. She wouldn't be sitting around  the house all day with the temptation to shoot up. I didn't think to  question why Frankie would take a high school dropout and put her in  charge of something so important. He showed her just how to do it. She  estimated he skimmed at least a half million before the cartel got  wise."

"Holy shit! What do you do with that kind of money?"

"Launder it. Put it into different club funds nobody ever touched. The  rest would be stashed away. She'd hide money all over the place.  Sometimes even in the house."

"But you could have been caught! Everyone would have blamed you."

"I know. Believe me, I've thought this all over a lot of times. More  than I can say." She cared more about Frankie, about the money he'd give  her for her drugs, than me. Or our marriage. Just like all Frankie  cared about was keeping the money hidden. I used to think he looked at  me like a son, or a kid brother. He didn't give a shit that I'd take the  heat if the money were found in my house, as long as nobody found it in  his. It took me a long time and a lot of drinking to come to terms with  that.

"You didn't know anything about this while it was going on?"

"Not until the day in the woods. I didn't know a damn thing. After the  ambush, when Frankie and the others were killed, you remember how she  was."

He nods, eyes wide again. "She was a mess. Crying all the time.  Sometimes she'd call me in the middle of the night, just babbling. I  couldn't make heads or tails of it. I remember coming out to the house  to see her. I couldn't get her out of bed." He shakes his head, going  back to that time. "I remember thinking, she's falling apart right in  front of me. I thought it had to do with you. Sometimes I would even ask  if you did something, and she wouldn't give me an answer. I assumed I  was right."

"I get it. She couldn't be honest with you." I sigh, running a hand over  my head. "That went on for weeks afterward. At first I thought it was  just the shock of losing so many friends. She grew up with all of them,  just like you did. But after a little while, I started to get a little  suspicious. I wondered if she wasn't maybe fooling around with one of  those guys on the side. It made sense. We hadn't been together, not like  that, in a long time. She wanted nothing to do with me. I always made  her feel guilty about the drugs, she'd say. She couldn't stand being  around me when I judged her." I sigh, rubbing my temples. "Maybe I did.  It's always easy for a person who doesn't understand the addiction to  judge the people in it. I loved her, though. In the end, it was all a  matter of wanting her to be healthy. I wanted my wife back, for God's  sake." I feel a catch in my throat, like I'm about to cry. I push it  away.

I continue. The words are just pouring out of me now. I locked them up for so long.         

     



 

"That day … that last day, before she went to the woods … she was desolate.  She sat for a long time at the fire, just staring at it. I knew better  than to get in her way when she was like that. I gave her room. I didn't  ask her questions, except to find out whether there was something I  could do for her. I went out to get some firewood together, and when I  got back, she wasn't there. Her coat was still hanging by the door. I  looked around and found the box for my gun on the bed. Empty.

"I ran out the door. I followed her footprints to the woods. She had the  gun. She was going to kill herself. I begged her to stop, to think  about it. She had her mind made up. Told me the whole story. All those  deaths-Frankie and the others, especially the others-were her fault. She  couldn't live with herself."

"Oh, my God." His face is white as a sheet of paper. I know I'm getting through to him.

"She pointed the gun at me at first. To get me to stay back when she was  confessing everything. Then she turned it to herself. She was going to  shoot herself in the heart. I lunged at her, just desperate to get her  to stop. I thought I could overtake her. She was so tiny. But I was too  late. She pulled the trigger just as I got to her. She died right  there."

I'm crying. Remembering the look on her face when she told me  everything, the way she'd sobbed. She hated herself. She hated who she'd  become. She was tired of being an addict, tired of lying. She had  killed her friends by lying to them. All because Frankie let her shoot  up and do whatever she wanted when I wouldn't. She would have done  anything for him, she said, because he let her be who she was. But she  didn't want to be that person anymore. And she couldn't live with the  guilt.