Hardcore:Storm MC(14)

"What aren't you tellin' me, Clav?"



He noted my use of his name instead of his title and raised his eyebrows a little. "Respect, Dom. Watch it." He looked at me hard for several seconds longer and then finally answered. "I know some stuff, but it's not for general consumption, Dom. Ronn and Fielding, they are planning some shit, and you gotta be aware. And maybe it's best if you and your woman get gone. Not forever, but for a while, till shit gets sorted."



I nodded my head, seeing his line of thought, and the light bulb flashed in my head. There was a way that this all made sense. "I see what you're sayin', Pres. I see that line of thought. But there's more you ain't tellin' me, and at this point, I want explanations.



"How far are you dug in with Ronn, Clav? Don't bullshit me. I know some big shit is goin' down. I'm not stupid. I know you're involved, too. What I don't know-yet-is how involved you are, and in what capacity. But I know there's some serious dirt that Ronn must have on you. I want to know why the MC is payin' for your shit. And I want to know what went down with Manny on that fuckin' porno lot out of town in February. You owe me-fuck, you owe all of us-some serious explanations. I've about had it, man."



His face was getting red, and his eyes were piercing in a tight, angry lock, and his jaw was clenched, but I was on a roll.



"So maybe now you heard I'm askin' questions, kickin' up what is sure as shit goin' to fuck up your little game with Ronn, so you want to run me out. You think this Fielding shit and sex-slave thing is the easiest way to get rid of me for a while, too, huh? It's too bizarre. It's almost laughable. But I ain't laughin', man. And I don't buy it."



I stood up and over him, and I declared, "You do not threaten me or my woman, and think you can just run me out of town. Now start. The fuck. Talking."



He stood up and growled, "Sit your ass down, Dominic. You remember who you're talking to. I am your President."



"Then act like it," I flashed back.



He shook his head. The man was angry, but he was a master at cool. "Fuck. This is so fucked-up. First of all, you need to check your tone, and check your presumptions at the gate. You are a member of this MC, and a brother, so I'm gonna give you just one pass for the shit you just pulled, but you gotta know, that shit does not fly. I am your President, and you gotta remember that. Regardless of what you think you know is going on."



"Pres-" I hated myself for going off like that on him, too, and I totally saw his point. But I was fucking angry, about everything from Manny to the Hardcore gig and the loss of fraternity at the compound and with the MC in general. It just felt like everything involving Storm had been losing. But he had a point. I really should not have let it out like that on him.



Clav got it, and he got me. He knew where I was coming from and where I was at. He was a big enough man that he could see from my perspective, and he didn't wait for the apology. "Dom-fuck, man, this shit is real, and you need to get that." He looked me in the eye again. "I was not lying about Fielding wanting you dead and your woman under lock. That's real, and he's dead serious. I swear to you. I would not make this shit up. So you needed to know, and you need to be careful, and I'm serious when I say you should think about skipping town for a while.



"The rest of it-I get that you got a right to info about Manny, dude. I know that. But that gets tied up with shit you do not have a consideration in, so you gotta understand that the thing that is driving this clusterfuck is bigger than Manny. And I know that's hard to hear, but that's my reality, and that's what I gotta live with."



He paused, and I could tell he was wavering on whether or not to let me in. "I'm not gonna share it with you if you are gonna make the smart choice here and get yourself and your woman out of town. There's no point in you knowing, then. So you gotta make that decision now. If you're gonna go, you should just go. And we'll sort it out, and then you can come back. We can have full honesty then, and we will."



I looked in his eyes, which were fierce and so tired. He was my President, my brother, my friend. And he was fighting. I could finally see that, looking outside my own narrow self. And all of a sudden, I understood that whatever the bigger that was going on was, he needed help. He was near to drowning in it, even if he didn't see it that way.



"I'm sticking with you, Pres. Tell me. Let me in. Let's bring down whatever the shitstorm is. I'm not goin' anywhere."



He looked at me another moment, shook his head, sighed, and gave me a brief chin up. "You are a stand-up man, brother." He went to pour himself a drink, and I retook my seat on the couch.



"Okay, Dom. Tell me what you know about it, so I can figure where to start."



"I only know that you and Manny were both at the porno lot the day he went down. Sienna dropped her sister off in the lot, saw you two at the door to the warehouse. Her sister never showed back, so something-whatever it was-happened that day. To both Tania and Manny. I don't know the details beyond that, but I know that much."



"Okay, Dom. Yeah." He nodded his head, squaring his thoughts. "So, they did the shoot. Since we were just security for Ronn, we weren't in the room. He had us standing guard in the hallway at the door. Which was fucking freezing that day. Fucker. But he said it was a closed set, no watchers. So we didn't know what was goin' on till after. But fuck, Dom. That was some sick fucking shit they were filming in there. That girl … " He shook his head, heavy with regret. "But we didn't know that, yet. We just thought it was regular porn. So we stood there."



"Wait a minute. Who all was in there?"



He grunted. "Right. Joey Ronn and Jonathan Fielding were both in there. The girl. And there was a camera guy. There had been a lighting guy and a woman there earlier, doing costumes and makeup and shit, I guess, but they left before they started taping.



"We were probably standing out there an hour and a half, hearin' all kinds of noises from the girl, but that's kind of par for the course, right? I mean, I figured they gagged her, so, you know, just a lot of high-pitched noises. Those eventually stopped."   





 



He shook his head. "Finally, Fielding came out. He didn't look at us, just left the building. We waited a few more minutes, and then Ronn poked his head out, looked at us, and said, just to Manny, ‘You. Get in here.'



"So Manny goes in, and I can hear 'em get into it. Manny yells, ‘What. The. Fuck.' And Ronn starts laughing. Like, hysterically. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with that motherfucker, but …  Doesn't matter. Ronn is laughin', and then there's a gunshot. And I had no idea what happened, or what the fuck was goin' down, but I grabbed my gun and pulled the safety and went in there. And god, Dom. You can't unsee that shit." His eyes were gone; he was back in that warehouse in his mind.



I gave him a minute, giving him a chance to pull himself back. "So Ronn shot Manny? Right there and then? That doesn't even make sense."



"It does when you know what they had been filming. The girl, Dom. Completely mutilated. Face, body, everything. There was blood everywhere. And I could see Manny was gone. Shot in the face. His head was … " He was choking up. Hell, I was, too.



"And when I got in there, I was ready to shoot Ronn, and I almost did, but he already had me in his sights and he reminded me of why I couldn't shoot him. Fuck. Fuck, Dom. I wanted to, so badly. I wanted to shoot that motherfucker, for Manny, for the girl, for all of fuckin' humankind. But I couldn't. Because, if I did, that would mean-"



He cut himself off, looking down, shaking his head with the slightest movement. When he did raise his eyes, they were red and holding back tears. I had never seen this man cry. Not ever.



He took a minute. "He has my baby girl. Fielding has my Zoe, Dom. I gotta find her, and I gotta get her back, and then I gotta kill that motherfucking son of a bitch. But I can't die first, and I can't let anything else matter more. That is what the fuck is goin' on."



Holy. Fucking. Hell. The clusterfuck just went apeshit out of control.



Okay, this was way worse than anything I had imagined. And it completely made sense why our Pres was keeping us tied to Hardcore. Shit.



Zoe had always been a little on the wild side, getting herself into drugs and shit. Jesus, she and Tania had a lot in common, from the sounds of it. But if what the Pres was saying was true, and Zoe somehow got taken up by Fielding, like a sex slave, and Fielding was also talking about the same shit with intentions toward Sienna, then the Pres was not talking out his ass. He was being dead honest. And fuck, his heart must be breaking every minute to think of his little girl in that situation. I'd be fucking lost and furious, too.



"Pres, you gotta know. I got your back on this, however I can help. Whatever I can do. What do you know? Do you have a plan?"



"That's what I'm workin' on. Zoe's been gone a long time already, over six months. I don't even know if Fielding still has her, or if …  No. I'm not going there.



"What I do know, from what I've overheard and from some bugs I managed to place in Ronn's office, is that Ronn knows that Fielding trades in sex slaves, human trafficking. They don't talk about it openly, though, so it's not something I can pin down. But there are references.