Outlaw's Promise(68)

“A few years went by. I was on my own and I thought I was doing fine. My brothers were all with foster families but I don’t know much about what happened to them after that. I felt so guilty about running...plus, there was a split down the middle. Kian and Sean couldn’t forgive my dad for what he’d done. Aedan and I still loved him. I went to visit him in jail a few times: that’s how I know that Kian went into the military as soon as he was old enough, because he had to get my dad to sign the forms. Sean, I don’t know. Aedan wound up in New York, making money boxing. I reached out to him a few times, let him know I was in Chicago.”

“But then things started to get too hot for me there. I’d moved onto stealing cars and I stole one too many from the wrong neighborhood, got some gangs after me. I had to run again and this time I hopped a goods train and rode it all the way to LA. And that’s where I met Briggs.”

“Briggs?”

“President of the Hell’s Princes before Mac.” Carrick sighed. “I’d literally just got off the train, was wandering the streets. Never been to LA before, didn’t know where to go or which streets to stay away from. So straightaway, I got into a fight. Three guys have me backed up against a dumpster, I’m just about managing to hold my own but it’s only a matter of time until they get me down on the ground and I get my ass handed to me. And then this Harley roars into the alley and a voice booms out, Let the kid be.”

Carrick drew a deep breath. “He was cool and tough and he reminded me of my dad. He told me he needed guys like me in his club: I’d have to do my time as a hanger-on and then a prospect, but he could get me in, even though I was only seventeen. He took me back to Haywood Falls and that’s how I found the club. Became a prospect and not long after that, I met you.”

He went quiet. I wanted the story to end there: a happy ending. The guy who lost his dad found a new one. But I knew that wasn’t how it finished. I could feel it in his body. I could hear it in his voice, a growing stain of bitterness as he talked about Briggs. Something bad was coming.

“I wanted to impress him,” Carrick said. “And I’d do anything to help the MC. So when Briggs said he had a job for me, I jumped at it. He took me to a poker game someone was running on our turf and told me to smash the place up and teach the guy a lesson. And I did it. And I was good at it. And eventually, the club made me their enforcer.”

“But then Briggs told me about this fed, a guy called Walker. He had some sort of grudge against the club and he’d faked evidence that we were dealing heroin. He was blackmailing Briggs: either he pay him or the whole club would go to jail. Briggs told me that the rest of the club didn’t know, that we maybe had a rat and I was the only one he could trust. He said—” Carrick hissed air through his teeth—”he said I was like a son to him.”

His voice was vicious now, sharp and toxic with the poison he was releasing. “I couldn’t say no. I took an untraceable gun and a stolen car and I lay in wait for the guy. I ran him off the road and then, while he sat there bleeding and helpless in the wreck, I put a bullet in his head.”

“And then, a few days later, I found out it was all bullshit. There was no blackmail plot. Walker hadn’t been about to bring down the club. He had evidence against Briggs: real evidence, just on him. He was cooking up a drug deal behind the club’s back. He’d conned me into doing his dirty work. And the FBI agent? Clean as they come. Had a wife and two kids.” He swallowed. “I couldn’t tell anyone: Briggs said he’d tie me to the murder if I did. Mac and the others eventually found out about the drug deal and Mac wound up killing Briggs over the border in Mexico. Mac took over as our new president. But no one ever found out about the FBI agent. No one except Briggs and me. And now you.”#p#分页标题#e#

God...he’d kept this bottled up for years, trusting no one...until me. And I realized why he was able to tell me now, in this pitch-black cabin: he didn’t want to see my expression. He thought I’d be disgusted. He thought I’d hate him. And he was willing to tell me anyway, to risk losing me, just so he could finally be straight with me.

I had to show him I still loved him. That I didn’t think less of him, not for one second. He was lying there silently but I knew he was screaming inside, needing to know. I pushed him over onto his back and rolled on top of him. “Listen to me,” I said urgently. “That is not on you. You didn’t know. That’s on Briggs, one hundred percent. He used you.”