I could've said a million things. Could've told her I'd be back as soon as I could, sworn it. I could've told her Finn had Oki, a good man who'd bring him up right, but it didn't change the fact that gramps wasn't his father.
I could've stood there like a fucking tool, telling her I'd send love and money, every fucking dime I earned. All my grand plans about murdering Fang and purifying the Grizzlies MC died like leaves stuffed down my throat when I thought about speaking them aloud.
The girl was right, smart as the day I'd claimed her. I was full of shit, nothing but excuses.
Too bad seeing right through them wasn't stopping me from walking out. I'd wracked my brain, burned through a hundred backup plans and a thousand alternatives, and the only one that ended with me doing right by my blood and my patch started with me walking the fuck out.
I turned my back, feeling hot tears stabbing at my eyes.
“I hate you!” she screamed. I heard something scrape off the little nightstand at her side.
I started moving, heading for the door. Totally ignored the skinny glass flower vase sailing over my head just a second later. It shattered like a bomb, spitting tiny shards everywhere.
She wasn't done yet. Fuck no. If I could've traded the sharp glass crunching under my boot for the next words out of her mouth, I'd have taken that bargain over and over.
“Fuck you, Sam! Fuck you. Get out! Don't come to me again, no matter what happens with you and the stupid, screwed up club. I'm never going to forgive you for this – never.”
I walked, headed down the hall to her wailing, without turning back.
Never. Never. Never. I heard that last hellish word over and over again in my brain.
You don't need to forgive me, babe. I need you and Finn alive, even if you hate my twisted ass forever.
I'm sorry, Finn. I'm sorry, Lizzie.
I'm so fucking sorry.
I lived in hell for twenty damned years.
If only all those preachers had told me hell meant silence, isolation, death.
Fang got his claws in deep. His power grew, corrupting the club, putting dirty assholes in all the right places, men without morals or club honor who'd support him 'til the bitter end.
Asshole never figured out what really happened to his brother, but it took me nearly two fucking decades to hatch a plan to kill him.
Just a couple years later, and I wore the Enforcer patch, taking the spot of his dead brother. I buried myself in work, doing every nasty deed I had to for the club, watching as good men fell.
We made money – a lot of fucking money. I sent it home to Spokane every month, emptying my account, always leaving Lizzie the same instructions about how to launder it so she wouldn't get fucked.
She never answered, holding to her promise. The only shit I ever got came from Okie, older and a little more senile, telling me to fuck off while he sent me pics of my kid.
I took a good, long look at Finn. He turned taller, older, handsomer, and stronger with each passing year. He grew up in still, faded images I burned every time after taking a good, long look.
Couldn't let anybody in this club know what he looked like, or even that he was still alive.
Assholes came and went like a revolving door. Fang forgot all about my family, thank Christ, and Wheeler hit the bottle.
I joined him, drinking out my woes, ignoring the boozing and whoring he started to do, fucking around on Julie. He was sorry by the end, of course, shortly before our final reckoning with the Scorps MC.
Another bad deal of Fang's killed my best friend. I started watching over Julie and Travis the same way I did my own kin. She got older, aged like a widow does. The kid grew up, eventually took the patch, called himself Roman. I remembered that name, knew I'd probably have him by my side someday, when I made good on my promise to purify this MC.
I spent at least a thousand nights listening to brothers drinking, drugging, fucking themselves stupid with faceless whores. My dick got to know my fucking hand so well I could barely tell them apart.
I rode out into the wilderness and screamed 'til my throat was raw, promising myself I wouldn't betray her, even if I never got pussy again.
Another blink of my eyes, and the Scorps were just a memory. So was peace.
We fought clubs in Sturgis, several kinds of mafias, any little shit who had the balls to step onto our territory. The Prairie Devils, the Raging Skulls, the Slingers, the Deads, all of them wanted a piece of us, so we chewed them up and shat them right back out whenever they came too far West for their own good.
Threats changed. Fang got cockier, greedier, uglier. He smiled at men with that crooked fucking tooth while he held his dagger behind him, taking out anybody who got in his way. He did more dirty deals. More men died, good and evil, 'til it was hard as hell to tell them apart.
Finn hit his teens and wrote his old man, told me he'd gotten his address off his ma, the only time she'd said my name. He told me Oki died, and that he had a few more years of high school before he joined the Navy, fulfilling his promise to gramps that he'd become a Navy SEAL.