Chapter 1
Layla
I took a deep breath and looked at the hovel I’d once called a palace. The giant of my childhood reduced to what it really was. The fortress in my mind demolished. It was just a big shack with a decent parking lot and a small garage attached to it. Something ordinary. Normal.
Home of the Fire and Steel Motorcycle Club.
Seeing it still made me angry. This was the place where my family fell apart. The place where I’d lost everything. The place that had made me who I was.
I wanted to spit on it and walk away, but I had to go in there. I had to do this for my brother.
I had to see his body.
He had died for the Fire & Steel. And what was we left with? Some biker’s funeral attended by drunken men and ugly women?
Welcome to life—and death—in the MC.
No matter how upset I was, anger didn’t ease the ache in my soul, nor could it cast out the misery nesting in my heart. It couldn’t quiet the mantra echoing through my thoughts, reminding me of the truth.
He’s gone.
My brother, gone. Murdered. Killed in the streets of a broken-down neighborhood just outside of Pittsburgh, just like my father was. That was life in Braddock.
Oh, Sean.
All because he’d gotten involved in some stupid war with a rival gang. I didn’t know if they were bikers or just run-of-the-mill thugs, but I didn’t care. I knew the drill. At least he wasn’t shanked in a fucking jail cell like my mother for her allegiance to the club. It was the price we all paid for our association.
Why couldn’t we just be mill and dockworkers like the rest of town? Why did we have to do… this?
I steeled my resolve and pushed forward. Each step felt heavier than the last until I was across the parking lot and in front of the back door.
Knock. Knock.
It opened with a big creak to reveal a friendly face.
“Oh, Lala. You made it!” My Aunt Donna stood there, a sad smile reaching up to her eyes as she looked me over.
Damn, the childhood nickname stung as soon as it came out of her mouth. I hadn’t heard it in ages. ‘Lala’ is what Sean called me as soon as he’d learned to talk, when I was still a baby. It stuck.
We were only twenty-five months apart. Now we were separated by a lifetime.
I let out a great, big sigh as Donna pulled me in for a hug, her eyes already brimming with tears. Sean had been like a son to her. She’d never had any kids of her own.
“I—I’m so sorry, honey. I know you two were close. If he could have said goodbye, I know he would’ve.”
If by ‘close,’ she meant that I got two visits and six calls a year? Yeah, sure, we were close.
Okay, we had a good relationship, but it could’ve been better. Just because we weren’t bosom buddies didn’t mean I didn’t love him, though. He was my brother and he tried his best. Whenever he came to visit me, he’d ask me to come home. I loved him for that.
I just didn’t want to see him die like this. I had worried for years that he would die. That I would have to come back just like this. And here I was. Standing inside the Club again, I would give anything to have been wrong. My brother had deserved better.
Donna’s familiar, raspy voice reminded me of the last time I’d been here. I’d only been fourteen then. A lot had changed since then. Not Aunt Donna, though. She was haggard now, but still the same woman who’d raised us , frizzled orange hair and all. She dyed it to imitate my own auburn shade—and Sean’s—but she never could get it quite right. While our mother was getting high, Donna had tucked us in at night and made sure we brushed our teeth.
I had her to thank for my mouthful of healthy teeth. I’d been a stubborn kid.
The years hadn’t been kind to her. Worry lines were etched deeper into her face than they should have been at age sixty, and the toll smoking had taken on her was obvious. But she was warm and she was friendly, and that was just what I needed now.
I let the stale smell of smoke wafting out from behind her envelop me as she hugged me tight, stroking my hair like she used to when I was a little girl.
“He was a good boy, Lala. He was.”
I just nodded as she led me through the maze of back rooms. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t a good boy. But they all said that after, didn’t they, that the men who died in violence were good. It was a lie they said to try to convince themselves of their own innocence more than anyone else. He’d probably killed - and was killed - in the name of something cruel, selfish, and illegal.
All this death for the MC.
“Aunt Donna, I don’t think I can do this,” I said as we turned down the hall toward a crowd of people. “I don’t think I can go in there. I can’t see him.”