Vicious Cycle(5)

Once I had let Frankie stew in his torture long enough, I cleared my throat. “So are we good now, Frankie? No more playing us with the Iron Lords, right?”

“Y-yes,” he stuttered, as his teeth chattered from his full-body shakes.

I cocked my brows at him. “Yes, what?”

His eyes, which still shone with tears, widened. “Yes, sir, Deacon. You have my word. I won’t ever fuck you over again. I swear on my life.”

“And your daughter’s?”

He cringed at the mention of his daughter. “Yes, mine and hers. I swear to God!”

“Glad to hear it.” I then slid the picture of his angel-faced daughter back into his wallet. “Glad to know that your baby girl will be staying safe and sound, too.”

“Yes,” Frankie whispered, a tremor of what appeared to be relief going through his body.

Glancing at Bishop, I gave a nod. He took his pocketknife out of his jeans and cut the ties binding Frankie.

“Have a good one, man. I look forward to our shipment next month,” I said with a shit-eating grin.

Frankie gave a brief jerk of his head in acknowledgment as he rubbed his wrists where they had been bound. With a final wave, I headed out the door of Frankie’s warehouse with Bishop on my heels. As we stepped into the intense May sunshine, I felt grateful for the warmth that heated the exposed skin below my T-shirt and the leather cut, or vest, I wore that boasted the Raiders’ logo. When I slid across the seat of my bike, I caught Bishop’s chuckle behind me. Craning my neck to look at him, I demanded, “What?”

He shook his head with a grin. “I was just thinkin’ it was good I was with you and not Rev when you started in on that kiddie-pussy shit. He would have freaked the fuck out and ruined everything.”

I snorted at the mention of my adoptive brother Reverend, or Rev, as he was known within the club. Nathaniel was his birth name, but none of his brothers called him that. The only person who refused to call us anything but our given names was my adoptive mother, Elizabeth. Although Rev was six foot four and a wall of muscle, he was really a tenderhearted pussy when it came to most things. He was the gentle giant who loved puppies and kids and that rainbows-and-hearts shit. Most of the time, he had too much goodness and integrity to fit into our world. “Yeah, well, that’s the reason no one ever voted him in as sergeant at arms. They knew he wouldn’t be able to do shit when it came to being a hard-ass.”

“True,” Bishop replied, as he slid across his bike’s seat. After putting on my helmet, I kick-started the engine. There was no other feeling in my life quite like the roar of the engine beneath me. The only peace I found was on the road. Although I now had the support of a loving family, I still felt like a loner—an outsider still searching for a place to make his own. Only the road offered a place for me to be my true self.

As I wound my way through the back roads toward home, Bishop stayed close at my side. When we got to the compound, there were a few scattered bikes here and there. It was only four, and members didn’t really start hanging around until they were done with their straight jobs. Years ago, when the cotton mill went bust, Preach had the business sense to buy the property. At the time, it wasn’t for the Raiders. No, he was holy rolling then and focused on his ministry. After growing up in the MC world, he’d found Jesus in prison when he was just twenty. When he got out three years later, he buried his biker past and became a Pentecostal preacher. That’s where he’d met my adoptive mom—she was a fresh-faced, pure-of-heart-and-body, eighteen-year-old beauty. The daughter of a church elder. She saw him as the lost black sheep she could lead into the fold.

But even after he married the virtuous woman and started spreading the good word, the biker bred into him raged and clawed to be free. Then, two years after I came to live with him, his preaching ended in a true blaze of glory. That was the night he killed one of his own flock. I’d never been given the entire story, but I did know it had to do with the man hurting Rev somehow. Preach didn’t do any time—instead, the transient man just “disappeared.” Most of the congregation had been made up of truly lost souls without hope or family, so it was easy to bury him in the deep woods behind the compound without anyone asking questions.

After that night, the biker emerged strong and proud, which caused Preach and Mama Beth’s marriage to go down in flames. They separated after that, but they never divorced. My mother, along with my brothers and me, stayed in the village row house while Preach slept at the clubhouse that had once been his church. While she loathed the biker world, Mama Beth watched helplessly as each of us followed in Preach’s footsteps by patching into the Raiders. I think the three of us boys kept her constantly on her knees in prayer. But even though we were badass bikers, we still loved and respected the hell out of her. She was the best mother a guy could ever ask for, and she never treated me any differently from her blood sons.