Hearts: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 7) Read online

“The hell?”

  “You and I are both fuckups, like you said. We’re both people who are trying to run from our past. So… we go. We move to Arizona or Utah or Reno, I dunno. We get far, far away and let these people solve their problems. What do you say?”

  But even as I was speaking, I saw the spark leave Tanya’s eyes, transforming her back into Mama, de facto internal enforcer of the Savage Saints. My attempts to rescue her had failed, because you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be.

  “You, of all people, know that the club is family.”

  “A family that is no longer mine.”

  “A family that will take you back,” Mama said. “I’ve said that multiple times. Richard and Krispy will apologize to you when you return.”

  “I want them to apologize to me first,” I said. “And in any case, this is a family that is dangerous. Aren’t you tired of having that kind of danger? I want the fun kind—”

  Mama came up to me real close, and I thought she was going to slap me.

  But instead, she did something decidedly different. She hugged me.

  “The club is my family,” she said. “I don’t have a real family. I can’t leave them, Joseph, and I don’t want you to, either. But right now, I’m going to have to pick family over love. Please do not make me do that.”

  That was harsh and cruel to say. It may have been right, but it really hurt to hear. It felt like I’d tried to stab the part of myself that the Saints occupied, only for Mama to redirect the knife straight at my heart.

  I struggled for hope and for something to say back. I got desperate.

  “I have family,” I said. “They can take you in.”

  “Joseph,” Mama said with a sigh. “You said you’re estranged from them.”

  “By my choice,” I said. “I can get back in.”

  “Family isn’t just something you shove yourself into and say that you’re in!” she snapped, pulling back abruptly from her hug. “Family is something that you build and work on every day. Family is something that you forgive despite all the fights. Family is something that takes time to develop, not an instant birthright.”

  “It is with mine,” I said.

  But I knew I was full of shit. I was clinging to whatever excuse I could have to try to get Tanya without the Saints, and I no longer even knew why. I was just embracing my position at this point for the sake of embracing my position.

  “Joseph, I don’t want it to come to an ultimatum, and I’m not going to be so stupid as to give you one on a night like this. But I am begging you to please reconsider and come back. Krispy and Richard will apologize to you. OK? I don’t know what more you need.”

  Calm yourself. She’s right. She’s going to get an apology from them. That’s what you want, right? To be respected.

  To be laughed with, not at. To be seen as a serious member of the club. To be taken in as someone who can make a difference. To be seen as a funny guy, not a clown.

  “I—”

  But then her phone rang. She picked it up.

  “Yeah?”

  I couldn’t hear what was on the other line. But her face got even more serious. She went to the window, her hand on it, looking out over Las Vegas. It was not a happy look.

  “OK, I’ll be right back.”

  She hung up and turned to me.

  “The Red Door just got attacked by the Sinners,” she said. “It’s now or never, Pork.”

  I shook my head. I just… it was too soon.

  “Fine, be that way,” she said.

  She went to the door, paused, and turned back to me.

  “By the way,” she said, “do you know why I’m so desperate? Do you know why I want so badly to see the Degenerate Sinners destroyed once and for all?”

  “Because they’re assholes?” I said.

  But Mama’s answer was much deeper than that. It was scary, in fact. Terrifying.

  “Because Stewart Elliot is Scar.”

  Chapter 16: Mama

  I didn’t wait to see Joseph’s reaction to the bombshell.

  I didn’t want to see anyone’s reaction to that bombshell.

  The only other person in the club who knew about my connection to Scar was Richard, having been there from the start. He never blamed me; he never accused me of fostering Stewart into the sociopath that he was now. He knew, and I knew on some level, that the type of person Stewart was meant he was destined to become someone like Scar.

  Yet, I couldn’t help but consider myself somewhat responsible for the current predicament. Had I not dated Stewart, maybe he wouldn’t have become so zealous about the club’s principles. Had I not dumped him—or, better said, had I never dated him so that I couldn’t have dumped him—maybe he wouldn’t have gotten so angry and become the monster that he was.

  In any case, it was all so much to handle that I just never handled it. Since no one else knew about it, no one else asked me about it. Richard, bless his soul, never mentioned it. In fact, when we learned Scar’s real identity, Richard never did anything more than glance at me in curiosity. He must have seen the pain and self-loathing on my face at that moment because the glance ended right there.

  So why had I told Joseph?

  Who knew? I supposed it was out of some probably misguided sense that if I exposed my darkest secret, my most disturbing fact about myself, that he might come back. But if that was the case, wouldn’t it have made sense to wait for him? He wasn’t going to get to the clubhouse in his current state, and even if he did, he wasn’t going to be any use behind a rifle.

  I just felt like I’d burdened him with another disturbing fact about me. I’d been selfish, really. I’d wanted to shove it in Joseph’s face that he was not the one suffering the most because of this, and as a result, I’d selfishly given him something he didn’t need, likely keeping him away.

  Fuck me, huh? What a bunch of bullshit. And it was all my fault.

  I got on my bike and hurried, going at the typical speeds that Dom and Joseph so loved to hit. The Sinners were gone by the time I arrived, but the damage they had created would remain for a long time.

  It looked like a goddamn grenade had gone off at the front entrance. Bricks lay crumbled on the street, with a charred black wall of debris where the bricks had once been. Bullets were sprayed all over the wall. It was a good thing that the walls were much thicker than the bricks suggested, because it was clear the Sinners had come with the intent of breaching the walls.

  That likely wasn’t going to happen as long as we stayed vigilant—we had fortified the walls quite a bit even before the Sinners became a real threat, preparing for the day when a group like them existed—but still.

  I walked inside to find Krispy sitting at the bar, a gun right by him, his head in his hands.

  “This is all my fault,” he said.

  He genuinely seemed contrite. I wasn’t going to say that that saved him, mostly because I already believed he wasn’t a rat, but seeing him be so sorrowful certainly reinforced the notion.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Talk to us,” Richard said. “What sort of things did you tell the Sinners?”

  Krispy bit his lip.

  “Everything I told you,” he said.

  “Tell the group, then. Let’s see if we can pick it apart. I’m not looking for anything to hold against you, Krispy.”

  The other California Saints were there too. We had a full house—not just the officers, but members of the club and members of the California Savage Saints. I was pretty confident that Richard had already put out a notice that tonight’s performance was canceled.

  If it wasn’t, then that was a dumb mistake.

  “OK,” Krispy said. “When I approached the Sinners, I explained that I had just moved from Minnesota, from a group called the Vicious Vikings. Believe it or not, Minnesota has a strong population of MCs. In any case, they were very suspicious, as they probably should have been. I was angling to get into a meeting with Scar, and I mentioned… this
was stupid, but I figured it would help me move up faster. I mentioned that the Savage Saints were also recruiting me. I kept it vague, only saying that members had reached out, but that seemed to pique their interest. I figured that I could trade information from them in return for a meeting with Scar.”

  Krispy shook his head.

  “But I let it slip that we meet on Thursdays. I think they figured while we were meeting, we wouldn’t expect an attack like this.”

  “They’re figuring out our typical schedule,” Richard said. “Meetings on Thursday. Business Thursday to Monday. Parties on Tuesday and Wednesday. They’ve been trying to attack us while the parties go on, but they’re probably going to start striking us when business is running.”

  “And that would immediately end The Red Door,” I said. “Ain’t nobody worth anything gonna come here if they think they’ll get killed.”

  “Right,” Krispy said. “And the thing was, I almost got a meeting with Scar. I came damn close to making it a reality. But they were asking me to try to get home addresses for you all. Obviously, I don’t have those, and I didn’t want to make up ones. I knew they’d hunt me down and kill me. So I tried, but… I think they got suspicious. I overplayed my hand. In fact, at the last meeting, one of their men said for me just to go home and they’d come to me.”

  To kill you.

  “Sorry, guys,” he said. “I blew it. At best, they don’t think I have any affiliation, but they’re going to kill me anyway. At worst, the jig is up. Actually, the jig is fucking up regardless.”

  “I figured as much,” Richard said. “We can try again with someone else. Or, does someone else have any ideas?”

  What would Joseph do?

  It wasn’t as stupid a question as one might have thought. He had SEAL training and broader military experience. If anyone in this group had an idea, it was the guy who had served in the special forces.

  And the first thing that came to mind was obvious. We had to take to the shadows. But we had to take to the shadows violently. We couldn’t fight in broad daylight, not if we wanted to avoid putting Las Vegas’ reputation in the toilet.

  “We keep doing these hit and runs, out in the streets, and innocent people will die,” I said, emphasizing the last word. “Our business depends on the knowledge that our guests will be one hundred percent safe. People know that we’re bikers; they know that we’re not some clean establishment like the Rhino or one of the Vegas clubs. Our seediness comes not in drugs but in who we are. There’s an appeal to that, though, if people know that they’re safe. But that’s a huge if.”

  “So you’re saying…?” Richard said.

  “That we can’t be fighting like this,” I said. “Prolonging the fight is the same thing as losing the fight. If you want my opinion? We need to treat this like a military operation, not a vengeance strike against a fellow biker gang. We need a tactical operation, not a chest-thumping showmanship with motorcycles. If anything, I’d say we should have very few motorcycles. Maybe we’ll have a few at the end when it’s out there, but you want my idea? Treat it like how they killed Osama bin Laden. In, out, and without the world knowing until much later.”

  Silent nods went up around the room. Richard was one of those heads.

  “What about Pork?”

  I shook my head.

  “He’s being a weirdo right now,” I said. “He needs a few days.”

  “We don’t have a few days, Mama,” Richard warned. “We need to—”

  My phone rang. I pulled it out. It was Joseph. Richard motioned for me to answer it.

  “You better make me smile with your reason for calling.”

  “I will. Put me on speakerphone.”

  Chapter 17: Pork

  It’s funny how deciding to take on a task bigger than yourself can sober you up in a heartbeat.

  Hearing what she’d said about Scar being her abusive boyfriend had lit a fire under me. I was fucking infuriated that the very asshole that had caused our club so much trouble had actually been the one who had abused Tanya for so long. It barely mattered to me that he had also affected the club; as far as I was concerned, he could have vanished to South Dakota after hurting Tanya, and I’d still want to kill him.

  I only needed to collect my wits and ensure that returning to the Saints was the most prudent move. It didn’t take more than fifteen minutes. Sure, there was brief consideration of continuing the lone wolf, except from more of a vigilante perspective, but that thought faded when I remembered Scar was a fucking coward.

  And so I called her, heard the din of The Red Door behind her, and requested to be put on speakerphone so that everyone could hear me.

  “You know, many people say that the Savage Saints are their family,” I said as the elevator lowered down. “I’ve always thought of family as this thing that loves and supports you. And you guys do. But I failed to properly account for the fact that sometimes, family fights. And I’ve been so used to those fights turning into expulsions that I just walked out, thinking that was that. And at the time, maybe. But when Mama came and tried to say you wanted me back, I resisted.”

  I had no idea who, besides Tanya, was listening. But if she was the only one who heard me speak, that was more than good enough for me.

  “I never realized there was a middle ground to it all, that there could be space for families to fight and then reach peace again. I just believed for so long that, as soon as this happened, I could never come back. But I recognize that I made a mistake pushing Mama away when she asked me to come back. So, with all that said, give me ten minutes. Pork is coming back, baby!”

  I hung up right then. I loved a good dramatic statement to end a phone call on. It just felt right, and besides, I always did love a little bit of showmanship.

  I got on my bike, feeling as loose and free as ever, and hurried over to The Red Door. I didn’t feel any of the alcohol; I’m sure if I got pulled over, I would be arrested but fuck it. I was a Savage Saint, not a Sinless Saint.

  I opened the door to see about six different Saints with their guns pointed at me.

  “Woah, hey, it’s me!” I shouted.

  “Sorry, Richard has us on high alert,” one of them, nicknamed Grease, said. “They’re in the back.”

  At least they hadn’t shot at me on instinct. I couldn’t really blame them for being on edge as they were, especially given how ugly the front of the building looked.

  I walked past Grease, patting him on the shoulder, and found Richard and Krispy not “in the back” but right there on the other side, approaching me. I paused and looked at both of them in the eye.

  “Pork,” Richard said. “I’m sorry.”

  He extended his hand. I took it, firmly gripped it, and shook.

  “And I’m sorry too,” Krispy said.

  I did the same thing with him as I’d done with Richard. I was impressed that they’d actually used the words “I’m sorry.” Bikers were good for many things but being honest and saying “I am sorry” was not one of them. The most we ever did was say “I fucked up” but to apologize directly… bikers did not have the emotional capacity that priests and nuns did, that was for sure.

  “You deserve an explanation for what happened,” Richard said.

  And so, as I noticed other club members start to filter in—including Tanya—Richard outlined the plan that he had, by now, been forced to reveal to the rest of the club. Tanya had told me most of it already but hearing it from the horse’s mouth added a certain weight and realness to it that was lacking before.

  “I should have said everything when you accused Krispy of being a rat,” he said. “But at the time, I was still trying to play it close to the vest. If you had confronted him in private, with just me, I would have told you. But that’s not to blame you. I take full ownership of the mistake here.”

  “All good, that ownership is worth a lot; it’s a stock everyone should buy.”

  I had never felt so happy to see eye rolls as I was then. I was back to being able t
o crack stupid jokes, and the club was back to mocking me for it. If we had that dynamic, we had a healthy dynamic.

  “Just one question, though,” I said. “Any other secrets?”

  “None,” Richard said. “It’s all out in the open now.”

  I looked over his shoulder at Tanya, smiling—actually smiling in The Red Door—at me. I didn’t know if Richard’s statement referred to how Mama and I felt about each other, but at this point, I didn’t mind either. It was going to come out sooner or later; it might as well be now while we were putting all cards on the table.

  “Sounds good,” I said as I walked past Richard and up to Tanya.

  I opened my arms for a hug before I was even in touching range, and when I hugged her, I didn’t care how it looked. I didn’t care that everyone took notice that she was the first person I voluntarily went to. I didn’t care that I held her in my arms for more than a couple of seconds.

  I didn’t kiss her, but that was only because I wasn’t a fan of public displays of affection anyway. I didn’t mind showing my affection for her and for showing my appreciation for bringing me back.

  “Thanks for talking some sense into me,” I said. “I’m sorry it took—”

  “All good,” Tanya said.

  She doesn’t want the club yet to know about Stewart being Scar. So don’t say anything.

  “Thanks for being receptive.”

  Finally, I pulled back and looked around the room. Dom and Barber were there; so were Trace and BK. Several others were littered around the edges, looking at us. I turned my attention back to Richard, in the process of lighting a cigarette. It was normally against house rules to smoke in the theatre, but all things considered, I’m not sure Richard gave a shit.

  And if someone else did, well, Richard was club president. He could do whatever the hell he wanted.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  Richard snorted.

  “We were gonna ask you that,” he said.

  “We need a military mind to do this,” Tanya said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “The things we’ve been doing so far haven’t worked. So we need someone who knows a thing or two about killing assholes to step up. Can you?”