The way I saw it, if my father was, in fact, a rat... I couldn’t even get past that thought. I couldn’t play out the chain of logic to try to guess what would have happened if that was the case. It was just too ludicrous a scenario for me to consider.
Austin Smith Sr., also known as Red Raven, the oldest member of the club, older than the founder Roger Carter, the eldest member of the club... would betray the only group he’d loved his whole life for their mortal enemies?
And yet, you know how he looked just before he got shot. When he stared at Butch and Axle.
Pissed.
And not the annoyed pissed off. Hatefully pissed off.
But why? Why did he look that way? Was he pissed off because Axle and Butch were preventing him from getting to Lane to warn him about the Saints?
Or...
Because they were preventing him from getting to Lane to kill him?
And then more memories started to come back.
The memory of how, at Roger Carter’s funeral, my father had privately leaned towards me after a speech from Lane and said, “If that’s our leader, we’re fucked.” He had said it with a smirk after Lane had stumbled over his words, an expression I had taken then as a poor attempt at humor, but looking back on it now...
Or how, after the first club party that Lane had thrown, one that was actually pretty damn wild—albeit one Lane didn’t particularly indulge in—my father had said, “The boy knows how to throw parties, but I don’t know if he knows how to throw Fallen Saints out.”
Such remarks were the kind of words that only I heard. My father was far too smart to ever speak ill of anyone within club earshot, and he was far too cautious to undermine leadership.
And maybe that was why my fears were so strong. Because if my father had the capability of hiding things...
This is fucking stupid. My father is a good man. I’m letting my paranoid side take over me. I know what I saw. I saw Butch murder my father. I never saw my father try to hurt him or anyone else. I heard plenty of other snide remarks about Lane that I never gave any thought to.
Just... fucking take care of yourself and enjoy this party.
If only it were that easy.
And it only got harder when my phone buzzed, alerting me that I had a new email from Father Marcellus.
* * *
The clubhouse slowly began to fill with girls and bikers. To my pleasant surprise, while there was certainly a fair share of girls who had once gone to Black Reaper parties, there were also plenty of new faces that I had never seen before.
I couldn’t say that I was a total recluse, refusing to party or associate myself with anyone there. That was ridiculous. I laughed and flirted and offered up a few witty lines.
But when it came time to shift up the flirtation from casual to heavy, I never found the desire or drive to do it. I just...
Only Jess can make me feel excited.
When the thought hit me, I felt silly. I was a biker, not a Mormon. I didn’t become attached to one girl and never fuck anyone else. I hadn’t had an exclusive relationship since I’d started at the Black Reapers.
But Jess...
Maybe my father’s death was making me think of life a little more seriously. Or maybe being at the bar with Jess, in the quiet space of Tom’s Billiards, was the one time that it didn’t feel like I was the son of Red Raven, a biker destined to be around bikers for the rest of his life.
Either way, after a couple of hours of flirting and deciding that I just wasn’t feeling it tonight, I retreated outside to the California night. I found a private spot away from a member making out with one girl, pulled up my phone, and opened the email from Father Marcellus.
“Decide for yourself.”
It was all that he had put in the text, but he had attached two things—a video and a screenshot.
The screenshot was the easier of the two to figure out. It looked like a conversation on my father’s phone—one that suggested he had spoken to Lucius about a meeting spot a couple of days before his death. This just seemed stupid; how would the Black Reapers have unlocked my father’s phone? And even if they had, this was the kind of shit that anyone with half a brain for Photoshop could have created. I refused to believe that this was valid.
The second was a video of a little over a minute. I started to play it.
