Cole
Idrove back to the Black Reapers’ clubhouse, expecting to find a bunch of Reapers still in their club attire with their funeral wear underneath it.
I got what I expected—but I did not also expect to see my brother waiting for me right outside the repair garage when I arrived. He had his arms folded, one leg crossed over the other, and sunglasses on, looking like he had stood where he was for quite some time. I killed the bike and made no pretenses about the situation, walking over to him.
“You got a minute before we get everyone fired up?” he said.
“Depends,” I said. “Are you going to try and talk me out of what I want to do?”
“Not necessarily.”
I snorted.
“Let’s go.”
I followed him into the office of the repair shop, a place of haphazardly placed papers, a few cabinet drawers with weapons, and old music posters that were quite possibly irrelevant even when they’d been hung in the first place. Lane sat on the edge of the desk while I leaned against the door. This scene of the two of us talking like this was familiar from our childhood days; at least now, Lane wasn’t trying to tower over me as we spoke, nor did I fear he’d be doing so condescendingly.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “What do you think is better? Eradicating one member of the Fallen Saints, or eradicating all members of the Fallen Saints?”
Here we go.
“You know that’s not a choice of equal weight, Lane,” I said. “Killing the President of a country is not the same as killing its citizens.”
“And you know that comparing a country to a motorcycle club is also not the same thing. In any case, let’s not get caught up in metaphors and comparisons here. You seriously think that by killing Lucius and Lucius only, that’s going to end the threat of the Fallen Saints?”
I nodded.
“And you don’t think that there might be even more evil members in that club who would do things that Lucius is smart enough not to do? You don’t think that allowing those members to rise to positions of prominence might have severe consequences that we suffer from accordingly?”
“Honestly? No.”
Lane fidgeted on the table, so obviously discomforted by what I said, he would have moved less if he’d sat on a nail.
“A lot of the folks in that club are just trying to make ends meet or got caught up in a world that turned out in a way they didn’t think—”
“And how would you know that, Cole?”
“How could you not?” I said, though I—we—had no hard evidence. “If you were under the control of an extreme dictator, someone who you knew was a sociopath and prone to killing whoever got in his way, don’t you think you’d yearn for the day when you had freedom?”
Lane shook his head.
“Cole, your empathy is both your greatest strength and your greatest weakness,” he said. “I’ll admit, the last two years have shown me that I was wrong to outright dismiss you. But that doesn’t mean I can’t call you out when I think you’re being an idiot. And I think you are grossly underestimating what the Fallen Saints would do if we took out Lucius.”
He sighed.
“We’ve all focused on Lucius, all of us, because he is the one most responsible for the deaths of the people we care about,” he said. “But we’re fooling ourselves if we think that Lucius is the only bad guy in that club.”
“Of course, I’m not saying it’s a bunch of actual saints and Lucius is the one that’s making them all fallen. But I am saying that we go for the head, and the body dies.”
“Right, and to use my own cliché, I’m saying that maybe the devil we know is, somehow, better than the devil we don’t know. Maybe killing Lucius and leaving the rest of the Fallen Saints by themselves will only lead to greater chaos in this town. Maybe you go for the head, and instead of the body dying, the decapitated chicken runs around aimlessly.”
Both of us stared at the other, feeling annoyed and maybe even some contempt.
“Plus, Cole, let’s be honest. Storming Lucius’ house would be like storming a military bunker with some butter knives. The best we’ll do is inflict superficial damage, and you know that the retaliatory attack will be unlike anything we’ve seen before. There’s a reason the only home attack that’s taken place in our clubs’ histories came when Dad died, and that’s because they thought we’d shatter into a million pieces when it happened.”
“So what would you have us do then, Lane?” I said.
Admittedly, there was more than just the genuine feeling that I’d found the right answer. My resistance to Lane always getting his way, my annoyance with still feeling like an outsider, and my need to prove myself were also underlining my contempt for Lane’s approach.
