“If the club falls, that is a failure I cannot live with on my part. And I mean that literally. I would sooner die having done everything possible than live knowing the club is no more or, worse, a pawn of King or the Black Reapers.”
There was an enormously thick silence in the room. It was so quiet we could hear people walking in the clubhouse outside of church. The silence seemed to go so much longer than it needed to, but he and I were both thinking of the horrors of what such a life would look like.
The only thing I disagreed on was who would die if the club fell. He had Hailey, a future in love. I did not, and I had taken note of how he and Spawn now were with women. They’d open themselves up to weakness. Love could come someday, but maybe not in the middle of a massive biker war that could erupt at any fucking moment.
Finally, when it became evident that my father would not say anything else, I spoke.
“We’re on the same page,” I said. “It’s in the appearances that we differ. Let me ask you this. If we play dead, King turns his back, and we shoot him after tricking him, is that still victory?”
“Son, I know what you’re trying to say, but you fundamentally misunderstand the situation. The minute that we ‘play dead,’ King and his men desecrate our ‘corpses.’ They will not let dying dogs go peacefully into the night. They will make sure we sooner commit suicide than have to face dying in their hands.”
He was getting too caught up in the metaphor. I wasn’t doing a fucking good enough job of explaining it, and I was desperate to do so. I was terrified this was the one chance I’d get to persuade my father out of something rashly stupid, and to this point, it was not going particularly well—better than most, but not good enough.
“I am your father, and I care for you, but…”
That was the most I’d heard him say since my mother had died. On the day of her funeral, he told me to never forget that he loved me, he would die for me, and that he would raise me as she’d wanted. Since then, he hadn’t expressed any affection to this level—which said it all about the moment.
“At the end of the day, the club is bigger than either of us. And right now, I’m club president, which means I have to take care of the club first and foremost, and we have to do it on my terms.”
His gaze hardened, and just like that, I knew I’d lost him. He wouldn’t devolve into screaming at me, but he’d gone cold. Icy. Frozen in what he knew was best.
“Your way got lucky in working to rescue Hailey and Melissa. I’m grateful that it did. But do not ever show me up like that again. This club has to operate properly, and it only will with order. Understood?”
No, no, no, we finally had a good thing going, and it just fucking crumbled! Why the fuck? Why, the fuck, why the fuck would we have things going well, only for Dad to just…fuck!
“This is bullshit,” I said, feeling the temper in me rise. “You literally just said my way worked with Hailey and Melissa!”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” my father said. “I just told you what you need to know. Now it’s your job to be a good VP and act on it. When you’re president, you do as you wish. You can fucking make everyone eat pink cake and wear tutus for all I give a shit. But while I’m here, we do things my way, which is not some bullshit ego but built upon years and years of experience. Understood?”
I stood up without a word because if I said anything more, I was going to start a fight with my father, something that had happened only once before when my mother was sick. I slammed open the door to church, stepped to a bar stool, and let the door slam shut behind me.
“Sonny.”
I looked over to see Spawn standing between me and the door. Probably for the best, considering the alternative was to have me have a free path to my father.
“Let’s just go grab some drinks and chill out. No partying. No going wild. Just decompress. We’ll do it somewhere safe to minimize the risk of ambush. And no discussion of work.”
“You say that like that shit’s possible, Spawn,” Satan said as he emerged from church.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m not in charge here; I know that. And if you guys don’t, that’s fine. But we need to cool down. We need to chill out.”
Satan chortled.
“When the hell did you become mediator?”
“When the president and vice president are on the verge of fighting like this, I become mediator.”
Fuck. If an outsider was seeing it…I guess it was easy to imagine duking it out with someone when it was just you and your own thoughts. When the fucking sergeant-at-arms saw it coming a mile away…yeah, that was a fucking major problem.
“I suppose beers between boys will be good,” Satan said. “Let’s bring the girls; they’ll help keep the peace. Might as well get a jump start on my fuck tonight.”
I snorted. I didn’t mind going solo; I wasn’t one of those crybaby dudes who whined about not being liked and such. If I did get jealous or isolated, I’d just find some girl at the bar to pick up.
It was more concerning and more telling, though, just how badly things had gone in this conversation. Things needed a serious turn, and if anything, they’d only become more rigid.
My father and I could agree on one thing, though. We both needed to blow off some steam. I think we both needed a good fuck.
He just happened to have a partner to do it with. I just happened to recognize how dumb that was and would grab some one-night stand.
