I saw the addictions take my mother, father, and a whole bunch of other folks associated with the Blackwoods. It’s either meth or the military with us – not a whole lot of in between. Luckily for me, I did well in the military. It lets me conduct my covert operations a lot more easily when you understand how civilians think and how to avoid detection.
Whatever. I workout. Pray. Take a shower. Pray again. I consider praying again to dispel the disturbing thoughts in my head, but I should have work soon to make it easier for me to stay away from the darkness. Exposing the truth to Magnum will be… interesting. I never took him for mentally stable and the Sinclair men need about a fifth of whiskey a day to stay level.
I grab our prisoners who we are pretending aren’t prisoners from the apartment Deacon put them up at. The redhead looks up at me with her raccoon eyeliner around those eerie blue eyes.
“I can’t be in trouble,” she says. “I was supporting myhusbandand doing what was right to keep my family together.”
“None of my business.”
“If it’s none of your business, you would be doing the bullshit with Deacon to take away our freedoms.”
Her husband speaks in a low voice, “Baby, that’s enough…”
“Come along with me. I’ll drive you out to Deacon’s casino.”
“I’m pregnant,” the red-head says with a typical entitled snarl on her face. “And by the way, does my brother know what the hell you’re up to out here?”
I think she’s lying, but I don’t bother exposing Tylee’s manipulation for what it is. I have it on pretty good authority that she drinks and does drugs far too much to be pregnant right now. I raise an eyebrow, but I don’t answer. Her husband shakes his head with disappointment.
Definitely a lie. Maybe they’re trying again and she’s just hoping. I heard Tylee use that excuse before. I still don’t answer her, ‘cause I’m not getting paid to answer, so it makes no difference to me as long as it makes no difference to her. Her husband puts his hand on her lower back and offers me a sympathetic look.
“We’ll do whatever Magnum wants to make this right,” her husband says. I grunt and nod because frankly, I don’t care what they do. Deacon didn’t pay me to worry about all of that and I’m just here to get my money so I can fuck off to the East Coast.
I heard Buffalo and Boston have equally terrible winters, but I can always spend the winter time in the southwest and make my way up the East Coast earning money along Route 66 until I hit Chicago. Then I’ll gun it back to Buffalo (or Boston, wherever I end up) and settle in with booze and bad bitches until the season changes again.
Now that I’m almost twenty-two years old, I want to settle down and get some space from the club during the year. I’m ready to retire and focus on my own hobbies and interests aside from fixing bikes, which I’m pretty good at, I’ll be honest.
Magnum’s ride sits outside the casino parked next to Deacon’s when we get there. The red-head gets nervous. Shelooks over at her husband like there’s something he can do to save her ass right now.
“We should call Wyatt,” she whispers.
“We don’t need to call Wyatt,” he grunts. “Trust me.”
The entire situation is a total fucking mess. All I can think about is getting myself a cigarette and the next place I’ll go when this is all said and done. Tylee got herself into a fucking mess from what it sounds like. Isaac and her are over. I have to stop them from getting killed and end up in the hospital after the whole thing.
Once everything blows over, Magnum and Damara leave. Deacon offers me a drink and I don’t turn him down. The shit between Isaac and Tylee is exactly why I’ll never get married and I can’t ever imagine being in a position to tattoo my club name on a woman’s ass, or neck, or wherever. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. And I wouldn’t know what to say to a woman in the first place.
I’ve been to bed with plenty of them, but they were the ones chasing after me most of the time. Convenient. But I’ve never met a woman who caught my interest for longer than a week or two. They get sick of me pretty quickly too.
Once we sit down and I get my lips wet with a few sips of Hollingsworth house whiskey, Deacon gets straight to the point.
“Are you seeing anybody? Got any business down south?”
“Why?”
“I have some work for you on the East Coast with Ethan. Could be a real chance to prove yourself to Wyatt.”
“Don’t care much about proving myself to Wyatt.”
Deacon laughs. “You’re a shit, you know that?”
“Just being honest.”
“This country is going to the dogs,” Deacon says. “I don’t know how it came to this, but we have a chance to make a fuck ton of money and keep our people safe while it all goes to hell.”
“I thought we had a president who cared in the white house,” I respond knowing full well that Deacon will miss the sarcasm. The military can make you cynical about the men in charge pretty damn quickly. They don’t give a crap about us while we serve and they definitely don’t give a crap about us when they’re done using us up.
Deacon finishes the rest of his whiskey glass. “You don’t actually believe that.”
