“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked, before Bull had even come to a stop in front of me. “You knew. All this time, you knew!”
“What would I say, kid?” Bull replied calmly. Too calmly for my liking.
I ran a tongue along my bloody teeth and shook my head. “I don’t know—how about ‘why’d you murder your mom and stepdad, Dillon?’ ‘Why’d you let them sell your baby sister to the highest fucking bidder?’ ‘Why didn’t you protect her?’ That suit you, Prez?”
Wolf and Patch exchanged glances and I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, that’s right. I killed my mom, and then I fuckin’ ran.”
Their expressions changed, becoming darker, and I should have been afraid but I wasn’t. I was done being afraid. Done feeling guilty and ashamed, but mostly I was done running from my past. It was time to face those demons once and for all.
“When did you find out?” I asked Bull, my voice still hard.
“’Bout two days after you joined. I do research on all my brothers.”
“How’dyou find out?”
He shrugged. “That don’t matter.”
I looked down at my feet. “So now you know.”
“Yeah,” Bull replied, “now I know.”
There was a long silence; just the distant noises from ringside of people drinking and laughing, like my world hadn’t just fallen apart for the second time in my short life. I looked up, and all four men were staring at me.
“Well, I don’t know, so how ‘bout someone filling me in,” Wolf said, looking between me and Bull.
“That’s up to Dillon, not me,” Bull said, turning to look at Wolf.
“What happens next?” I asked, the tightness in my chest feeling looser and yet more toxic with every breath I took.
Bull cracked his knuckles. “We collect our winnings and go home is what happens next. Might need to get some stitches for that eye too.”
I frowned, my eyebrows pulling in. “And what about me?”
Bull sighed heavily. “What do you want me to say, kid? Like I’ve told you before, when you’re ready to save yourself, we’re here for you. It ain’t good, but you didn’t do it on purpose. Shit happens, and we make bad choices. That’s life. Life’s hard, but we have to be harder. When life knocks us on our asses, we hit right back with everything and more and we get back up.”
“Ididdo it on purpose though, Bull. I intended to kill them. I knew exactly what I was doing when I locked those doors and lit that match. I walked away as my own mother screamed at me to help her. Fought for everything in this life. Fought for the clothes on my back, the food in my stomach and the roof over our heads. I—” My words caught in my throat. “I fought for her, Aster, my baby sister. But it was too late. All the fighting in the world couldn’t save her, and it was my fault because I should have been there to protect her and keep her safe.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Bull said.
I shook my head. “But I did. I knew it in my gut that things weren’t right when I set off for school that morning. Mom and my asshole stepdad had been partying all night and I was tired. But I knew, Bull, deep down I knew that something weren’t right and I should have listened to my gut and stayed with her. Instead I left because I hated being in that house and around them, I left and when I came back Aster was gone.” I looked at the ground. “They’d sold her off to the highest bidder, promised me that she’d be looked after, but how would they know? How could they know? For all I know she was sold to some pedophile or sent abroad or some shit. I’ll never see her again! I’ll never know what happened to her!”
I tried to drag a hand down my face, but I was still wearing my gloves. Tears filled my eyes, but I swallowed and fought them back. Because even then I was still fighting.
“Let me get them for you, brother,” Patch said, his usually cold demeanor nowhere to be seen. He knelt down in front of me, pulled out his a knife from somewhere and cut through the tape holding my gloves on before pulling them off, and Wolf handed me a bottle of whiskey.
I eyed it for a moment, the screams of my mom still deafening me, and I unscrewed the lid and downed a quarter of the bottle before coming up for air.
Patch stood back up. “Gonna go let the boys know everything’s good, okay?” he asked Bull, who nodded in agreement.
Wolf, Patch, and Hammer left, and Bull dragged a plastic chair from the corner of the room and sat opposite me.
“I’ve been looking up your girl, Hope,” he said.
I glanced up at him. I’d forgotten all about my hunt for her, what with my history being laid out for everyone to see.
“And?” I asked.
“No one’s seen her since the night Patch was patched in. Asked around her college, checked in with some of her girlfriends. Nothing. Her mom and dad have the cops looking for her too. Turns out that she had been failing school though. Grades dropping off a cliff for no reason whatsoever and she’d stopped showing up for classes a couple of weeks before.” He stopped and took a breath before continuing, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t like what he said next. “Something happened to her, Dillon. Not sure what, but a girl like her don’t suddenly ruin her future like that for no reason whatsoever.”
