“What was his name?” I ask before taking the last swig of my beer.
She crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Only got a first name—Ryder.”
“What in the hell kind of name is that?” I chuckled a bit.
Crickett laughed along with me. “Fuck if I know. I should probably get home before Abel has a shit fit about me being out alone with all this crap going on.”
“I’ll take you. It’s not smart to be out on the roads alone right now.” Abel would have had my head if I let Crickett out of my sight at that point.
“You’re sweet, Holt. Thanks.”
Chapter 3
Ididn’t sleep all night;no surprise there. High alert was an understatement. I cleaned my entire house from top to bottom, did laundry that had needed to be done for over a month and cooked more bacon than I could eat in a week. Finally, I found myself sitting at my kitchen table, staring off into the dew covered back yard with three fingers of whiskey on ice at seven in the morning.
Fuck it. I’ve done worse.
Waiting on a call that wasn’t going to come for hours, I didn’t know what else to do. There was no way that we were
going to get answers overnight, and that fucking killed me.
I was typically an extremely quiet man and for the most part I kept to myself. I did what I had to do for myself and my club and kept my fucking mouth shut about it. Ever since the day my mother died, the Unacceptables had been my only family and I was extremely grateful to all of them for bringing me out of the ashes, excepting me without question, unwaveringly standing by me—I did the same for all of them. I didn’t know what else there was in the world and couldn’t have cared less about that fact—I was proud of be a one-percenter in every aspect of that title.
“Holt,you know there is no going back from this one, right?” Rave asked as he helped me load the drug dealer’s limp body into the back of his blacked-out van in the middle of the night.
“What else wasI supposed to do?” I asked as the weight of the corpse made the back axle whine. The cool night air wrapped around me as I sighed, leaning on the back of the vehicle.
“You should have just let us handle it. We’ve dealt with worse and it would have been better than you getting blood on your hands so young. You’re not alone, kid. We’re a family and we look out for our own. Just remember that the next time you get that nagging twinge of revenge nipping at the back of your brain.” Rave sank down next to me, watching as my hands trembled.
“I’m sorry.” I looked over to where Abel and Odin were scrubbing the garage floor to get as much of the blood out of the concrete as possible.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for. If I were you, I probably would have done the same damn thing. An eye for an eye and all that bullshit.” Rave’s declaration made me feel a heck of a lot better, probably more than it should have.
“I snapped. I think I blacked out for most of it.” I bowed my head as I wiped my bloody hands on the front of my fading jeans.
“Get up, kid. We need to get this body out of here before a neighbor calls the cops to report a suspicious vehicle out on the street.” He closed the back doors of the vehicle, handing me my first cigarette. “This will help those nerves a bit.”
“Thanks.” I choked on my first puff, making Rave laugh.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Yeah, all in due time, right?” I tried to hold the white cancer stick as comfortably as he did but failed miserably.
“I don’t mean the smokes, son. I mean all of it. You’ve entered into a dark, unforgiving world today. You need to be prepared for that and keep your head on straight. If you were my kid, I’d kick your ass for even hanging out with Abel in the first place.” He spit on the ground before lighting up another stick.
“What do you mean? He’s a really good guy.” I felt an overwhelming need to defend my friend.
“I never said he wasn’t. I love that damn kid like he was my flesh and blood, but he was always going to follow in his old man’s footsteps. I would never want that for any child of mine. It’s too fucked up and far too dangerous.”
I brokeout of my daze of remembrance when knocking thundered through my house. Jumping to my feet, the safety off on my Beretta, I slowly made my way to the front door from the back of the house. I wasn’t taking chances. If someone had the nerve to show up at my place that early in the morning, for any damn reason, they were going to be met with the barrel of my gun no matter what.
Forcefully, throwing the door open, I looked at the spitting image of a younger me. It was eerie as fuck.
“Who the hell are you?” I barked with my gun trained right between the kid’s eyes.
He didn’t flinch. Nonchalantly, he put his hands up a little and looked me dead in the eye. “My name is Ryder Walsh. I think I’m your son.”
“The fuck you are.” Honestly, looking at him, I was questioning it but to my knowledge, I wasn’t a father. “I don’t have a son.”
