Page 5 of The Secret's Out

Chapter Two

Pick

Lounging back on the couch in the compound while my brothers joked and laughed around me was nothing new. I enjoyed nights like that, just chillin’ and drinkin’. I never used to. After my brothers-in-arms found out I was double crossin’ the boss, my life had turned to shit.

For a while there, before I redeemed myself in Talon’s eyes, in turn my brothers’, I was glared at, smacked about, spat on and shouted at. All of it I could take, all of it was well deserved and all of it was nothing compared to what my hellish life already had been. And that fuckin’ said something.

Because what most of my biker brothers didn’t know was how my life before Hawks had been a fuckin’ nightmare.

My fuckin’ mum was a bitch. Christ, bitch was too simple. She was true evil. From an early age, she was nothing but a bad dream. I was beaten, starved, and my body was sold so my mum could stay high or drunk.

What made my stomach churn, every fucking goddamn day, was the thought of not stopping her control sooner.

All I could think was that she was my mother, the one who birthed me. No matter how much shit she put me through, I should be there for her. She had no one else.

I wish I’d been smarter.

Guilt had the better of me for eight years. From when it all got worse at the age of twelve, when she started to sell my body to women and men for money. Which lasted for two years until I had the physical strength to say no. However, those two years were what night terrors were made of. I had been touched, groped and taken in every way.

Fuck. Just thinking of it made bile rise in my throat. It made my body sweat and chest pound, even now twelve years later. I quickly took a pull of my beer, closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the couch.

Stupid motherfucking memories. I wished I could wipe them all out. I wished I could forget.

The only thing that eased any of it was...

No, I couldn’t even go there, because then other memories would rise, even when they were good. When they were the cleanest and most precious ones I had in my sad fuckin’ life.

Hell, they weren’t even that momentous, but they made me smile. They made me feel.

Shit. I couldn’t think of them because none of what I wanted, what kept the bad dreams at bay, would happen again.

She was gone.

And he didn’t want anything to do with me.

Instead, my mind drifted back to the years after I stopped the selling of my body. When I took to stealing. The one bad thing about that was when I got caught and charged. Thank fuck, I was only sixteen so only had to do a small amount of time in juvie. The only good thing that came from stealin’ happened after I got out of juvie. In the small amount of time I was away, my stupid mum had racked up an even bigger debt. So I went back to stealing, which was what led me to Talon, my boss and brother.

He’d caught me trying to knock off some of his tools in the Hawks’ mechanical business off the compound. He beat me, but while doin’ it, I was taught a lesson. In the end, he gave me a job working on cars. It helped a fuckload with getting money in. Still, after a year, it wasn’t enough. Mum was an addict. She no longer survived without her fix and if she didn’t get it, she made my life hell. Christ, if it wasn’t her making my life shit, it was her suppliers coming around taking stuff out on both of us.

Finally at twenty-two, I kicked the habit of supplyin’ Mum with money after I saw my errors from that one night.

And after I risked my life for two gay guys.

How-fuckin’-ever, before that, I had fucked up big time by helping a bastard get his hands on Zara, Talon’s woman. I’d let those pricks take her and the retribution I got in return for my fuck-up was earned. Having the crap beat out of me was nothing. I deserved more.

At least I was back in my brothers’ good graces. I had proven myself in many ways with the help of Zara, Matthew and Julian. Fuck, not only them, but Zara’s ‘rents, and most of all Talon.

He was the one who knocked more sense into me. He was also the one to pay off all debt my mum had. In return, I stopped all contact with her, which suited me just fuckin’ fine.

Didn’t stop her from trying though.

Not a week went by that I didn’t hear her pleading messages about helping her out.

But no more.

I was done.

My life and my family was the brotherhood of Hawks.

---