Page 20 of Demon's Angel

“Is this a meeting of MC members or the ol’ ladies?” I snarl, ignoring the questions from Mace and Sparky. “Let’s talk about business, and then I’ll fill you in on what you need to know.” I glare at Hellfire for raising it. He just shrugs, but one corner of his mouth is turned up. Yeah, he would appreciate not being in the hot seat.

“Any chance the kid is yours?” Thunder asks.

“No, there fuckin’ isn’t,” I roar.

Unrepentant, he shrugs, holding up his hands. “Look, as your acting VP, I’m only askin’ what everyone is thinkin’. Come on, Prez. I know there were personal reasons you wanted this bitch here. But you’ve brought her into our house. Can’t blame us for being curious.”

At the other end of the table, Hell raises his eyebrow. If I was to try to interpret the expression on his face, it’s a mix betweenI could have told you this would happen,andWhat are you going to do about it?

Shit. I’m still finding my place at the head of this table. Someone has to lead the MC, and that’s fallen to me. While I can well understand my brothers’ curiosity, it’s me who needs to take the helm. Heading into a fight, you can’t decide which way is up by way of a democracy.

I’m just about to try and get the meeting back on track, when Bomber speaks.

“Prez, I speak for us all when I say we just want to help. All we know is there’s a woman here who tried to abandon her kid. Not many of us are family men.” He grins, that’s an understatement. The only person who could ever qualify for that title is Hell. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t get concerned when someone walks away from a child.” As I open my mouth, he continues without letting me speak, “Now, you’ve spoken to her, obviously decided she has good reasons. You might think we’re getting up in business which you think is yours, but all we want to do is understand how we can make what’s obviously a bad situation right.”

I catch Thunder’s eye. He’s mouthingVPto me, but I shake my head, my own lips forming the words,I’ve asked. Yeah, I’d approached Bomber with a suggestion of him playing that role, but he’d turned me down, saying he wanted no such pressure at his age. He was content to ride at the back of the pack while he can still handle his big two-wheeler. Like it or not, Thunder will have to put up with sitting on my left for a while yet.

While he’s there, I’d best listen to him. He thinks I need to explain. As it seems no one’s going to leave the subject alone, I better just get on with it. Taking a deep breath, pushing my hastily aroused temper back into the box, I lean my elbows on the tabletop. As they settle in to listen, Mace gets out a packet of smokes, and lights up. When he passes them around, Sparky, Liz and Ink are the only other takers. Hell looks tempted but pushes the pack on when it gets to him.

“To understand, I have to give you some history,” I start, as the air becomes tainted with smoke. “When I was a kid, I had a friend, a best friend, named Nathan Palmer. We were inseparable from the time we met and right through our teens, and remained close beyond that. At eighteen he signed up, joined the Marines. Wasn’t a way out of a shit upbringing; he’d had a good family life. Being in the forces was all he’d ever talked about doing from when he was little more than a toddler. It was going to be his life, same way as all I’d wanted was to join the MC.” I break off. Even though nine years have passed, getting out the next words remains hard. “He lasted eight years before a stray bullet took him out.”

They’d been quiet, listening, but the silence becomes more intense for a moment, and serious looks come over their faces. If they hadn’t done a tour themselves, most knew someone who had. Some of those hadn’t returned, just like Nathan; some had, but as changed men. Ink’s face has paled, his fingers tapping fast on the tabletop. His PTSD is mostly under control nowadays, but sometimes something can send him back.

“Nathan had a little sister,” I resume, hastily moving on. “She was ten years younger than us, and an absolute pest.” I soften my description with a smile. “She was fifteen, no, sixteen when he died. Well, to step back, when Nathan signed up, he wasn’t stupid. Knew his life could be cut short. Made me promise to keep an eye on Violet if anything ever happened that meant he couldn’t.”

“I take it that woman out there is the sister?”

It’s Hellfire who answers Bomber. “Yeah. That’s Violet.”

“So you’ve been watching out for her all these years?” Rusty, quite reasonably asks.

“Not closely enough,” I admit, then come clean. “Actually after the first few years, and when she moved to New York, I lost touch with her completely. Didn’t know she’d come back to Pueblo a year and a half back. Not until I ran into her by accident, last Wednesday. When we’d been at the mall, Liz.”

Lizard nods. “So that’s why you hurried off. What, you met her, talked to her, knew something was wrong immediately, and put a prospect on her?”

“That about sums it up. I had a feeling, okay? Things just didn’t seem right. I admit, it was part guilt from having been out of touch with her. I didn’t know she’d returned, didn’t know she had a kid, and while I was there, the way she treated him seemed off.” Now I know she was pulling away, trying to do the impossible, turn off a mother’s love. A gut reaction to a threat she’d received only that day.

There are frowns, anger. I realise I need to bring them up to date. They hadn’t all been down in the basement when Vi had blurted it out. From my reaction, Thunder and Mace would have kept it to themselves. “Theo, the kid, was the result of a rape.”

“Jeez,” Pyro strokes his hand down his face. “Can understand why it might be hard to accept a kid…”

“She couldn’t cope with the thought?” Bomber’s eyes flare as he cuts into Pyro’s statement. He glances toward Hell, then at me.

Before they all start joining the dots and coming up with the wrong picture, I cut them off. “That’s not it. Problem is, the rapist walked free, and has claimed parental rights to the child.” I go on to qualify it as Vi had explained to me. “If he’d been convicted, he wouldn’t have been awarded anything. But, as he was cleared, he has every right to co-parent. Violet’s view is that he’s the last person on earth who should raise a child. Wednesday, just before I met her, he went one step further. Told her he was going for full custody. Served her with a court summons for the week after next.”

Bomber’s sucked in air. “Club has a history of dealing with rapists,” he says before I can stop him. “Reckon our way is best. When we going to kill him, Prez?”

His comment is echoed around the table. The night Moira, my mom, had been raped, Hellfire had been patched in, and Blackie had taken his last breath. But I’m going to have to tell them who they’re dealing with. When I do, they’ll vow to be behind me. What’s most concerning, this battle may be one greater than we can afford to take on.

I glare at Bomber to silence him. “Violet’s had a hell of a time of it recently. Her father died; that’s why she came home. Her mother’s brain has gone, she doesn’t even recognise her daughter anymore, and has spells where she can be violent. She’s all but homeless, as her house is up for sale to pay for her mom to be properly cared for in a home. On top of that, she had to deal with a rape and a pregnancy alone.” I break off, then realise they need to know the full story. “She’s lost twice in the courts: once when he was cleared of rape, and the second time when he was awarded co-parenting rights. She thought he’d be successful a fuckin’ third time and declare her an unfit mother. I think you can say she wasn’t thinking straight. Rather than let him get near Theo, she arranged a private adoption, one that couldn’t be traced. Not doing things legal meant there’d be no paper trail to follow. Even she wouldn’t know where Theo had been taken.” As it had when I’d first heard it, a chill runs down my spine.

There’s silence. “She’d prefer an unknown stranger to care for him, instead of his sperm donor?” Rusty asks at last, the first to break it.

“That plan has more holes than a piece of mesh,” Pyro puts in.

Paladin, who I have to remember comes from a club where babies are the norm not the exception, is looking disgusted. “Her story’s a sad one, but there must have been something else she could do. How the fuck can a woman give up her child? She could have gone out of town, hidden herself and the baby.”

“As I said,” I start sticking up for her, “she was fuckin’ desperate.”

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