Page 2 of Reconciling the Consequences

Kara had paid the price, though. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises and horrendous coloring, she had a broken wrist and a long cut on her arm that had needed stitches. She also had broken three ribs and punctured a lung. A drain tube had been inserted in her chest to reinflate her lung and decompress the chest cavity. She had needed surgery to repair the torn ACL in her left knee. She’d even managed to break two fingers on her right hand, most likely from a punch that landed the wrong way on her attacker, if Marcos had to guess.

Marcos could barely look at his baby sister in the hospital bed. Along with the chest drain, she had IV for fluids and antibiotics and a catheter. At one point there had also been a blood bag to replace all she’d lost.

According to the doctors, she had gotten extremely lucky. Nothing in her face had been broken despite the gruesome bruising. She did have a minor concussion, but considering everything else, it was almost inconsequential.

The police had been by to speak to him and check on her. Marcos had advised them that they could speak to his sister when she was well and truly healed. Or not, if he had his way, since most of the cops in this town were crooked as hell. The two officers had taken one look at his leather cut and puffed out their chests with a macho bravado that grated on Marcos’s nerves.

Marcos was restless—he hated the not knowing. Why the fuck had someone tried to kill his sister? He’d questioned the police, but all they had said was that she had been attacked in the house and managed to fight back and shoot the guy with his own gun.

It had only led to more questions from both him and the cops. Was she working on a case that would have someone looking to hurt her? Was she dating anyone that was violent? Who was the man in her house? The neighbors had reported that someone had carried her out, but no one had gotten any distinguishing features other than that he was probably male.

Marcos had nothing to give the police either. He and his sister weren’t close, though they kept in touch. He didn’t know the first thing about her work, and he purposely kept a lot of his life away from her.

She didn’t even know he was in the Devil’s Psychos Motorcycle Club.

There was so much they both hid from each other, and he couldn’t blame her. She called to open up to him about dating not one butthreemen at once—together—and he had lost his shit and basically called her a whore.

That had been the last time they spoke.

She had been attacked three days later.

Here he was three days after her attack, still waiting for her to wake up.

Marcos’s list of regrets was a mile wide when it came to his sister, and it started on the day she’d been born. He’d been ten years old, and his single mother had worked hard to support them. Back then she was still turning tricks, still looking for a husband, and most of the time Marcos was left alone with a new baby.

His mother hadn’t been mother of the year by any means, but she had tried. She had kept a roof over their heads, put food on their table and clothes on their backs. She might have been a little desperate for love and always looking for a Romeo to sweep her away from a life of poverty, but she’d worked her ass off, both figuratively and physically, to the very end.

As Marcos got older, Kara was his sidekick most evenings. At five years old she was smart as a whip and would call him out for cussing too much. He often dragged her around the Creekton Villages—the large low-income apartment complex on the south side of Creekton—where they lived, exposing her to people and situations she had been far too young to handle.

At five years old she’d watched a neighbor overdose and die in front of her. After that Marcos had vowed to get her out of that life. At fifteen he dropped out of school and started working full time. He convinced their mother that Kara needed to go to a private school instead of the local public school in the ghetto of Creekton.

It had been the best decision he had ever made despite the fact that it had led him to a life of crime. Kara had thrived in the private school in Mourningside and had gone off to college. When her father had magically appeared her junior year and handed her Harvard and the means to pay for it, Marcos couldn’t begrudge her for wanting to go or for wanting a relationship with her father.

The fight Marcos had with her over it was just another entry in the long list of regrets when it came to Kara. It had changed everything between them. Kara went from telling him everything to only sharing big events, usually after the fact.

There was a knock at the door, pulling Marcos out of his musings. Marcos looked up to find his best friend and brother Jason “Stone” Langford standing in the doorway. He had on a pair of dark wash blue jeans and a red button-down shirt that was left open over a black T-shirt. A throwback to the ’90s, if ever there was one, he even had a silver chain around his neck.

His dirty blond hair was styled in a messy bedhead look, and his steely gray eyes pierced right through you. He had a barbell through his left eyebrow, and that was just the start of his piercings.

“Hey,” Marcos muttered, nodding his head. “What’s up?”

“How is she doing?” Stone’s voice was deep. He wasn’t one for talking. He could say a lot with just a look.

Marcos turned to his sister and found no change. He sighed and shook his head. “The same.”

Jason’s stoic expression didn’t change. Marcos braced himself for whatever his best friend was about to say. “Pres called a meeting. Heat’s picking up between us and the Ravager Knights. The Knights have emissaries from almost every charter in the country in town. They’re flooding the streets and blocking our trade routes.”

Marcos growled and stood up. “All because of that push into Buffalo Creek?”

Jason gave a curt nod.

Marcos shook his head and ran a tattooed hand over his buzzed black hair. “Alright.” He nodded and headed toward the door.

Stone paused. “She gonna be OK on her own?”

“She’s been on her own all her life.”

Ithurts.Everythinghurts.Make it stop.

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