Page 100 of Love is Strange
This was wrong, the whole fucking situation stunk to high heaven.
“Kill me then.” Snake jerks his head toward my gun.
“You know it isn’t that simple. We’ve got to set an example for the brothers, you’ve got to suffer before you die. Make anyone else who is thinking of doing the same reconsider.”
“Just get on with it.” Snake rolls his eyes at us like we’re pissy little girls too afraid to get down to business. Doesn't he know who I am! Fuck! I'm the final option after Heat, the Sergeant at Arms and the enforcer of this club. He’s the nice guy out of the two of us who uses his words and smarts to enforce the club law, and I’m his deputy and the one who they bring in when his approach fails. I'm sick and twisted. The product of a dysfunctional childhood. My mother was too busy opening her legs for any guy who wanted in her and was willing to pay to support her flourishing drug habit. My father was absent most of the time, due to the fact he preferred to drink himself stupid, and when he was around, he liked to use his fists on my mom, my brother, and me. I think by the time I was ten, I’d been beaten black and blue more times than I’d had hot dinners. My parents, if you can call them that –I prefer to use sperm and egg donors– were the sort of people who should have been sterilized the second they discovered what a dick and pussy were for. It would’ve saved a great deal of hassle and prevented me from becoming the twisted freak I am, and the junkie lifer, in Maricopa County jail in Arizona, that my brother is. I guess I should be glad my baby sister died before her second birthday from an accidental heroin overdose. She wouldn’t have stood a chance at life and is better off in heaven.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” I step up and lean forward into his face.
He laughs. He actually stares directly at me and throws his head back with a maniacal chuckle. The guy’s lost it – he’s gone insane. I raise an eyebrow at my president.
"Enough." The big man slams his fist onto the table, and the sound reverberates around the sparsely decorated room. There’s really nothing else in here apart from a table, the chair Snake is sitting on, and lots of books. “It’s time to go. Up.”
Snake doesn’t move.
“I said get up.” Prez is getting pissed now, and his whole body’s shaking with rage. Nobody dares to defy him – that’s why he's the boss. Snake, though, he’s a dead man walking, and they don’t always do what’s expected of them, or maybe they do because he doesn’t get up, which is just what I thought would happen.
“Prez said on your feet,” I snarl.
“Do you know why I came here?” Snake asks while tapping the four fingers of his right hand on the table in a steady rhythm. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. He’s too calm.
"Ok." My boss nods over to me indicating we’re going to let Snake have his say for now, but not for long. I step back from the table and fold my heavily tattooed arms over my chest. "We’ll allow you to have your say, but only because I don't have any decent pussy up at the clubhouse I want to be tapping today."
I chuckle under my breath. Prez lost his wife five years ago to cancer and has been on a mission ever since to be balls deep in any willing hole the club bitches have to offer. Most just want to get laid by him because it could be a way of becoming his next old lady, and in turn, the ruling lady in the club, but none of them are in any way equal to his late wife. I don’t think anyone ever will be. They’re just convenient fucks.
Snake starts talking, “I got greedy. My old MC were close to finding out the truth about me. I told them I had to come this way for family reasons, and I got a good recommendation out of them to join this chapter of the Jade Riders. I got away with it. They never knew."
“You got greedy, again, but this time we found out.”
"Yes..and no,"–Snake looks off into the darkness of the room, his mind must be elsewhere, and it's starting to freak me the fuck out–"you think this is all about me making money from selling out my club, don't you? You think I’m selling you out to other clubs as well as the cops."
Prez steps back and also folds his bulky forearms across his chest.
“It sure as hell seems like it's about the money to me. No one would be willing to sell their brothers out to the cops or anyone else unless there was a handsome sum on offer.”
“It wasn’t this way, at first. It was normal.”
“Normal. What the fuck are you talking about?” I shake my head, Prez has a lot more patience than me. I'm itching to get this guy back to the dungeon and have some fun with him.
“Me and her.”
“What are you talking about?” Prez asks, his eyes flicking up to me with confusion.
“My daughter. She was the reason for all of this. But not anymore, I’m dying. Not just from what you lot are about to do to me but from the disease riddling my body with retribution for all the wrongs I’ve done. But you know what, I’m not scared. The fires of hell don’t bother me not when I’m going to go out in a blaze of glory by destroying so many others around me.”
My head whips around at the sound of metallic clanking to the left of me, which echoes through the room. I bring my gun up ready to fire on anyone who might be a threat, but I instantly lower it when the shadow of a thin feminine form materializes into the dim light to reveal a battered, bruised, and naked woman.
“Shit!”–Prez exclaims–"What the fuck have you done?" He's over the table, and his fists are flying into Snake's face. I don't move though. I can't. I'm transfixed by the girl. She's hauntingly beautiful.
“Caim, call in back-up. We’re going to need it!” Prez shouts at me, and I shake my head, trying to clear the vision of her from it.
“Why?” I ask, and he nods toward the girl while pinning a half-conscious Snake to the ground with his knee.
“Because if that is who I think it is, we’ve got a shit-storm heading our way. A violent and deadly one.”
Chapter Two
LAYLA
