Page 18 of Protected

I cranked up my car, and my headlights shone directly on a man standing in front of me.

Hail.

Oh, shit.

He didn’t look so happy. Not like Hail was constantly smiling, but I could tell that he was wondering what in the hell I was doing.

He walked over to the passenger door and slipped into my car.

We sat in silence while I tried to figure out what to say.

“You know I’m the president of the Lost Mavericks MC, Mary Jay?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Do you also know that guy you were talking to is part of the Broken Jokers MC? An MC I fucking hate with every fiber of my being?”

I did, in fact, not know that. “Uh, no.”

“You wanna know why I hate them?”

“Sure.”

“Because they don’t care about anyone but themselves. They take and take without caring about who they are taking from.”

I knew that firsthand. My dad had racked up quite the gambling debt with the Broken Jokers, and after he had died, they still expected to be paid. “Uh, I would believe that.”

“I’m trying really hard not to jump to conclusions, Mary Jay, and trying to think of any legit reason why you would be meeting with one of their members in the middle of the night when you texted me five minutes ago that you were stuck at work.”

Yeah, when he said it out loud, this really did not look good.

“Can I explain?”

He finally looked at me. “I think that would be a really good place to start.”

I could tell his anger was boiling, but he was keeping a lid on it.

“I wasn’t doing anything illegal.” At least, I didn’t think it was illegal.

“What did you give him?” Hail asked.

“Money.”

“Money for what?” he growled.

I held up my hands. “I really think that we should start from the beginning, okay?”

“You have five minutes, Mary Jay.”

I took a deep breath and started way at the beginning. “My mom left right after I was born.”

“I know that.”

I needed to speed this up. “My mom wasn’t a good person, so she left; the problem is she didn’t leave me with the best dad in the world. Sure, he loved me, but he never made the best choices when he was alive. I can still remember being two, and I used to suck on the dice he left lying around. Looking back now, how in the hell did I not choke on them?” I waved my hand. “That is beside the point.”

“I know he's your dad, Mary Jay, but he sounds like a fuckstick if you have memories sucking on dice.”

I wasn’t going to argue about that. “Gambling. My dad was a gambler. It didn’t matter what it was. If he could bet on it, he would. I never really understood how bad it was until I got older, and he would get the shit kicked out of him every couple of months because he couldn’t make good on his debts. They would beat him up, give him another month or two, he would rack up more debt, and then would be back to kick his ass.”

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