Page 67 of A Love So Hard

“Oh no, she means every bit of it. She blames me for not doing more to see to it that the whores never had enough of a foothold on our club to cause the kinds of trouble they have over the years. She absolutely blames me and the club for just as much as the whore who took my son’s life.”

Merc ran his hands down his face. “Christ. Maybe we did the wrong thing by telling that bitch she was banned from the club. Should have just taken her out. I didn’t foresee a woman doing something like that though,” he admitted.

“No? Even after what happened to me? In this room?” I held my hands up to indicate the place we were sitting. “You forgot about coming in here and finding me almost dead with a whore riding me?”

He flinched. “I relive the nightmare of pumping your fucking chest when your heart stopped working on its own too often to forget all that,” he admitted. I guess I always thought the majority of the blame for that was on Stiff’s shoulders. The whores were just pawns. Never thought they would have had that in ‘em if he hadn’t encouraged it, you know?”

I waved off his words. “I know. This was different. We weren’t dealing with the same thing, and that’s the problem. Club issues with business, we look at it from all angles. Club issues with pussy, and everyone puts their blinders on and just sees the wholes that are there for their pleasure. The only ones seeing that shit any different are the few who ain’t using them.”

He nodded.

“How long you think you’ll be here?” He glanced around. “I gotta tell you, I am not a fan of you staying in this room.”

I laughed bitterly. “It’s no more than I deserve right now.”

“Fuck that!” He yelled out at me. “You came here with Toby. You both did what needed doin’. We fucking acted as a club on that shit. We didn’t know we were making the wrong fuckin’ call at the time. Thought we had that shit handled.” He sighed then calmed his voice a bit. “I know that shit Lucy screamed at the cemetery is eating at your head, man, but this is not on you. It’s on some crazy fuckin’ bitch who was off her rocker so far we didn’t realize just how bad shit was. Even Toby hadn’t thought it was all that much more than annoyance, and if he thought his girl might be in danger he would have done more too.”

We sat in the quiet a while. “You weren’t much older than him when that shit went down here and we almost lost you,” Merc mentioned. I looked over at him. “Never occurred to you to change the way club runs then, just to take out the ones who had fucked with you. Toby was probably thinking the same.”

“I keep waiting for him to show up and ask me what the fuck I did to piss his momma off this time,” I admitted. It doesn’t feel real. I know that I identified his body. I know that I stood at his grave, watched them lower my boy into the ground, but I’m still waiting for him to come home,” I told my best friend. “Now, I don’t even have Lucy with me through this. All the things I’ve been through, I don’t know this is going to be one I come out ok on the other side.”

“Get some rest, man. It’s going to take time, for both you and Lucy. We’re having church in a few hours. The whole club’s here, figured now is as good a time as any.”

“Whole club’s here, why wait a few hours?”

“Wanted to give you some time,” Merc insisted.

“Nah, let’s go. I’m ready.”

“Everyone who is not a patched brother or wearing a prospect patch for this club needs to get the fuck out now. We’ll let you know when you’re able to come back,” Merc called out as we entered the main lounge area. “All brothers and prospects need to be in this room in the next 20 minutes or their vote will not count, and they won’t have room to complain. Prospects, get your asses moving through the building, flush out any and all strays. There better not be a single woman left in this building, and there sure as shit better not be a man here without a patch.”

“On it,” One of them called out and took off. The other two glanced at each other warily and then moved to get on it too. Merc took in everyone in our surroundings and realized we still had a fuck of a lot of company from other chapters here. I knew this because I noticed the same shit.

“Those of you from other chapters are welcome to sit on the periphery, but we’re about to handle some chapter business. We aren’t taking this to church, because we need the room. I expect you to be respectful and keep your mouths shut about our business while you’re here though.”

“You heard the man, you think you might not be able to hold your peace, and you don’t wear the Charleston patch, get the fuck out now and don’t come back ‘til you’re called,” Ghost, our club’s national president, called out to the crowd.

We waited the twenty minutes. Our prospects found two women trying to hide out in the bathroom so they could listen in. One was a club whore the other was a hang around who wanted to become a club whore. They thought they might learn something that would help the new girl get on quicker. What they ended up doing was highlighting exactly the shit we had problems with in the clubhouse.

As soon as they were ousted, I started in. “That right there is our biggest problem and our weakest link in this chapter,” I told the men as I pointed to the door the prospects had just ejected the women from.

“What? Not enough pussy to go around,” one of the men joked. I turned my glare on him and he shut his fucking mouth.

“That pussy that just got booted out the door was hiding so they could listen in on our meeting after we were pretty fucking serious about who could be here in the building and who couldn’t as while that meeting happened. You need to think on that a minute. They’re so disloyal and disobedient that they ignored a directive from not only our chapter prez, but also the national.” Murmurs swept through the room full of men then. “Maybe, they were telling the truth and just trying to see if there was something they could glean to get the new girl in here quicker. Maybe, we have two other MCs nearby, and one that we don’t really sit on too good of terms with depending on the day, and those bitches could have been listening in for a hint of something to take back to those they actually gave loyalty to.”

“Come on, man. That’s a stretch,” one of younger members, Glass, called out.

“Is it?” I asked. He was probably around T-Bone and J-Bird’s age, I realized as I took him in. Then I realized whom I had just compared him to. My son who wouldn’t get the chance to age anymore, and who wasn’t here to weigh in. “Shit like that just doesn’t happen, right?” I asked.

The kid looked around nervously but nodded his head. I turned the full weight of my attention on him.

“You know who our last prez was?” I asked him and he also tipped his chin up and down quickly. “But you never got to meet him though, because he was dead long before you were old enough to prospect. Let me tell you about him though. He was in love with an MC Princess who wanted to be a snooty, uppity bitch. Unfortunately for her, she loved him too. They had a baby together. There was a woman who earned a spot as a club whore here, who found a job at the hospital where our prez’s old lady gave birth. Who then attempted to steal that baby so that it could be used as leverage in an ongoing war over territory in the area.

“That same baby, that same old lady, the prez gave them up to keep them safe after that. Another brother had been in love with her too, and said he’d leave the club to ensure they stayed protected. He’d raise that kid as his own. He did too. Our own president lost out on raising his kid, keeping his old lady, and ended up dead for it all in the end anyway. All because some bitch wasn’t above using her body and playing club whore while she got information and tried to steal a kid from our club.”

“That didn’t really happen, did it?” Glass asked.

“My old lady was that baby the bitch tried to steal,” I informed him. Then I spun around taking in what everyone thought of that story. When I got with my woman, I planned on having her wearing my kutte and my ring. I set up something special with the club to get that shit done. A brother who proved to be a jealous fuck and a disloyal motherfucker drugged me that night before my woman could get to the clubhouse. The night I was supposed to propose to her and officially claim her before the club. Not only did neither of those things happened, but the asshole who drugged me set a few things up too. Had some whores on his side, set them to work, stripped me, had their way with me while I was knocked out but still functional thanks to the fucked up cocktail mixture they used. Had my woman walk in and see that. She saw enough that it looked like I was doing wrong by her.

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