Page 60 of Walker

Quickshot looked like he had been put through the fucking wringer and Ghost didn’t appear to be holding up much better. I assumed that was because Jamie was still in a holding cell downstairs. No one had addressed where the fuck Sweet had gotten off to. I couldn’t imagine him leaving his woman in a cell in what used to be his clubhouse without a hell of a fight.

“First thing, since I know you’re all wondering, Sweet took the kids to West Virginia when Smoke left with the other women and children.”

“What the fuck? He left his old lady here?” Snake asked.

Ghost looked as though he’d aged a good ten years in the past two days as he dropped down into one of the chairs. “My daughter isn’t well. Unfortunately, instead of trying to get her help, Sweet attempted to handle it on his own. Doc came down from the Dakotas with a specialist friend of his and they checked her over.” I glanced over to see tears dripping unchecked down Quickshot’s face and they were soon mirrored by Ghost.

“She, um… Fuck!” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Jamie, Angel Girl, has a lesion on her brain. It isn’t operable and it’s led to a type of dementia where she has delusions and then she acts based on the altered reality. For anyone not paying attention, she seemed to be operating at full capacity. Sweet thought so as well. He was concerned that she had become more ruthless over the past year or so, but it was still normal behavior for the most part. That was until Jamie shared her plan with him to put the kids in a cell-like area on the S.H.E. property like what we have here.”

“The kids?” I asked. “As intheirkids?”

Ghost nodded his head and let it hang there for a moment. “She thought they were spies sent to figure out how to dismantle the MC from the inside out, so they could start up the human trafficking ring again. MiMi did not help with that delusion. She never fully recovered from her last attack. How the fuck no one noticed is beyond me, but she fed into my daughter’s delusions and when she saw Joey Farina in town again, she devised a plan to get the mafia in bed with them so that they would have backup when the traffickers came calling.”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ, how in the hell did no one in their club notice that bullshit?”

“I told you that Jamie was operating at top tier within her delusion. She kept what they were doing hush, hush from the other women because MiMi convinced her that they didn’t know who they could trust anymore.”

“What the absolute fuck?” I growled. “All this time, dealing with Sweet fucking me raw every other day over this shit his old lady was pulling and you’re telling me it’s because she had a fucking tumor that is making her irrational?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. I know that out of everyone present today, she has caused you the most problems, but I want you to know she’s been handled. My daughter is going to come back to Cedar Falls with me once I get this shit handled and she’s going to live out whatever remains of her life with family around her.”

“Man, I’m not about to tell you that I need revenge or some shit. That’s fucked all to hell. Wish I’d known Sweet was dealing with that shit. If he needed a whipping boy to keep her in line, I would have signed up for the abuse until he could figure shit out.”

Snake slapped me on my back a few times and then roughly shook my shoulder. I knew what the gesture meant. He was proud of me, but it wasn’t about that. I could not, for the life of me, imagine having to go through that shit and watch my old lady suffering and falling to pieces in front of my eyes. For sure couldn’t imagine having to protect my kids from a woman who swore to love them forever.

“I’m sorry to hear about Jamie,” I offered. “That’s a raw fucking deal for everyone. If you need anything, let me know and I will do what I can, but for now, we have other pressing security issues to move on to. If the two of you need to step aside and handle family affairs, we can get someone here who you trust to help Snake out while we navigate the mafia fiasco.”

“We’re not stepping aside just yet. I have a meeting we’re phoning in with Giovanni Martinelli in about five minutes. Wanted you all here for it. Keep quiet and let me handle shit, but pay attention because I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as it should be to get these fucks back out of the area now that they’ve settled in.”

Five minutes later, the phone rang. Ghost picked it up and introduced himself.

“I hear there has been some trouble in your neck of the woods.”

“That is a fucking understatement,” Ghost told him. “One of the S.H.E. MC founding members, and an old lady of our founding member of the Sierra High Chapter of the Aces High MC, was killed yesterday.”

“My condolences, but from what I was told, it was not my men who killed her.”

“It was a woman pushed by your man, and your man who was threatening another old lady and her kids.”

“Would that be the Ambrose family?”

I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut as my woman’s name slipped free of his so casually. “That would be them,” Ghost admitted.

“Well, they have a $462,000 debt to settle up.”

“Do you even know where that supposed debt came from?” I asked. When Ghost didn’t tell me to sit down and shut the fuck up, I knew he wanted me in on the call for a reason.

“Gambling debt.”

“Wrong!”

“You’re going to have to explain.”

“Your man, Joey Farina, thought he knocked up the woman who went nuts yesterday. She made him believe he fathered her oldest child back when he went to high school here.” I paused to see if the fucker on the other end was going to admit to knowing any of this.

“I’m listening.”

“Well, he stupidly didn’t ask for proof and started paying her three grand a month for child support. He did that for twelve years of the girl’s life until Terry Matheson sent Josh Ambrose to him for a gambling loan. Josh, or one of his buddies, let it slip that he needed the extra money to pay child support to Terry.”

---