Page 1 of Cocky Secrets

ONE

Sage

Another mission has left Mom and I here alone. IknowI don’t have what it takes to be a Cipher, not good at violence myself, but I sure do get bored when the house goes quiet. Especially a home as large as ours — a plantation’s mansion we’ve let disintegrate in honor of the sins of its past. Our motorcycle club bought it long after the original owners had long since been chased out, or died. Scratch was only in his twenties when they purchased it, before he was President andlongbefore he retired and moved away, leaving the presidency and this house to Jett Cocker, my dad’s best friend.

Even though Jett is the head of The Ciphers, everyone has a say. It’s very democratic. He always considers everyone’s opinion about what mission to take next, how to tackle it, but he has the final say. He told me once that he owes learning that kind of respect by being raised by good parents, among six brothers who are all very different, and whose opinions mattered in their household growing up.

My dad, Antonio ‘Honey Badger’ Martinez, is the quiet type so grunting“Okay”or“Nope”is how he expresseshisopinion. My mom, Margaret ‘Meg’ Martinez, is far more eloquent, with a love for books and art that she passed on to me. My brothersare a mix of the two. While Luke is far more thoughtful and sometimes poetic, Atlas doesn’t care for books, but is quite intelligent and quiet naturally. Both can kick some serious ass, and that they got from Dad.

That’s what I didn’t inherit. In fact, from Dad, I got naturally tanned skin but that’s about it. I’m an artist, a painter, and maybe some day I’ll take up sculpting if ever I feel the need to expand the ways in which I express how I feel about this world.

And what a pretty world it is.

Rows of four dozen oak trees line the long driveway to our enormous home of paint-chipped white columns, decaying antique furniture that came with the plantation’s purchase, flanked by enormous front and back porches we have patchwork-fixed as need be over the years. You cannot see the house from the street, and our property is flat, tree-filled and vast with a marsh on its southeast side. Oaks, an electric iron gate, plus distance provide us with the privacy we sorely need due to the type of life we lead.

The Ciphers save the innocent by any means necessary, and we — I mean,they— find out about the next mission by the whispers of those who hear of them and all the good they do. It’s a sort of referral-based battle against evil.

Long ago it began with the very first group of four Ciphers being a somewhat boring motorcycle club — an M.C. that rode together, drank too much, got into bar fights when they felt like it, and didn’t do much else.

But one night at a new bar in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona, they came across a woman who’d been beaten by her husband, facial bruises showing he no longer even tried to hide it. One of the early Ciphers saw it wasn’t anywhere near a fair fight, not that spousal abuse ever is. But she was very frail, as if she hadn’t been eating. If she had, she wasn’t eating well. A malnourished slip of a woman they felt moved to protect, so together inunanimity they sought out the husband, made him confess via their strongest fists. He was left to live but with the warning that he must never hurt her again.

For the next year they watched over her, stayed in the area, until she got the courage to divorce her abuser. The first Ciphers even forced him to sign, though it wasn’t hard. At that point, the husband was so tired he would have done anything to make it stop.

He learned how it felt.

To be a punching bag.

And not just the once.

As long and as many times as it took to break him.

During that year, word spread in town. More battles were waged. Kids saved. Seniors. From crimes as small as burglary to as horrific as sexual abuse.

Word spread further.

Always mouth to mouth.

Never traceable.

Under the radar.

Where the law couldn’t find them.

“Sage?” Mom calls from the sitting room, where I left her reading a book.

From staring at the ancient portrait paintings in our vast foyer, their gilded frames weathering time better than every other thing in our house, I look to my left. “Yes, Mom?”

“Are you hungry?”

Sighing, “I’m bored. I think I might go into town,” I walk inside the room with its tattered curtains and chaise lounges, tufted sofas and ottomans, all faded under huge, dusty chandeliers. I note to myself for the millionth time in my life, that this place has a romance to it. Perfect for a painter to capture. It could be mistaken for a haunted house, especially atnight when breezes blow gauze lazily from the windows. That’s how newcomers might see it. Strangers.

But to me…

To us all…

It’s not scary.

It’s home.

---