Page 20 of Bourbon & Blood

I fixed him with a look and he colored faintly.

“I heard what you told him,” he finally admitted.

“Think he’ll pass the test?” I asked, when what I really wanted to know was“do you think I’m asking too much?”but I was the president. I couldn’t appear weak. That was something that wouldn’t end well for any man under the banner of the Voodoo Bastards’ name.

Collier nodded. “He might hesitate a minute – I don’t know a man who wouldn’t. Not when it’s their momma…”

I nodded, and the elevator stopped. The doors opened and without looking at Collier, I told him the cold hard truth, “I wouldn’t.”

He swallowed audibly and said, “An’ that’s why you’re the boss man.”

I nodded slowly as we stepped out into the hospital’s lobby to traverse it on over to the parking garage’s bank of elevators.

“Not something any of you boys should forget, neither,” I told him.

“No worries there, boss. I don’t think any of us could.”

“Good deal,” I said.

We stopped at the bikes in the garage and Collier looked up at me and said, “Louie’s been good to us. Time for us to be good to him. We don’t let a brother fail. We don’t let a brother fall. He’ll do what needs doin’, boss. We’re his family now.”

I nodded slowly, keeping my face devoid of emotion when all I wanted to do was grin like a fool with pride.

“That’s the right answer, C. Just what I wanted to hear,” I told him and climbed onto my bike.

“Silence is better than bullshit,” he said and I looked over at him. “You lost your patch, boss.”

I did quirk a smile then and said, “I didn’t lose it. I know right where it is, and it’s right where I want it to be.”

Collier gave me a dubious look and said, “Whatever you say, boss.”

He fired up his bike, and I started up mine. We rode back to the club. Once I saw my tired brother through the gate, I split off and headed on out of the city, pointing myself toward the swamp I and my blood family had called home for generations.

I killed the bike out back of the ol’ family homestead – the house I grew up in, way up on its stilts.

“Where the fuck you been?” my daddy demanded, coming down the bank to the old dock as I unwound the line, tying my old boat in place.

“Places,” I muttered in consternation.

“Oh yeah? Doin’ what?” he demanded, spitting. I looked up at him as he eyed me with his light blue and watery eyes – the complete opposite of my own. I’d gotten my mother’s eyes.

“Things,” I answered shortly.

He huffed a laugh that was a mix of disgust with a shot of derision.

“The fuck you want from me?” I demanded.

“Some goddamn respect might be nice,” he shot at me.

I looked up at him and ripped on the cord, starting up my boat motor.

“Should have thought of that a long while back when you was whoopin’ my skinny ass as a kid,” I told him curtly and motored my way away from the dock, his angry fuckin’ scowl burning twin holes in my back.

I couldn’t wait for his fuckin’ cancer to take him, but the bitter old fuck was too spiteful to let it take him down easy.

He always was a prick. Cancer honestly just seemed to make his ass meaner.

Just meant I had to be meaner than that.

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