Page 53 of Prodigal Son

When she was on her feet and following Albie through the press of bodies, Axelle realized she’d had more to drink than she should have on an empty stomach. Not drunk, but fuzzy, her balance less than stellar.

When they reached the foot of the stairs, and the prospect on guard duty nodded them through, she grabbed a handful of the back of his jacket. “Wait.”

He paused immediately and looked back over his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” The jacket was old faded corduroy, something dorky like someone’s grandfather would wear, but the fabric was very soft between her fingers. “Just…go slower.” She swallowed and offered a smile. “Room’s spinning a little.”

“Shit.” His mouth turned down. “We should get you something to eat–”

“No, show me. I’m fine. We’ll eat after.”

He gave her a measuring look, gaze unreadable, then nodded and continued on, slower this time.

They went all the way up to the third floor, where it was quiet and the air smelled less like sweat and alcohol and more like old furniture. It helped to clear her head a little.

He led her steadily down a long hall and finally to a door at the end, one that was tucked up into the eave of the building, and her pulse gave a little rap-rap of disquiet again. What was on the other side of that door? What did he…?

But he turned the knob, pushed it open, and flicked on the lights to reveal an ordinary, if small, bedroom. The roof was sloped in the right corner. A twin bed and a small dresser crowded the room. Faded, peeling motorcycle posters were trying to come loose from the thumbtacks that held them to the wall. And in the steep corner, right by the window, sat a small wooden chair.

Albie stepped in first. “This was my room for a while,” he said, voice soft. “After Mum died, and before my grandparents found me.”

“You – you lived here? How old were you?”

“We all lived here at some point or other. I was thirteen.”

“…Oh.” Thirteen was – thirteen was young. That was…

He eased down into the chair; it was small, and it creaked when his weight settled in it, but it held.

Axelle found herself easing down onto the end of the bed, perched on the edge, ready to bolt if she needed to. She felt the fear thrumming in her veins – but knew there was no cause for it. Nothing about the way he slouched down and propped his head against his knuckles spoke of a threat.

No, this fear was an internal thing.

He was silent a long moment, gaze trained somewhere on the rug. Then he said, “It was heroin with my mum. The drugs didn’t kill her – that was her boyfriend. She always picked the winners, Mum did.”

It was hard to swallow. “Oh,” she said again, and something – some reservoir of anger and resentment – deflated inside her. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It was rough at the time, but. I already knew Phil. He made a point of that from the beginning, being involved with all of us. He took me in, brought me here, gave me a place to stay. Made sure I had food, and clothes, and that I went to school.

“Mum had been on the outs with her parents for a long time. But Phil tracked them down. They wanted me to be in their lives. So.” Another shrug; a little twitch like his jacket was too tight. “They had a furniture shop. A shit one. Phillip helped them buy and set up Maude’s.”

She could see him in her mind’s eye: thirteen, small for his age, shiny dark hair falling in his blue, blue eyes, sitting beside an old man as he showed him the way to shape a wooden table leg. Not an outlaw, or a drug dealer, but a little boy freshly orphaned, leaning on the support of the family he had left. A family that was half biker club, half elderly craftspeople.

“And that’s why you’re a biker who makes furniture.”

“Some of why. I made this chair.” He smoothed one hand down the arm of it. “It was the first thing I made all by myself. I was sixteen.”

If she squinted, she could tell that some of the angles were off, and that the legs could do with a little refining. Still. “Pretty impressive for a kid.”

“Gramps thought so.” He curled his hand around the chair’s narrow arm, squeezed until his knuckles cracked. When he lifted his head, his gaze was direct, but not uncomfortably so. “I like making furniture,” he said. “I likemakingthings. Sometimes that’s a chair, or a coffee table. And sometimes it’s a plan to keep my family safe.”

Axelle took a deep breath and let it out slow. It felt like she stood at the edge of something.

“There’s a photo downstairs in the pub,” he said, with the air of starting something. “Of the two founding fathers of the Lean Dogs. It was 1947. Everyone knows about the clubs that got started in Cali in sixty-seven, but this was after World War II. Bobby Ludwig and Cole McCallan, RAF boys without homes to go back to. This building was one of the ones that never got touched by the Luftwaffe. They opened the pub, and started the club.

“The Knoxville chapter gets credit for being the mother chapter. It’s the biggest, it makes the most money, and Ghost makes all the big club-wide decisions, yeah. But this is where it all got started. Because the war was over, but there were some who couldn’t go back to the way things were. Who thought that letting someone – a tyrant, a country, a government – tell you what to do with your life was too dangerous a way to live.

“That’s the one-percenter life. Living on your own terms, making your own rules, and your own fortunes. I’m sorry about your father, Ax, but I won’t apologize for being what I am. We all make our own choices. He made his.” The last was said gently, but it still stung.

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