Page 3 of The Souls We Claim
Fuck. I’m all she has.
Focusing on Lola, I strip her, clumsily change her diaper, and put her in a clean and dry onesie that saysI’m the prez in this housein pink sparkles.
Gently, I place her head to my shoulder and start the bob and sway that soothes her. As she settles, I return to the bedroom, where Switch is on the phone, arranging whatever needs to happen next.
“I’m sorry,” Switch says as he hangs up. “Wrinkle was a good man, most of the time.”
I smile sadly at that. “Yeah.” My dad could be problematic as fuck when he wanted to be. And he was a shitty, often-absent father when I was a kid. But when I patched in, our relationship changed.
“I’ll let the club know.”
My train of thought finally catches up with my floundering ass. “There’s no hiding this. I’m going to need a death certificate to close up his affairs. An undertaker.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’m guessing she’s gonna need feeding and clothes and shit if you’re taking her to the clubhouse. You’re gonna take care of Lola, right?”
I look down at the baby in my arms. “Honestly, I don’t know that I can. Someone is going to pay for this shit. And I can’t be taking her out on the road with me as I track down whoever did this.”
Switch shakes his head, and I ignore the glint of disappointment from my friend. “Yeah, well, the person who has to pay for this shouldn’t be Lola.”
As if recognizing her name, Lola rustles against my shoulder, and I shift positions so I can see her face. “It’s you and me for now, kid. So do me a favor and be good, yeah?”
Her little lip trembles as fat tears fall over beautiful long lashes. They’re dark, a contrast to her wispy strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes.
The cry she then lets loose tells me she’s not in agreement.
“I think she needs feeding. You take care of her; I’ll deal with this.”
“I should take care of Dad. Can you take her?”
Switch raises an eyebrow. “I learned one really important thing in battlefield triage: the living come before the dead. Take care of your sister.”
I put one foot after the other, making formula for the bottle and feeding Lola, until first, the blue lights, and second, the roar of motorcycles pull up outside my dad’s house.
As I’m about to wrap a blanket around her and step outside to greet them, my phone vibrates. I almost ignore it, but something—the kind of something that saved my life on more than one occasion—tells me I should check it. There’s a text message from an unknown number.
Every decision has consequences, brother. Until it’s time to face yours, peace.
1
HALO
They say dead men can’t speak, but ten days later, I’m sure as fuck hearing my father’s voice in my head, and all it keeps repeating is the same phrase.
Avenge me.
Anthony “Wrinkle” Flynn was a mess of a human being. Some wonder how I ever became a Navy SEAL, given the example he set.
Personally, I know it’sbecauseof the example he set that I ended up on the path I did because there was much to rebel against. Sure, we liked a lot of the same things: Loose women with looser morals. A cold beer on a hot day. And a sense of belonging with our brothers in the Iron Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
But there were a lot of ways in which we were nothing alike. He was unfaithful; I was loyal to the military. He was lazy; I could focus for days with little sleep. He bounced around; I was still. He lived in the past; I faced the future.
Yet I loved him. The complex man he was.
He’d been a dick at times, often when more progressive decisions were being made about the club. The vote to create anew role within it, one for Catalina to play a part, caused him much consternation. What he couldn’t see, which everyone else did, was that the vote wasn’t just for Catalina. It was for Niro, to bring him the peace my brother had been searching for since he was a kid.
“Brad Collins is a ghost,” Vex, our tech brother says to me, bringing me back to the search for the man who killed my dad.
We’re in Vex’s office, an old pantry cupboard at the back of the kitchen, staring at one of the banks of monitors he has.
