Page 151 of Fury

After Tania and I had stopped seeing each other, I’d hooked up with Rachel. She was good looking, put up with me in and out of bed, and we got along fine. We’d been together for a few months when she’d gotten pregnant and hinted that she wanted to get married. But I didn’t want to get married; I wouldn’t let myself go there again.

But the baby. Oh, the baby.

In her fourth month, Rachel had a miscarriage. Turns out she had some blood condition that didn’t let her carry to full term. She hadn’t known, and hadn’t gone to a doctor soon enough. Afterwards, she’d gone off the deep end, and I didn’t know how to help her. I couldn’t respond. I felt helpless, numb.

Having a child was a secret hope I’d had with Serena and then it had failed, and I’d had to ignore it. Crush it. With Rachel’s pregnancy, that hope had inflated again like a big red balloon. With the miscarriage, that balloon had popped loudly, its shredded remains littering the floor around us. If only I’d paid enough attention. If only…

If only a hell of a lot of shit.

Rachel had plummeted into a depression, started using. One night I tried to shake her out of her daze, literally shake her. She slapped me, shoved at my chest muttering all sorts of angry words. I’d grabbed her hand, stopping her, but then I asked myself, why are you stopping her? She’s right. You’re a concrete wall, that’s what you are. I’d let go of her hand, and she punched and slapped me, kicking at me, yelling at me to leave her alone until she fell into a heap of tears on the bed. In the end her sister had come and taken her home, and I never saw or heard from her again.

I’d been kidding myself with Rachel, and she’d known it. I saw it in her eyes plenty of times, that wash of sadness, a submission to futility in the face of my barren landscape which, for her, would ultimately yield nothing.

Plenty of my bros had children. Many of them were devoted husbands and dads, and many weren’t so devoted. Either way they had their own families. I’d once wanted that for myself.

Once.

Once it had been a dream, a goal, a burning desire. But all of that was wrapped up in Serena without any beginning or end, and even though there was no more Serena, there was no way to unravel it.

And I didn’t want to. I was that stubborn. As stubborn as the prairie grasses that grew and grew, season in, season out.

Seeing Lenore pregnant with another man’s kid in her belly was a sledgehammer slamming down on me. I’d chewed on shards of glass at the sight of her that day and then months later when I’d seen her in Rapid and she confirmed the boy wasn’t mine. I’d tried to move on with other women, especially with Rachel. She’d been the last relationship. But after the miscarriage, I’d shoved the whole idea over the side of the table like some china platter, and it shattered into a thousand unrecognizable pieces. I would never be a father. I would never have my own family.

Catch had become a father, and it had made him stand up straighter. For all his swagger and personal crazy, he melted every time he saw Becca, and I liked that for him. I was glad for him.

I eyed Butler. “You get out there, find Creeper, bring him to me so I can have my fun with him, then do whatever the fuck you want and impress Jump with the leftovers.”

A grin lit up his face. He relished the opportunity. “I’m going to get this done and get back to Ohio. Reich liked the job I did for him last month. Said he has other shit on the back burner he wants me to take care of.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ground down on my teeth to control the charge of excitement that flickered through me.

I had sent Butler in Reich’s path months ago and it was paying off.

Turo and I had continued to work together over the years. Our business alliance remained secret, the way we both preferred. It worked for us, and filled my chapter’s vault with cash and maintained a firewall of protection from small fry interference throughout the Midwest stretching toward the East Coast.

He’d killed Med and sent me a photo of the fucker’s mangled body. I’d celebrated by taking off and riding through the Sandhills of northwestern Nebraska to deal with the volatile emotions that had erupted through me at the sight of that picture. Riding the banked turns, the sweeping hills, the hidden descending curves on that road was a better high than any drug or booze. That’s what made me feel alive, focused. At night the stars there can shine bright enough to cast a shadow over the grass covered ancient sand dunes. There I cleared my head, alone.

Turo also kept his eyes on Reich for me. Even sent a whore on his payroll to get close to him, and she did. She’d told Turo all about Reich’s scarred dick, in fact. Although Reich had a wife, that hadn’t stopped him from having plenty of action on the side, and Turo’s Chandra became one of his favorite girlfriends. She reported back to Turo on his movements, his disappearances. Disappearances that I’d tried to trace, but without much luck.

Finally, Reich took Chandra with him on a quick weekend getaway to Atlantic City that was really a business meeting with a local Jersey mobster. Chandra took photos. I made sure those connections went south for him with Turo’s help—deliveries not made, promises broken, goods stolen, destroyed. Reich’s reputation suffered. We let him have a few victories in between, and then tore him back down again. Eventually, Chandra let Reich’s wife know about all the wild sex she was having with her old man, then Turo pulled her and Chandra disappeared from Reich’s life. Reich looked over his shoulder all the time now, a permanent sneer on his mug.

“I got something for you,” Turo had told me over the phone a couple of months ago. “There’s a connection I can’t place between Reich and a Tantucci.” The Tantuccis were a rival crime family in Chicago.

“The Flames of Hell don’t work with the Tantuccis. Never have,” I said.

“I know. This Tantucci Reich talks to is connected to a state senator. Reich was spotted with this senator at a hotel in Michigan of all places. Brief. But it was a meeting. I’m digging, but you should dig too.”

“Will do.”

That was when I’d urged Butler toward Reich, and Butler had played it well, offering Reich his services under the radar of his club as well as mine. A nomad wasn’t supposed to do a job for another club without permission from his own. Butler’s reputation appealed to Reich though, so they both took the risk of bending the rules.

After his move to Ohio, Reich had set his sights on a position at the national level, and he’d succeeded. I wanted to slice him wide open, and I needed someone unattached to me and my club to do the dredging, and Butler was the perfect choice. Butler was no stranger to the subtle, the underhanded, the risky.

“Reich likes me,” Butler said, his light blue eyes gleaming, that cocky grin of his tilting his lips. “As much as he can like anyone.”

“Yeah, he pats you on the back with one hand, holds the knife over your head with the other.”

Butler knocked his head back and laughed. “That’s right.”

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