Page 20 of Shadow

Made no bones about it. The brother was dark.

Dark like me.

I saw it clearly. We were the same. Both of us had knowledge that no man should have. Blood coated our hands, and I bet Monk knew shit that Kansas didn’t even know.

From what I remember, Kansas was just a member back in the day of Big Jim. A soldier. As such, Kansas wouldn’t be privy to club secrets. However, Monk was.

He knew them all.

Which meant that he was dangerous.

“Don’t give a fuck,” Kansas growled. “Big Jim is dead. You and the rest of the club voted me in as Prez. You don’t like how I run things, then bring it up at the next monthly meeting. Until then, you will give Keys your full legal name and your next of kin. Got me?”

“Can’t do that,” the Sergeant-of-Arms stated flatly, getting to his feet. “I won’t.”

“What the fuck do you mean you won’t?” Pence fumed, rising from his chair too. “The Prez of this club just gave an order.”

The big bastard growled and left church.

Following soon after, I walked out into the rec room, heading for the front door. Seeing my sister, I clearly ordered, “Let’s go, Hope.”

I wanted to get the fuck out of this clubhouse and away from everyone. Hope hurriedly walked over to me as the Diamondback enforcers, Widow and Whisper, followed me outside.

Of course, they did.

I was a murderer.

I was just the soulless fucker who killed their brother.

I fucking knew what they all thought of me.

In their eyes, I was a dead man walking.

And maybe I was.

Chapter Four

Joan

“What do you mean you can’t find him?!” I shouted at the man before me. For the last year, this idiot had done nothing but take my money. I was tired of it. I hired him to locate my father. I needed to know where the fuck he was.

There wasn’t a damn memory I had concerning my father that didn’t end in bloodshed. I had thought when the New York Police department arrested him three years ago, all of our troubles were over. That me and my siblings could live without looking over our shoulders for every five minutes.

I thought wrong.

Apparently, thanks to some clerical error, the prison that held my father released him eighteen months ago, and he has since disappeared. No one fucking knew where he was. That was when I started hiring private investigators. The first one I hired was damn good at his job. I got word that he had the information I was looking for and I agreed to meet him at the Diamond Bar. That night I saw something I shouldn’t have.

I never got the information.

Instead, I spent two months in the hospital in a medically induced coma to repair the damage that motherfucker did to my head. I still had blank spots and occasionally suffered from debilitating migraines, but I was healing. However, what I needed the most was gone.

I tried for months after I woke to get a hold of the investigator, but he never returned my call. Left with no choice, I hired another, then another until I found this useless piece of crap.

“I’m not giving you another dime. In the months you’ve worked for me, you’ve found nothing. Not a damn thing. I hired you for one thing only. To find my father. I gave you everything I had, and you still haven’t produced one shred of evidence of his whereabouts.”

“Ms. Trinity, please understand. I’ve gone through all the records you’ve given me. The state of New York has no records of a James Malachi Trinity ever being incarcerated. The last known residence I found was in upstate Oregon, where he owned a farm.”

“He didn’t own the damn farm!” I shouted. “And I was eight years old when we lived there until the ATF came and raided the place because my father was smuggling guns down to Mexico.”

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