Page 59 of The Convict

Sam is let go and he kneels beside Telly.

“Fucking bullshit,” Telly says and Rax turns back around, fire in his eyes.

Sam moves in front of Telly, holding his hands up, his eyes wide and pleading. “It’s cool. He didn’t mean it. We’re cool, man.”

Rax growls, “Get him the fuck out of here before you go with him.”

Nodding, Sam grabs under Telly’s arms, getting him to his feet. Telly wobbles, leaning heavily against his friend. “Didn’t know you get your ass beat for trying to fuck whores in this MC.” Telly’s voice slurs as he speaks loud enough for the whole clubhouse to hear.

Zeke barks a laugh, pulls a gun from somewhere—tucked behind his back, I’m sure—and slaps it into Rax’s outstretched hand. “Stop walking.” Zeke’s voice booms across the courtyard and Sam does what he’s told, his shoulders slumping. “Drop him.” Sam hesitates.

Cocking the gun, Rax raises it and aims it at the back of Sam’s head. “Fucking drop him or I’ll drop you first.” Sam does as he’s told, shucking Telly from his shoulders.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Telly says, turning around as he winces in pain to look at Rax. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m sor—” He doesn’t finish his apology as Rax shoots him twice in the chest, then once in the middle of his forehead. I scream, pressing my face into Zeke’s chest.

It’s funny, Zeke’s heart rate doesn’t even falter. In a far-off kind of way, I can see what Rax means when he says Zeke is calm and calculated.

A hand wraps around my shoulders and I’m drawn into Rax. I breathe him in, holding tight to the front of his shirt. Sobbing, I bury my face in his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you do that. I’m so sorry, baby.”

He tips my head back, kissing away my tears. “It’s his fault, sweet pea. You did nothing.” To the men behind him, he says, “Someone clean this shit up. I need to get my property home.”

Zeke nudges a shell-shocked Sam in the back. “Get to it. Clean the blood while we take the body.” When Sam doesn’t move, Zeke pulls him to his feet and turns him around, slapping him across the face. “Don’t make me tell you twice, bitch. Get the bucket and clean this shit the fuck up.”

Sam nods, then turns to the side and vomits. Zeke scoffs, stepping back from Sam. He looks over at the two of us. “Come on. You look tired.”

With that, the three of us head out of the clubhouse, leaving the members of Devil’s Mayhem to clean up the body.

Chapter 21

Rax

Ithink I broke Finn. Since we got back last night, Finn has been attached to my hip. When I move, he moves. I thought it would be the opposite—he watched me kill someone, after all. But every step I take, he’s right there. He even came into the bathroom while I was taking a shit. I know that couldn’t have been a pleasant experience.

As we’re lying on the couch the next day, Finn’s head on my chest while he traces circles around my pecs, he asks, “If you could have done anything else with your life, what would it have been?”

I shrug. “Not sure. I didn’t have the best role model with my biological dad.”

“Why not?”

“He was the town’s junkie. Always walking around, begging for money for a hit. For the first six or seven years of my life, I barely had food in my belly or clothes on my back. When Jermaine and Zeke moved next door, Zeke and I got tight fast. He wasn’t like the other kids, looking down on me and not wanting to play with me because I had filthy clothes and holes in my shoes. Zeke didn’t care.”

“Sounds like Jermaine raised him right,” Finn says softly.

Humming, I keep talking. “Yeah, Jermaine was the best. I was a second son to him. I could always count on him. And he was in the MC, so that was always my path. Not the most glamorous job for a lot of people, but it’s a family business,” I tell him with a grin.

“Just like me. I think I was destined to be a mechanic since I was around it all the time. Nothing else I’d rather be.” He pauses for a moment. “What happened to your mom?”

I stiffen. No one ever asks me about my mom. It’s always assumed that she left my dad because of drugs, but that’s not one hundred percent the case. She did leave, in a manner of speaking.

“Dead.”

Finn gasps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Quietly, he asks, “Can you tell me what happened.”

“I watched her OD.”

That day is permanently etched in my mind. She was nice, my mom, but she was on drugs just like my father. Hell, he probably got her started. I’ll never know. My mother tried to keep me away from it, but she loved the needle more than me.

One day when I was five, I walked into the living room after trying to scrounge up some food that I knew wouldn’t be there. I tiptoed over to the couch to ask her if I could have some breakfast. When I rounded the couch, I saw her push the plunger down on the needle and felt my stomach drop—while growling with hunger—because once she had her medicine, as she called it, I shouldn’t bother her.

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