Page 4 of All's Fair in Love & Wrath

Whatever has happened at the site this morning isn’t something out of the ordinary, and I’m already prepared for the worst-case scenario. Even if the guilt is eating me alive, running right next to the rage I’m feeling that someone hurt one of our own. That very well could have been me there this morning, and instead, I fucking sent Rolo. If he doesn’t make it, I’m gonna have to live with that decision.

Since I joined, I’ve been stabbed, beaten, and battered. I’ve held back my club brother from seeing his sister’s raped and beaten body. I’ve watched brothers die in our own clubhouse during an ambush. I’ve killed, maimed, and done whatever I needed to survive. Maybe all of it has desensitized me. Call me numb, insensitive, or detached. But maybe my body is forcing me to disassociate to preserve the man behind the road name. Because Axel? He cares way too fucking much.

Whatever it is, I just know that nothing surprises me anymore, and nothing invokes feelings as strongly as they used to.

The loud rumble thunders through our small town of Amberwood’s downtown area. When we have a show of force, it’s like an earthquake, the ground rumbling beneath our tires. We drop our speed slightly, pulling our formation tighter. I clock the jerking ticks of Malice’s head, the slow tapping of hismiddle finger against the throttle. I may be prepared for what we’re about to face, but he sure as shit isn’t.

Our bikes come to a screeching halt outside Hell’s Asylum, and we all make the same movements, pulling our guns free and holding them in front of us. Sin and Malice flank Chaos, looking around the construction site. I want to canvass the area, because something feels off. There are no bikes here besides ours, no people milling about. No sign of the contractor or the inspector. It’s a dead zone.

Something’s not right.

I’m a split second from thinking the entire area is going to blow until I hear a moan followed by a cough. We jog over to find one of our prospects, Luca, leaning against the back of a dumpster, his shirt soaked in blood, his hands clutching his middle. Blood oozes from his side, the ground below him a wet mess.

Chaos crouches down just as our in-house doctor, Stitch, drops to his knees, ripping Luca’s shirt down the center. Sin and I flank the group, our guns held out in front of us as we scan the area. What the fuck happened here? The construction crew and inspector must have bolted the moment shit went awry. I’m already looking into the construction site, the tall frame of the building that’s going up, the laid concrete. If Luca is out here and Rolo isn’t anywhere to be seen, helping him, it’s not fucking good. Did someone take him? It wouldn’t be the first time one of us has been picked up and held, tortured and abused for retribution, ransom, or just because they wanted a new toy to fuck with. The world is full of sick pricks, and that’s why we take them out any chance we get.

My eyes return to Malice’s, his the color of night, soulless and empty. Fuck.

“Talk!” Chaos demands.

“He-he shot at us. I got in front of him, but I went down,and he kept shooting,” Luca says between wheezing coughs. Stitch starts to work on him, and I look down to find two bullet holes on the side of his stomach, blood trickling out of him like a leaky faucet. Luca groans as Stitch gets to work. It doesn’t look like anything vital was punctured, but any higher, he’d be drowning in his own blood if it clipped his lung.

“Who shot at you?”

“Garrett.”

“Fuck,” Sin hisses. I make eye contact with him, and we both have the same thought. If we have one traitor in our ranks, who the fuck else is in there?

“Where the fuck is Rolo? You said he was shot. Where?” Malice spits, looking all around. Luca lifts a weak arm, pointing at the construction site where I was just looking. Malice only reacts, not giving a shit that the entire place could be set up to blow at any minute, racing into the framework of the new building in search of Rolo. I don’t blame him, but he’s not using his fucking head.

I’m hot on his tail, keeping my gun drawn as my heavy boots crunch on gravel, the sun bearing down on us. “Malice!” I yell, but he doesn’t listen. Then he freezes, and I practically run right into his back. Malice falls to his knees, and then I get my first view of what he found. What I knew we’d find. What could have been me.

Rolo lies limp and lifeless in a pool of his own blood; his body riddled with gunshot wounds. He’s contorted in an odd position, clearly having fallen from the shots. I hope his death was quick and he wasn’t left here to slowly bleed out, that the Devil himself returned to bring our brother home. I’m sure his last thoughts were of his old lady, Morgan, and that realization alone gives me a sharp pain between my ribs. I sent him to his fucking death. My brother. Pain lances through my chest, sudden and intense.

Malice screams out, an ear-piercing cry as he slaps his hands against the sides of his head repeatedly. I’m quickly joined by Sin, Chaos, and Noose, who all have their own reactions to finding our club brother, a ranked member no less, murdered, lying in his own blood.

“Fuck, man.”

“Goddamn it, not fucking Rolo.”

“Mal?” I offer, crouching down next to him. But he doesn’t seem to be with us. When he speaks, it doesn’t sound like him at all. It’s darker, possessed.

He mumbles something under his breath I can’t make out, but I swear he’s counting. Malice takes a deep, steadying breath before he continues, this time to us. “He knew something was coming. He fucking felt it, and I didn’t listen.”

“What do you mean,he knew?” I ask, confused. Rolo didn’t say shit to me when I told him to head down here to deal with the bullshit.

“He was drinking alone and felt like something big was on the horizon. He fuckingfelthis death coming. He knew.”

“Malice, even if that’s so, there’s nothing we could have done. We’re going to find that sonofabitch who took him from us. We will get our revenge,” Sin adds.

Malice stands quickly, whirling on our president. I follow, holstering my gun, ready to pull him back if need be. “Fuck that. Why the fuck was he allowed to come here alone? I should have gone with him! Fuck you, Chaos, for letting him go! Fuck you!” What Chaos doesn’t say is that I sent him. Chaos didn’t even fucking know until after the fact. It was my goddamn decision.

Sin tries to de-escalate the situation, mirroring my decision to put away his gun to keep his hands free in case he needs them. We’ve all had our turn on Malice’s bad side, and it’s not something I want to repeat. The scar I have right under my ribsproves it. Hell, most of us have a battle scar from taking on Malice at one point or another.

“I could have gone with him! I could have tracked him! No one misses fucking church except Rogue! No one! Why the fuck was he out with only two prospects? After everything we’ve been through! I know better. I do!” Malice screams, his voice cracking.

“Buddy, we do it all the time. Even when there was the constant threat of danger, I was leaving, you know I was,” Sin replies. “We’re all hurting. We’re all going to get through this together, and we’re going to find Garrett. Make him pay.”

“Fuck you!” Malice screams, spittle flying from his mouth. He continues to unravel, screaming barely intelligible sentences, all blending together. I’ve seen Malice in many different forms, but I’ve never seen him quite like this. “He was the fucking best of us! And he’s fucking dead!”