Rowe by Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rowe

“You’re going to fuck up your back worse than it already is,” Pagan’s voice called from behind me after I waited for all the others to head out before I made my way toward my bike. “Trust me, kid, I know a thing or two about fucked up body parts,” he added.

It was no secret that Pagan was probably the most rough & tumble of all the OG members. He’d been a cage fighter for shits and giggles. And then he’d joined the MC to become one of our fiercest enforcers when a situation called for it.

“Stay out of it,” I demanded, reaching for my helmet.

“Far be it from me to stand between a man and his own idiocy, but let me demonstrate something for you,” he said, then jumped forward, jabbing a fist into my shoulder.

It wasn’t even a hard hit.

But with my weak lower back and the fact that I’d taken off my supportive brace made it impossible for me to absorb the impact and stay on my feet.

If it weren’t for Pagan grabbing the sides of my cut to steady me, I would have toppled over my bike and crashed onto the unyielding ground on the other side. Probably fucking up my back for life, like he’d said.

“Take your stubborn ass back inside. You will heal eventually. And then you can charge into action again.”

I couldn’t explain.

Billie was Pagan’s niece, even if it wasn’t through blood. They were a family in all ways that counted. I couldn’t tell him I’d started things up with his niece.

Hell, it was the whole reason I’d rejected Billie in the first place.

There weren’t a lot of rules in the club.

No drugs.

You treated women with respect.

And you kept your fucking hands off the princesses.

Sure, Niro had broken that last rule when he’d gotten with Andi. But that was a different thing. Niro had been in love with her since they were kids. Everyone had seen them settling down together. There’d never been any worry that Niro would hurt Andi.

They wouldn’t have that assurance with me.

I was an outsider.

They’d just barely started to get to know me.

Sugar would have my fucking head on a pike if he knew I’d touched his girl when he’d entrusted me with her.

“If you want something to do, I think Brooks is going over all the paperwork Chris dropped off earlier.”

Good old Brooks, making the rest of us look like slackers.

What else was there to do?

I got to work. And I kept an ear peeled for information about Billie.

“They were so fucked up,” Seth said when he made it back before the others. “Willa, Luna, and Gracie were out cold even through all of us walking through the apartment.”

But what about Billie?

It wasn’t that I wasn’t worried about the other girls, but they weren’t the ones with a stalker. A stalker who was undeterred by the new security system and the ever-present guards around.

That was some ballsy shit to show up again.

Which wasn’t good.

The problem was, there was no lead.

The letters were similar to the old ones. The only difference was that instead of hand-drawn art, there were pictures taken of Billie as she moved about her day.

Billie in her van, smiling at something Dezi in the passenger seat said. Billie teaching her yoga class, in some position that had her perfect ass stuck up in the air. Billie carting a box of whatever she’d made and sold on her website to the post office.

I wasn’t alone in thinking it was even more creepy to have the pictures than the so-called art.

Which was why there were two men sitting on Billie’s apartment around the clock. One was inside, one was outside.

I figured, eventually, it would come around that they would tap my shoulder to take a shift inside with her.

I just had to bide my time.

Even if it was killing me.

And it was. Little by little. Each memory was eating away at me as one day turned to two, then two to three.

“Incoming,” Brooks called, coming inside from the yard.

“Who?” Fallon asked.

“Judging by the cocky entitlement, I’m assuming that missing cousin of yours,” Brooks said, shrugging.

“Valen?” Seth asked, jumping up.

“Yeah, him and someone else,” Brooks agreed. “He’s talking to Wolf now,” he added, going into the kitchen. Likely to put on the coffee.

Valen was a bit of a legend among his cousins, despite the fact that most of the guys who had patched in were older than him. There was just an air of mystery surrounding the cousin who had taken off on a bike to drive across the country and do God-knew what for not just weeks or months, but years.

I’d never really gotten to know Valen. Malc and I were several years older than him, so he hadn’t really been in our circle before he’d taken off.

The man who walked into the clubhouse was different than the boy who’d left town. Where he’d once been tall and scrawny, he had fleshed out, clearly either hitting the gym or simply doing some sort of manual labor to make ends meet while he was on the road. He had dark hair like both his parents, but it was kept a little longer on the top than it used to be. And where he’d left town with exactly one tattoo—one he’d gotten on his eighteenth birthday—he was back covered in them. They snaked up his arms and the sides of his neck, and likely a lot of places hidden by his simple black jeans and tee. There was also a scar on his neck that hadn’t been there before. One that looked relatively new since it was still pink.

Valen, though, wasn’t alone.

He’d brought someone else back from his journeys with him.

The other man was probably a few years older than Valen, maybe even older than me. He was tall and the burly kind of strong with a full blond beard and a shitton of tattoos as well. He kept both sides of his head shaved, but had long blond hair down the center that almost gave him a Viking look. He had a prominent brow which made his eyes fall a bit in shadow, but they seemed to be light. Probably blue.

“Well, look who finally decided to drag his ass back where he belongs,” Fallon called, walking over and giving his cousin a one-armed hug.

The rest of the cousins followed suit, leaving me, Cary, Brooks, and the guys from the Shady Valley chapter standing back a bit awkwardly.

Dezi, though, Dezi walked right up to this man he’d never met, never even seen in his life, and gave him one of those one-armed hugs as well.

“What? We’re family now,” Dezi said at our raised brows.

“Let me guess,” Valen said, his voice deeper than it had once been. “Dezi.”

“See? My reputation precedes me,” Dezi claimed. “Now who is this? I don’t think I’m forgetting a grumpy-faced cousin.”

“Grumpy-faced?” the guy asked in a sound that was more of a growl than a voice.

“No shit. Check that out. He’s got a grumpy voice too,” Dezi declared with a smile as he moved away.

“Guys, this is Voss. Voss, this is everyone. I’d introduce you, but there are several faces here that even I don’t recognize. We’ll have to get to know them together.”

“Together?” Fallon asked.

“Right. Yeah. You’re in charge now,” Valen said, nodding toward his cousin. “Got in a tight spot down in Louisiana a couple months back. Voss here kept the fuckers from slitting my throat,” he said, gesturing toward the scar on his neck. “In return, he asked me to bring him back here so he can prospect. So here he is. Prospecting,” Valen said to Fallon in a voice that said it was a done deal.

And, really, when someone saved the life of one of ours, payment was given, no matter how strange it might have seemed.

“Alright, Voss,” Fallon said. “We have a couple prospects right now. That’s Cary and Dezi over there. You will be bunking with them,” he added, and I watched as Voss gave Cary a cursory glance before landing on Dezi. Something told me that the two of them weren’t going to be fast friends. “Brooks is going to be in charge of you,” he added, waving toward Brooks who was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Boss,” Voss said, nodding toward Brooks.

“Nave is also going to be prospecting soon,” Fallon said.

“It took him this long?” Valen asked.

“Took you this long too,” Fallon said with a shrug. “You go see your family yet?”

“No. I rolled into town in this direction, so I figured I would drop in here first.”

“Your Ma is gonna be pissed when she hears.”

“Sounds weird, but I’m kind of looking forward to it. Been a long time since my mother yelled at me.”

“Did you guys bring anything?” Malc asked.

“We each have packs. We’ve been living out of those for the last few months. Well, me, years. Gonna need to hit the store in the near future to get some life shit.”

“Dezi loves hitting the store to pick up life shit,” Brooks said, smirking at Dezi who slapped a hand to his heart like he’d been shot.

“So, what’s been going on around here? The fuck is that brace for?” Valen asked, pointing toward me.

“Broken back,” Fallon supplied. “We had a drop a bit back. Got ambushed. Rowe was chasing one of the fucks up on a roof. He got shot and fell off.”

“Fuck, man,” Valen winced. “You in that for life?”

“Hope not,” I said, shrugging. “Been going to therapy.”

“And the hippie-love-goddess has been giving him creams and teas. Don’t get your hopes up, there’s no Satan’s Lettuce in the tea. I checked.”

“You drank my tea?” I asked, snorting.

“Hey, if you were getting the goods, I wanted some too.”

“Hippie-love-goddess has to mean Bills. She sent me a screenshot of my fucking birth chart for my last birthday. Whatever that means. How is she?”

“She’s got a stalker,” Fallon supplied.

“Busy town,” Voss grumbled or growled or whatever noise you could call his voice.

“Yeah. And it never stops. So we are all taking shifts over at her place since her stubborn ass is hellbent on keeping her normal schedule, and we are trying to work on the bastards who ambushed us. And… who the hell is that now?” Fallon asked when he looked out a window to see someone else approaching.

But before we could take any guesses, the door was bursting open.

And there was Jason Mallick.

Or Jase, as everyone called him in town.

He was the spitting image of his father. Tall, broad, built, with black hair and light eyes.

“You motherfucker, you thought I’d just forget we got some shit to work through just ‘cause you rolled outta town a few years back?” Jase asked.

Then, without any more warning than that, he cocked his arm, and slammed a fist into Valen’s jaw.

“Oh shit,” Dezi mumbled, rubbing his hands together, enjoying the show.

“The fuck is this about?” Malc mumbled, moving next to me as Voss made room for the two men to keep wailing on each other.

“That much piss and vinegar,” Voss grumbled. “Gotta be a chick.”

“Whose bikes are…” Reign started, coming in the back door, then pausing, taking in the scene. “Is that Jase Mallick?” he asked, looking over at his son.

“It is,” Fallon said, nodding.

“Are we just going to let them destroy the clubhouse?” Reign asked as the two of them nearly crashed into the pool table.

“Apparently, it’s a long-standing grudge. Figured we’d let ‘em go a couple rounds before we break it up,” Fallon said.

“What kind of grudge? The Mallicks have always been allies of ours.”

“Yeah, maybe your generation. And Charlie’s generation. It’s not looking so hot for us,” Fallon admitted. And it wasn’t the first time one of us had gotten into it with one of them.

I always figured it was family rivalry type shit. But then Malc had informed me that while the girls from many of the families and organizations in town had sort of banded together and bonded, it hadn’t exactly happened with the guys.

“Dezi, Cary, you wanna do the honors?” Reign asked when there was the crash of glass breaking.

“What? So we can catch the stray fists?” Dezi asked.

“Exactly,” Reign agreed with a smirk.

“Yeah, this is getting ugly,” Fallon agreed, wincing as a splatter of blood shot across the wall.

With that, Dezi and Cary moved forward to try to drag the brawling men apart, but it took the two of them just to grab Jase, and Voss had needed to intervene to push Valen back.

“You stay the fuck away from me, do you hear me?” Jase snapped, even through the blood dripping out of his mouth.

“Alright. Time to cool down, big guy,” Dezi said as he and Cary pushed Jase to the door, then outside.

“The fuck, kid?” Reign asked as Valen wiped blood off a split in his lip that just kept bleeding down his face. “You’re home for all of five minutes, and you’re starting wars in this town?”

“That was an old war,” Valen admitted as Voss went behind the bar to grab a bottle of vodka, handing it to Valen. “It just took this long to see actual bloodshed. He’s fucking bigger than I remember,” Valen said with a humorless snort as he uncapped the vodka and took a long swig.

“Yeah, he takes after his father,” Reign agreed. “How’d he even know you were here?”

“He was pulling into the gas station as we were leaving,” Valen told him.

“What’d you do to him?” Reign asked.

“I, ah, I maybe stole Louana from him back in the day.”

“Louana,” Reign repeated, the name ringing a bell, but not quite.

“Luce and Evan’s kid,” Fallon filled in. “Wait, though,” he said, looking over at Valen. “If you stole Louana, but he didn’t get a chance to beat the piss out of you for it before you skipped out of town, does that mean…”

“It does,” Valen said, nodding and wincing at the same time.

“Oh, shit, man. The fuck were you thinking? You do realize that Lou’s mom once kidnapped Luce and locked him in an actual jail cell that she built, right? Complete with a two-in-one stainless steel toilet/sink combo. Like that’s the kind of crazy that chick is descended from.”

“Why the hell you think I stayed away so long?” Valen asked, smirking even though it made the split in his lip bleed more. “I can deal with Jase. But a pissed off Lou is going to be a whole different animal to deal with.”

“Can I suggest a mini cow?” Dezi said, getting drawn-together brows from Valen who didn’t know the inside joke.

“When can we expect you back?” Fallon asked.

“I figure I will let my Ma fuss over me for the night, then be back here tomorrow to officially move in. If that works for you. Don’t know what kinda room you got right now.”

“The prospect room is a little full until the new chapter brothers head out. Which is in a day or so. We can bunk you in the basement until then. It’s not luxury, but there are beds.”

“Works for me,” Valen said, nodding. “I’ve spent more nights than I can count sleeping in the woods without a tent,” he admitted. “It will be luxury for me.”

“What about you, Voss?” Fallon asked. “You going to hang out at Valen’s parents’ place?”

“Don’t do parents,” Voss growled, shaking his head.

“That’s a parent,” Fallon said, nodding toward his father.

“Different,” Voss declared. “Family shit. Not used to that.”

He’d have to get used to family shit eventually if he wanted to make it into the club. But I understood that for people who didn’t really have a good family, coming to accept that aspect of the club took some time.

“Alright. So, you’re crashing here tonight,” Fallon said. “Brooks, you want to give him a tour and some basic information about the club and the rules?”

“Yep. Got it,” Brooks said, nodding to Voss who followed him as he led him down toward the door for the basement.

“He’s… charming,” Fallon said, smirking at Valen.

“He might not be one for conversation, but he can be trusted. And he will be loyal once he knows everyone. And there’s no one you’d rather have your back in a fight. He’s fucking ruthless. Doesn’t hesitate. This,” he said, pointing toward his throat, “was from facing down four guys. He tore through them in seconds, took the knife from the guy who sliced me, and stabbed him through the eye.”

“Why’d he step in?” Fallon asked.

Valen shrugged at that. “I’d asked the same thing. He said he used to get jumped by assholes like that when he was young and hates an unfair fight.”

“What did he do before you came upon him?” Reign asked, always ready to have Chris up at Hailstorm run a file on a new prospect. We didn’t usually hold anyone’s past against them, but we liked to know what we were getting into.

“He worked overnight security at a junkyard.”

“Like a dog?” Dezi asked, smiling.

“I think anyone who jumped that fence would have rather run into a rabid dog,” Valen said, shrugging.

“Where was here before that?” Reign pressed. “He doesn’t have an accent like he’s from Louisiana.”

“No. He bounced around a lot. He was raised mostly in the outskirts of Chicago. But when he aged up, he took off. He stayed in a bunch of areas, never anywhere longer than a year or two.”

“Because he got into trouble?” Reign asked.

“He hasn’t done any real time. Was in county a few times, but never went to jail. He doesn’t have connections to any organization. I know that question is coming. Any trouble he’s been in has been because of his bad attitude and tendency to settle disagreements with his fists.”

“So, a biker,” Cary said, shrugging.

“Exactly,” Valen agreed. “When he said he wanted to prospect, I figured it might be a good fit. I know you can’t guarantee him a spot, but he deserves a shot. I figure we can always use some rough-around-the-edges guys here.”

“What about you?” Reign asked. “How rough around the edges have you gotten?”

It was a mix of the president and the concerned uncle in that question.

“There have been some rough spots that had me laid up for a bit,” Valen admitted. “Hell, I once got my ass kicked by a goddamn mountain lion.”

“What?” Cary asked. “They almost never attack humans.”

“I know. That’s what the hospital said when they stitched up my arm,” he said, shaking his head. “I figure I tried to set up camp too close to her babies or something. But yeah, I’ve gotten into some scuffs. But like Voss, I’ve managed to stay out of too much trouble, and stay away from any organized sort of crime.”

“Good,” Fallon said, nodding. “Just so you know, though, you prospect with the rest of the guys. And you get the same treatment. We all had to.”

“Understood. I’ve always known that was how it was going to be.”

“You should get going to see your mother before she hears you are here from someone else,” Reign suggested.

“Yeah, I am gonna shove off. Anyone know if my sister is in town?”

“Vi has been crashing with Billie,” Fallon said. “I can text you the address if you want to pop over.”

“Eh, I’m gonna let her figure out I’m here secondhand,” he said, smirking, making it clear that he and Violet had an antagonistic sort of sibling bond.

“Dunno, man. She’s a lot like your ma these days,” Fallon said. “Won’t hesitate to whoop your ass for being an asshole.”

“That’s how we show our love,” Valen said with a smile before turning and making his way toward the door. “I’ll be back in the morning. Tell the Girls Club if they are planning a big shindig, that I haven’t had a home cooked meal in years, and that they should do it up.”

“Well,” Fallon said, nodding as Valen left. “That’s it. Now we wait for Nave, and that’s everyone who is old enough to prospect.”

“What about Bennet?” Seth asked, meaning Cyrus’s son.

“Didn’t you hear?” Fallon asked, shaking his head. “Bennet’s band just landed a record deal. He’s going to be going off on tour in the near future.”

Huh.

Maybe Navesink Bank would have to add that to their slogan.

Bikers, and Loansharks, and the Mafia, and Rockstars, oh my!

As it turned out, the girls did catch wind of Valen being back in town. And, like he wished—and like Dezi did more than a little self-serving nudging—they all planned a ton of food and a party.

A party that would be cut short.

Because we got a call that had my stomach plummeting.

Someone took Billie.