Creed’s Honor by Simone Nicholls

You’re a naked flame.

And I’m coated in gasoline as I dance with you.

Intoxicated on love. Blinded by delusions. Consumed with passion.

Your lips were venom, and I was willingly prepared to lose my life.

It was never love.

It was purely insane addiction.

There was no question if loving him would kill me—it was simply a matter of when.

So why did I stay?

Because some love stories are pure, utter insanity to the outsider’s eyes—and those love stories are ones that are never forgotten.

If there was one thing certain, our love was a mixture of the darkest black, the purest white, and the deepest grey, with flashes of crimson.

Dedicated to the demons that wage wars within my mind, yet they will never win.

West Brooks, my best mate and the only man I truly trusted, was the same bastard who broke my daughter, my little girl, Holly.

Ivy, my second eldest, had caught him in bed with Holly.

It was a Sunday night, and we had just had our weekly family dinner. My son, Kobra, and I were trying the new weed shipment when I heard Ivy scream. The drugs delayed my reactions, but I nearly fucking killed West, even as Holly protested, saying she loved him. Ivy said it didn’t look like it, but Holly stood by the fact that West and she had something.

Holly told me that he wasn’t raping her as I held him by the shirt with my gun in his mouth. Part of me didn’t fucking believe it, but the other part of me didn’t want to think my best mate would rape my daughter.

To think the bastard had fucked my daughter still makes me sick.

Holly stopped me from killing him that night. Even under the influence, I could still throw a punch. His playboy looks were gone by the end of the night from my fists. However, I was so furious that I just wanted to shoot him straight in the head at the time.

Fucking Kobra reminded me I couldn’t kill my vice president, VP, especially if Holly said it wasn’t rape.

What made me even sicker was my daughter had kept a relationship with my best friend behind my back. People considered me cold, but to have my daughter keep such a thing from me… well, it broke my relationship with her—or at least, that’s what I thought.

A week passed, and I was charged for. To my surprise, West handed himself in and pleaded guilty to the charges I was facing, and he went to prison the following week. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Holly during that time, either. My daughter hid a relationship with my best mate, the only man in the fucking world I trusted with my family.

It was maybe a week and a bit before I went home from the club, where I had been staying. My wife understood. Zara told me Holly hadn’t left her room much, though.

When I got home, I reminded myself that she was my daughter, and I loved her regardless of her actions. So I walked up to her bedroom, knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. I went to let myself in, but she had locked the door. That was when warning signs began to register.

My kids knew never to lock a door. Never. Kobra was the exception when in his dorm room, but that was it.

I kicked the door in, the wood splitting, and yelled Holly’s name. Nothing.

Then I saw it. A letter on the bed and three words swirled across the front of the envelope—To my family. It took half a second for it to click. My head snapped to the bathroom door.

My heart stilled. I remember the cold red fear that flooded my body as I burst down that bathroom door, the lock shattering.

I roared her name so loudly that, if it were possible, the house would have shaken.

Her silence terrified me. My breathing caught in my lungs, and I was faced with an image that still floods my nightmares.

My daughter.

My little girl.

She was lying on the white tiled floor, blood covering her wrists.

I don’t know how I moved while in shock, but I did.

I grabbed a towel, applying it to her wrists. I heard myself screaming at her, roaring for her not to leave me. Screaming that she was my little girl and had no fucking right to do this to me. I felt so powerless and had never felt so fucking terrified. My little girl. The girl who I helped take her first steps, remembering the first time her little blue eyes locked with mine as I held her in the hospital—all the memories were running through my head.

She was our miracle child. She was what breathed life back into mine and Zara’s marriage. I was a hard man to deal with, and it was our little Holly who brought Zara and me back together when we were on the edge of separation. All these scenes ran through my mind as she lay still in my arms, her skin a sickly pale, and the silence was deafening.

I continue to scream—Please don’t leave me—the guilt of my actions swallowing me. I roared for Kobra at the same time. I needed him to call an ambulance. I kept telling her I was fucking sorry, and I’d make it up to her if she would come back to me, telling her that I needed her to keep breathing. “Please, baby girl, keep breathing,” I said over and over.

The ambulance arrived quickly, and as I carried her down those stairs, memories flooded me. I recalled carrying her up these exact steps to her crib, and now, as I carried her down them, I felt like it was going to be the last time I would hold her.

And then I had to watch as they put my daughter into the back of an ambulance. The paramedics wouldn’t let anyone get in with her. They slammed the door in my face. I now know it was because they didn’t want me to see my daughter take her last breath.

I stood at the end of the driveway, my leather vest and white shirt covered in her blood. A sickening feeling flooded me, one question running through my head over and over—What the fuck had I done? I had locked her out while knowing how close she and I were.

I thought I killed my daughter that day. The fact I was called Hades, the reckoning of death, never fit me better. Because I thought I had just dealt death to my little girl.

I sat on the porch, her blood still on my clothes and arms, as Zara stood screaming at me as she got in the car. She left without me and headed to the hospital with Kobra. It was Ivy, my second eldest, who sat beside me on the porch, taking my hand, holding it.

The blame I felt in those moments didn’t lift. I couldn’t bring myself to mount my bike and go to the hospital. I sat there on the porch, feeling this numbness that coated every blood vessel in my veins.

It was Ivy saying “Dad” softly that pulled me back to the moment. I could see the tears in my daughter’s eyes, and I knew she’d blame me for losing her sister. Fuck. I felt the family I had, the life I had, my purpose for not letting the club or the road take my life, shattering.

With tears in her eyes, Ivy said she had to tell me something, but it was the blame written across her face that seemed to break me even more. Then she swallowed nervously. Ivy placed the letter on my lap—Holly’s suicide letter. I wanted to rip it up, but Ivy said I had to read it because she had made a promise to Holly that Holly would be the one to tell me.

I had no idea what she was talking about. Opening the letter, I saw another note inside it with one word across the folded piece of paper. Dad.

Ivy was repeatedly saying how sorry she was as I unfolded it. I could see the teardrops on the piece of paper. Holly’s tears had stained the letter.

I could feel her pain as I read how much she loved me, but three words changed everything at the end of the letter.

West raped me.

I felt the colour drain from my face. Ivy kept saying if she had known Holly would try to take her life, she wouldn’t have promised to keep it a secret from me.

It was then that I took off on my bike with Ivy screaming how sorry she was as I pulled away.

I revved through the gears so fast that I knew my bike would need a new motor. I flogged it, but I didn’t fucking regret it. The price of a new engine was nothing compared to my daughter’s life.

I got to the hospital and found police and security surrounding the waiting room. They stiffened when they saw me. They thought they only had to deal with Kobra, who had a temper and a habit of throwing things. The boy got that from me.

I walked in, and Zara, the woman who gave me purpose and life to my children, was sitting in a plastic chair. Tears spilled from her eyes. One of my real weaknesses that always got under my skin was seeing a woman or girl crying. When I lowered in front of Zara, she wouldn’t look at me. That was when it hit me. My world was shattering. I always knew what I had was too good for the likes of me.

Expecting Zara to push me away, she wrapped her arms around my neck instead as she cried and pleaded with me to do something to save our baby girl.

I never believed in a higher power, but I prayed. I fucking prayed like a desperate man as I held my shaking wife in my arms, pleading with me not to let her go. I prayed, over and over—Don’t take my daughter. Don’t let her go into the light. She was our light, the light of our entire family. Without her, the darkness would suffocate us.

Kobra didn’t stop pacing, saying fuck every couple of minutes. I think the boy only sat down for a few minutes. I saw him breaking, just like the rest of us, and ended up forcing him to sit down when Zara left to go to the toilet.

That was when I saw my son, a man with my eyes and my strength, break. Kobra went on that it was his fault. He knew she wasn’t well. He knew like the rest of us that her depression was always bad. Said he roared at her yesterday when she was in the kitchen. Said it was the first time he had seen her since it happened with West. Said he was angry that she would betray our trust like that and sleep with him behind our back. How could she have a secret relationship behind our back! He kept saying these things over and over.

It made my stomach tighten, but I didn’t say anything. I just listened

Then, as tears ran down Kobra’s cheeks, he turned his head to look at me. Fuck, it was like staring in a mirror. His words still floated in my mind—I told her, Dad, that I never wanted to see her again. He repeated it again and then followed with a sentence that seemed to push him to the brink—I fucking did this. I knew she was fragile, and I pushed her. I—

It was at this point that I gripped his neck, pulling him into me. As he cried, I told him it wasn’t his doing. I made him look me in the eyes, and I told him, I fucking promised him, that this wasn’t his doing.

As soon as Zara walked back in, Kobra pushed himself out of the chair and went back to pacing as he wiped his eyes clear. Just like me, he never wanted the girls to see his weakness. He always wanted to be their strength.

A trembling Ivy arrived within an hour. Seeing the pain on her face suffocated my anger with her. I understood why she did it. She and Holly had a strong bond. She couldn’t have known Holly would do this.

So I hugged her. I had Ivy crying under one arm, and Zara curled into my other side. The sun slowly set. It was dark when the doctors came in.

My heart, my world, our world, paused as they approached us. I had to stand up, gripping Kobra’s arm when I saw the six police officers behind them. A sickness fucking flooded me.

That was when the doctors said the words we were waiting to hear. She survived. But I couldn’t believe it, not until we walked into her hospital room. There was my angel, laying in a hospital bed, still sickly pale but breathing on her own. I pulled up a chair beside her. As a family, we were reminded just how fragile Holly was, and we were never going to forget that.

As I held her hand, I spoke to my family.

The question continuously rolling through my fucking head was How did I not see it? Kobra’s shocked face matched mine, and the rage that followed was also like mine. I had to tell him not to do it as I gripped him by the shoulder.

I knew what he was thinking. Do something fucking stupid, get arrested, end up in prison and kill West, maybe get a life sentence. I knew because I had already thought of it too.

But this family needed to stay whole.

“We do this smart,” I said. During the hours I had spent in the waiting room, holding my wife and daughter as we waited to hear if Holly lived, well, I knew how this was going to play out. I locked eyes with Kobra.

Kobra was furious because West was now doing a four-year sentence. But that’s when I told Kobra we had four years to make sure that when he got out, everything that kept him breathing was gone. I then made the vow to my son in front of my family. I would ruin West Brooks.

* * *

The next six months were the most trying time of my family’s lives. I stepped away from the club because my focus was Holly. Just like I didn’t leave her bedside in hospital while she healed, I made sure she wasn’t on her own as she recovered. I was the one taking her to her doctor appointments. I was the one making sure she took her pills every morning. And it broke me every time she said she wished I hadn’t saved her, and she cried when taking those pills.

It took nearly two months, thanks to medication, and maybe the gods above, for her to come back to us as a family. She started taking her antidepressants without me standing in front of her. And she slowly began to recover.

Kobra handled the club, so it was in good hands. I didn’t step back into the president patch until Holly was studying again, functioning, and smiling again.

Though, with every day that passed, rage boiled inside me, wanting nothing more than to get my hands on West. I couldn’t even get members inside to rough him up, because I needed him thinking that he got away with it.

* * *

So here we were, four years later, with Kobra and I at the prison gates. I lit up a cigarette, my eyes on West as he walked from the prison. He’d just done that time for me, more than likely thinking as he walked free, that I owed him. But I now knew he had another motivation to take the sentence—to buy time to see if Holly would tell us the truth.

And she had.

But he didn’t know that. As I grinned at him, I knew something he didn’t—the bastard was dead.

“West”—I looked him up and down—“you look like shit.”

He cracked a smirk, running a hand over his freshly shaven head. “Nice to see you too, Hades.” He then extended a hand, and I still found anger in my blood towards him, but suppressing it, I shook his hand. “How you been?” he asked.

I inhaled on the cigarette before dropping it.

My lips twitched up as my grip on his hand tightened, and I pulled him into my chest firmly. I gripped the back of his neck. “Patience,” I hissed into his ear. “That’s what I’ve practised while waiting for you to walk through those gates.”

I could feel him stiffen.

West pulled back from my grip. He had been my best mate and the only one I trusted with my family. I had looked at West like I looked at Thanatos and Khaos, my blood brothers. That was how much respect and trust I’d had for West.

“So you fucking know.” He shoved out of my grip. “Whatcha gonna do, Hades? Shoot me? In front of a prison?” he mocked me. “Blood oath means ya can’t end my life.” He referred to an oath between him, two other leading club members, and me. It meant we couldn’t kill each other.

“Yeah, right, I can’t, but Kobra never made a blood oath.” I gestured my head to my son, wanting West to think he was about to have the life drain from his eyes.

Kobra didn’t move.

“I thought about just chopping your dick off, thought about just killing and fucking the oath. But”—I paused and stepped forward—“I thought that would be painless compared to seeing the lifelessness in my daughter’s eyes. Seeing her as she wished she wasn’t above ground.” I felt my blood boil. “I thought, how can I make West feel some of the pain I feel? You never loved a thing, apart from”—I watched as it registered on his face—“the wife you still begged to get back to you and the son you wanted in the brotherhood.”

“You touched my family?” he asked, incredulous. The only thing stopping him from coming near me was the fact that I wanted him dead. If he were to get too close, the limited control of my temper would snap.

“You’ll never see them again, West. You’re going to spend the rest of your life wondering where in the forest their bodies lay. Is their grave shallow or deep? Will the police call you today or next week to identify the bodies?”

West felt sick. I could see it on his face.

“Ya dead, Hades, you hear me.” He growled at me. “Only a monster would go after a family!”

“Only a foolish man would rape my daughter and think they wouldn’t suffer by my hands.”

I’m Hades Kincaid. I am the darkness the media warned you existed. I am the figure in the shadows you were never sure if you really saw them. I am the one causing the terrifying six o’clock headlines. I don’t run the underground—I am the underground.

And nobody touches my family.

“You’ll be out of my country before sunset.” I walked back to my bike. “You lay a foot on my territory, in my country, I won’t kill ya.” I held his gaze. “I’ll have the gangsters rip you apart and feed you to the bikers who want you dead. And I’ll tell you now, West—no Satan’s Bastards will stop it from happening.”

I was about to start my bike to leave when he spoke.

“She screamed, Hades, when I fucked her, so tight, so young…”

He aimed his words to get me to react. He wanted me to end his life, end his suffering, knowing the two people he loved the most were gone from his life. He was suffering, in pain, and that was the only thing that stopped me from shooting him. He was in pain, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

So I looked him dead in the eyes. “I’m sure it had nothing on your wife’s screams as she begged for the boys to stop. But you know how the boys are with a naked woman.” I let those words sink in. “You know, West, I taught Kobra to take the pain.” I tilted my head, making sure he got the worst image possible. “You clearly didn’t teach your boy that. Squealed nearly as loudly as his mother.” Leaning on the handlebars of my bike, I kept my eyes locked with his. “After all, I couldn’t cut your hands off for touching my daughter, but I could cut his.”

Pressing the ignition button, my bike roared to life, and Kobra and I took off with West running at us, trying in a weak attempt to get us to react. His threats fell on deaf ears.

Only Kobra and I knew what had happened to his family, and we were taking that to our graves. To ensure West never got peace. Because as much of a monster as I am, I couldn’t kill a woman who I watched grow, or her son, when I was his godfather.

So I gave them one chance in exchange for a life they deserved if they would never reach out to West. But if they broke that promise, I wouldn’t be giving them a second chance, and they knew that.

So we rode away, thinking we’d never see West again.

We Kincaids believe family protects family. We faced everything together.

* * *

Now it’s time you met my daughter. After all, this is not my story. It is hers.

Perhaps one day, my tale will be told, but this is not the time. This story is about my daughter and a man who thought he would be good enough for my little girl.

As history has proven, I protect my family with the same ruthless fist that I rule the underworld. I don’t care how bloody it gets in the name of protecting my family.