Ryker by Jeneveir Evans
Chapter 33
Blood is thicker than water, but family isn’t just about blood. Family is about faith, and loyalty, and who you love. If you don’t have those things, I don’t care what the blood says. You’re not family.
~Mira Grant~
Ryker
November 9th, 1999
South Dakota
I’d slipped away from work a little early. I was headed to Regina’s house. Taz was meeting me there. I wasn’t sure how she would feel about moving. If her brother Ford still lived in the area, I don’t think she would have gone for it. But Ford’s wife’s family was originally from Louisiana. When his wife’s mom moved back to her home state, she’d convinced her daughter and Ford to move too.
Regina’s mom had passed away a few years earlier so there should be nothing to hold her in the state besides Taz. At least I didn’t think there was. I had no clue if she was seeing anyone or not.
I pulled around to the back of the house like I did each time I came. Even though their house wasn’t close to town, I didn’t want to take the chance that anyone could drive by and recognize my bike sitting out front. As I dismounted, I saw the back door open. Regina stood in the doorway smiling.
“Hey, stranger,” she called out.
“Hey, Reggie. How have you been?”
She shook her head at what I called her. She didn’t like being called that and I knew it. Ford had got me started doing it and with him gone, I figured I needed to be her surrogate older brother.
“I’m doing good. What brings you to these parts?”
I rarely came over anymore, not since Taz was grown. Even though Regina worked fulltime in a daycare, he still helped support his mom since I was no longer supporting the both of them.
“I’m meeting Taz here. We need to talk to you about something.”
The smile dropped from her face and a worried look replaced it.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I assured her.
She didn’t look too convinced. Luckily, I was saved from answering right away by the sound of Taz’s bike coming down the road. I walked toward her and grabbed the screen door. She stepped back and I followed her into the house. She walked over to the fridge and pulled out three cans of Coke. She was setting them on the kitchen table as Taz walked through the front door.
After both of us had hugged her, we sat down around the kitchen table and opened our drinks. As I took a long pull from mine, Regina immediately started in.
“Tell me what’s going on, Ry,” she demanded.
From the moment I’d first met her, Regina had been a woman who knew her own mind and wouldn’t take shit off of anyone.
“Regina, there’s some shit going down with the MC. Things that I won’t be a part of, nor will Taz or the other men who are loyal to me. Things are going to get real ugly and probably fairly soon.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
I grimaced.
“Ry, be honest with me. You know I can take it.”
I studied her face then nodded.
“King is trying to get the MC involved in human trafficking.”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. The horror of what I said was easily heard in her voice.
“Ry, you can’t do that.” She turned her head toward her son and said, “Taz, you can’t be involved in anything like that. I know you do illegal shit but you can’t do this.”
“I know, Mom. I’m not going to, neither is Ry or the guys.”
Taz usually didn’t keep anything from his Mom and I knew he had told her who the core group of brothers were who had my back. She looked back at me questioningly.
“Then what are you going to do?”
“It’s better that you don’t know, Regina.”
“Screw that, Ry. Tell me,” she spouted angrily.
I bit back a groan. Damn woman wasn’t going to let it go. Hell, I knew she wouldn’t, I don’t know why I had thought otherwise.
“Regina, King told me years ago that the only way out of the MC was through old age or death. There’s no way we can just walk away from the club without repercussions, not like it is now.”
She was examining my face and, damn her, she knew me well enough that she could tell that I had a plan.
“Let’s hear what you are going to do to get out of this shit. And I don’t want to hear that bullshit about this being club business. This is Taz’s life you're talking about.”
“Dammit. Lord save me from women like you,” I grumbled.
“The Lord isn’t sitting at this table right now, I am, and your ass is going to tell me what you have in the works.”
I looked at Taz to see him grinning and shaking his head.
“Son, I’m glad you aren’t as stubborn as your mom is.”
He chuckled at my statement.
“You’re stalling, Ry. Quit it.”
I heaved out a deep breath as I tried to decide how much to tell her. Trying to buy some time, I reached back and pulled the band out of my hand and ran my fingers through it then put the band on my wrist.
“Okay, but I swear, Regina, not one word to anyone. You fucking got me?”
The look on her face was backed up by the words she uttered to me, “You don’t scare me, Ry. I know you better than that. You’d never hurt me. Just tell me already.”
I looked at her seriously. “The only way for us to walk away from this is if the men who want to get involved in the human trafficking trade are taken out. All of them, Regina.”
She sat there in shock for a couple minutes before she spoke again, “If you take them all out, will you be the President of the club?”
“No, sugar. The club would be gone. None of us would try to keep it going. We have no clue who King’s made deals with. Those people would expect any member of the MC to keep the deals. I’m not doing that.”
“You would just disband and go your separate ways?” she questioned softly as her eyes searched mine.
“You sound like that’s a bad thing, Reggie.”
She smiled faintly at me.
“Ry, for Taz and those other boys it would be a bad thing.”
“Can’t stay here, sugar. We would all be looking over our shoulders constantly, waiting for someone to come out of the woodwork after us to uphold King’s deals.”
“You already have something planned, don’t you?”
“I do. I know Taz told you about the son I learned about a few months back.”
“He did.”
“Bane is a member of an MC in Arkansas. We’ve been invited to patch over to their club.”
She looked at Taz. “You’d be moving to Arkansas?”
“No, Mom. We’d be moving to Arkansas.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled.
“Not going without you, Mom.”
“I can’t just pack up and move, Taz.”
“Tell me why not?” he demanded. “You don’t have a man here. Besides me, you don’t have any family here. Sure, you have friends. But, Mom, you can make friends anywhere. Plus, you’d be closer to Ford. You could visit him easier.”
Regina looked pensive as she stared at her son.
“Mom, Ry said this MC isn’t like anything he’s ever seen. You would be able to live in their compound in your own house.”
She immediately started shaking her head.
“No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t.”
“Sugar,” I drew her attention to me. “Hear me out. Gonna tell you some shit that I shouldn’t. You can’t repeat it to anyone. This MC is a 1%’er club, but they don’t have any illegal businesses.”
“Then how are they an outlaw club?”
I laughed and shook my head at her.
“Dammit, woman. I told you to hear me out,” I growled playfully.
She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at me. If things had been different, I could have seen myself falling for her. She reminded me a lot of Deb. Through all the shit she has been through, she’s kept a positive attitude about the shit life dished out to her.
“Let me just say that if anyone hurts a member of the club or any of the members’ families, that retribution is taken.”
“Okay. Tell me more about the club.”
“It ends up that I know several people there. Men I trust. They have a lot of military members. The compound itself is like a resort. I have never been to any place that nice in my life. The houses that the members have are all ones that could be in any upscale subdivision.
“Almost all of their men work in their businesses. They have a garage, a construction company, a bar, a tattoo parlor and are about to open a training academy.”
“Ry, what’s to stop them from getting into the same shit King was in?”
“I guess nothing. Yet, sugar, I’d stake my life on that not happening. While they might turn a blind eye to gun running, they aren’t as lenient to drugs. They hear about that shit, they put a stop to it. They don’t run a whore house like King does either.
“Their Prez and any member of the club will tell you straight up that they revere their women.”
“You can’t tell me they don’t have club whores like Hell’s Retribution does.”
“Reggie, there are club girls there, yes. Twelve of them. All of the women want to be there. They have their own rooms with a private bath. They are given an allowance each week. If any of them want to go to any type of school to learn a trade, the MC pays for it.
“Their women don’t just walk in off the street and say, ‘I’m gonna be a club girl.’ They are interviewed for the positions.”
“They actually do all that for their club girls?” she asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah, sugar. They do.”
She was quiet for a moment and I know why she was hesitating.
“Reggie, look at me.” I waited until her gaze met mine.
“You would be safe there. Not one man would ever try to touch you inappropriately. If you decided to go to the Clubhouse, you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone spiking your drink. These are honorable men, sugar. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have left Bronte, Taron, Raiden, or Trina down there when I went to visit Bane a couple weeks back.
“I’m giving you my word, Reggie. You would be safe there. And if for some reason you get there and find you don’t want to live inside the compound, then we’ll find you a house not far away.”
She still didn’t look one hundred percent convinced. I knew I was going to have to tell her what I didn’t want to, but it would be the one thing that would seal the deal.
“Reggie, this MC actively hunts traffickers down and rescues the victims and works with an organization that gets them back home. And if the victims are over eighteen and have nowhere to go back to or it’s unsafe for them to go home, then they help out the victims.”
Her eyes widened in shock at hearing that. She glanced back at Taz, searching his face for clues of where his thoughts lay.
“You really want to go, Taz?” she asked solemnly.
“Yeah, Mom. I do. I would like to have the chance to experience being in a decent MC. I want to be able to stay close to Ry and the guys.”
She reached up and tenderly brushed his hair back behind his ears. Since he had graduated, he had let his hair grow long. I knew he did it because I kept mine that way. While I wasn’t in his life as much as I would have liked, I had been in his life.
“You’ve always thought of him as your dad, haven’t you?” she quizzed him lightly.
He glanced guiltily at me before he responded, “Yeah, Mom. I have.”
She sighed. “I should have taken him up on his offer all those years ago. I was stupid not to.”
“What offer, Mom?”
“Ry told me he would claim you as his. That he was willing to be your dad. I didn’t want that though. I didn’t want to get that close to the MC.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I understand why you wouldn’t have. Ry’s always been here when we needed him. He’s always taken care of us, that’s what a dad does. He’s been that for me. Yeah, when I was little, I might have wanted to spend more time with him other than the times he was here to give you money and spent the day with me. But he let me know during those times that he cared about me, Mom, about us. I’ve had a lot more than a lot of kids did.”
“You’ve grown into a good man, Taz.”
“Thanks, Mom. I owe it all to you.”
I watched as Regina slid her hand across the table and took Taz’s in hers.
“It wasn’t just me, Taz. Your Uncle Ford was there for part of it and, like you said, Ry has always been here for us, for you.”
Taz squeezed her hand back, then he glanced over at me as he answered Reggie.
“Yeah, he has, Mom. He’s always been here for me.”
I swallowed hard. I should have pushed harder all those years ago. I could have been so much more than I was to Taz than what I had been. I never knew he looked at me as his dad. That was humbling to a man like me. One who’s crude sometimes and rough around the edges. I’d always wanted children. It looked like I ended up with more than I ever thought I would.
“So what do you say, sugar?” I questioned while keeping eye contact with Taz. “Let’s move you and our boy to Arkansas.”
Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her breath in deep and release it before replying, “I’ll start packing today.”
Taz closed his eyes briefly in relief, when he opened them back up, he stared back into mine as a smile crossed his face.
“Hot damn,” he crowed. “We’re going to Arkansas.”
~***~