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Something on the far side of the wall behind the bar—in the residential part of the clubhouse—draws all our attention. We stare in silence for a moment, waiting to see if a residual sound will follow. A sense of unease settles over me. No one should be at the clubhouse right now except me, Dally, Rico, and Knuckles. Everyone else is out on runs or at the shop down the street.
“Think that’s one of the shop boys who forgot something?” Knuckles asks wishfully.
Slowly rising from my seat at the bar, I set down my beer. “I think we better go see.”
With all the renovations we’ve done on the warehouse to turn it into our new clubhouse, we’ve had a few trouble-making teenagers and no-good thieves try and break in to steal things. While that hasn’t happened in almost a month now, it’s better to catch them in the act than to have to replace whatever they might try to steal or break. At this point, the boys have installed a good-sized TV along with a few other valuable things.
I reach the door into the residential side first, Dally closely behind me, and I slowly twist the handle, doing my best to stay silent so we might catch the intruder by surprise. But when I step into the living room area beyond, I’m swallowed by darkness. Someone’s closed all the blinds and turned off the lights until the only light that fills the room are the tiny lines peeking between the holes in the blinds.
White-hot pain sends colorful fireworks exploding behind my eyes as a hard rod connects with the back of my head. I stumble forward, completely caught off guard by the sudden assault. While I pictured potentially having to scuffle, I hadn’t expected someone to be lying in wait for me. I hear the air leave Dally’s lungs beside me and feel his arm brush mine as he doubles over. At the same time, something hard connects with my ribs, launching me clean off my feet.
My eyes haven’t had a chance to adjust to the darkness, and I feel blind as I bring my arms up to guard my head until I can make sense of where my attacker stands. But it seems as though there must be more than one, as the blows rain down on me from all sides, some burying into my stomach, some into my back, several launching toward my face. I can’t tell if it's boots or fists or clubs hitting me, but they’re striking with such force that I can feel my ribs caving beneath their onslaught, my forearms bruising as I keep them raised in defense.
Dally’s steady flow of cusses stops suddenly behind me, and I hope that only means he’s knocked out—not dead. As my head grows woozy with pain, I think I hear Rico and Knuckles join the fray. Whoever was at my front kicking me in the belly moves away, and I take the momentary relief to turn my attention to the person behind me. My ribs protest loudly as I reach down toward my boot and yank out the knife I keep hidden there. Then I cut backward toward my attacker, who releases an inhuman scream as my blade sinks deep into their flesh.
“Fucking shit!” he howls, his assault ending abruptly as he stumbles back.
I keep a firm grip on the handle of my blade as it grudgingly pulls free, followed by another high-pitched scream. My eyes are finally starting to grow accustomed to the dim light, and I can barely make out six bodies drawing together and disengaging as they exchange blows. That must mean Rico and Knuckles are fighting two armed attackers each because I know Dally’s on the ground like me. I can only hope Rico and Knuckles were far enough behind us to pull out their own weapons before joining in the fray.
Despite the nauseating dizziness that threatens to overwhelm me, I rise to my feet, determined to help my club brothers in any way I can. I can hear the man I stabbed while I was on the floor bailing as he stumbles for the residential door. The room floods with bright light for a split second as he flees, leaving his comrades behind without a second thought.
The flash of light doesn’t give me enough time to make any sense of the chaos in the room. All I can see is that the man nearest me is a stranger, and I dive on top of him before he knows I’m there. The other person fighting with Knuckles manages to swing his metal club just as I shove my knife deep into my victim’s neck, and as my man drops, the metal bar of Knuckle’s attacker connects with the side of my head.
I feel as though my brain just split in two. My entire body whips around from the powerful blow. And suddenly, I’m weightless in space.
The next thing I know, I’m flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I’m lying in a pool of warm, sticky wetness that makes my shirt cling to my back. It takes me a minute to realize the lights are on, which is what’s making my head throb painfully. I feel as though someone’s shoved a knife directly into my left eye. My arms feel too heavy to lift just yet, so I stay flat on the floor as I try to recall what happened. Vaguely, I remember stepping into the dark living space of the clubhouse and being attacked.
“Fucking hell, Gabe. You scared the shit out of me,” Knuckles says, leaning over me and blotting out the bright overhead lights. His expression is a distorted combination of anxiety and relief.
“What happened?” I rasp, though my tongue is so thick I can barely make sense of my own words. I don’t know how he could possibly understand me. As I suck in a deep breath to try and calm my head from spinning, I feel excruciating pain in my chest. I must have a few broken ribs.
“You guys got jumped. There were five of them, I think. Some escaped, but we killed two,” Knuckles says.
His words trigger flashes of memory, and I recall trying to curl protectively as I was pummeled on the floor. I remember pulling out my knife and stabbing someone—no two people. But after that, it all goes blank.
Groaning, I force myself into a sitting position despite Knuckles’ protests. Taking in the sight of the room, I’m shocked at what I see. The man I stabbed in the neck is lying in a pool of blood, his eyes vacantly staring at me, his mouth slack in an expression of surprise. That same pool of blood is what I was lying in as well. He clearly bled out, and the puddle spread around me, leaving a sticky halo where my head once was. Beside the man I killed is Knuckle’s attacker. His face was beaten to a bloody pulp, and the metal pipe he’d been using rammed through his eye. He’s so bloody and disfigured, that I can’t even be sure what age he might have been.
As my eyes lift to Rico, he looks pretty banged up with a quickly swelling black eye, a split lip, and a gash across one thigh. But Dallas looks as though he was hit by a semi. It seems every inch of his face is covered in cuts and bruises. His forearm is clearly broken based on the odd angle at which it sits, and from the way he’s gripping his midriff, I’d say he has a few broken ribs like me.
“You look like shit,” I rasp and start to laugh, but my humor quickly shifts into a coughing fit that makes my stomach heave.
“Easy, boss,” Knuckles says, gripping my shoulder.
Turning my neck stiffly, I take in the last member of my crew. I’m grateful to see Knuckles is in far better shape than the rest of us. His shirt is smeared with blood, though from what I can tell, it’s not his own. He has a bruise purpling along his jaw and a split lip but otherwise seems relatively okay. I grip his arm, partly to stabilize myself and partly to show my relief that he’s all right.
“Do we know these guys?” I ask, turning my attention to the two men on the floor again. I don’t recognize the one I stabbed, and the other man’s face is so pulverized I doubt he even resembles what he might have looked like in life.
Rico shakes his head. “We couldn’t get a good look at any of them without the lights on. And the rest fled before we could turn anything on. I don’t know this guy.” He gestures to the one I killed.
“Well, fuck.” I groan.How the hell did we end up in this mess? Did we somehow incite a war with some rival gang?I thought I’d done my research so nothing like this would happen.Could it be John making a power play?For some reason, I doubt that. He wouldn’t want to disrupt his alliance with Mark just to show me who’s boss.But if it’s not that, then who the hell would want to attack us like this?
I rack my brains, trying to come up with a logical solution. But I’m dizzy enough that I can’t quite seem to think straight. My thoughts come in a jumble and quickly flee from my brain before I can really latch on to a single one. Every time I try to concentrate, it’s as if my mind skips, leaving me disoriented and dizzy.
“Well, we better get rid of these assholes. Bury them deep before someone comes looking,” I say, pressing my fingers to my tender skull. I hiss as I find the definitive bruise at my temple. Sticky blood coats my fingers when I pull them away.
“You’ve got a big bloody knot on the back of your head too,” Knuckles says, pressing a finger unceremoniously to the spot.
“Fuck, man!” I shout, swatting his hand away.
