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I don’t know why I said it.
He just popped into my head.
I don’t know why I even thought about him.
My employer. He wasn’t just some banker or lawyer. He was a biker. A brother who belonged to a club called the Golden Skulls. Over the last month, the Golden Skulls had been in the news for their part in helping to bring down the vigilante and terrorist group called theSociety. My employer was moving himself and his son to Tennessee. He wanted me to come.
“What about him?”
“I know of a place, but I’m going to need help until I figure some things out.”
One
Reaper
The tomb, present day.
“Gadget and Torque are dead, and Remi miscarried the baby.”
“You son of a bitch!” I screamed, rattling the chain that anchored me to the wall. “I need to see my wife. She needs me!”
I knew more happened since I’d been in this fucking tomb. I could see it clearly on his face. I also saw determination and resolve. Whatever had set him off was weighing heavily on him. I stopped fighting when he pulled a gun from behind his back, pulled back on the chamber, loading a single bullet.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, backing up.
“What no one else has the balls to do.”
“You can’t do this. They will know!”
Aiming the gun at my head, he whispered, “No one will ever know.”
Holding my hands out in front of me, I shouted, “Player, stop! This isn’t you. You are not a killer. I can fix this.”
“Really? You can bring my brother back?” he shouted at me as tears rolled down his face. The pain of loss was clear in his eyes. He was barely hanging on. “You can bring them all back? You can make it so that none of this shit ever happened? I trusted you. Looked up to you. I would have followed you anywhere.”
Grief weighed heavily on him. I could see it now. He believed by killing me it would erase all the pain he was currently feeling. I could have told him it wouldn’t. Nothing would. That pain would always be with him. The feeling of something missing, like a lost limb, would never leave. I just needed to make him see reason. To keep him talking. Fuck. I knew where I went wrong. Since Player’s return, I avoided him because his brother’s death still weighed heavily on me. All of them did, but Massacre was the worst. I avoided all of them. I never talked about my decisions or the aftermath. The best I could do was move on. I should have said something, talked with him. Instead, I kept him at arm’s length because I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.
The fact was, Massacre died because of me. Player had every right to blame me for his brother’s death. All of them did. The souls of our fallen club brothers lay squarely on my shoulders. I knew that, but I did nothing to atone for it. That was on me.
Even worse was that Player had every right to seek vengeance. Only I knew something he didn’t know. Player wasn’t a killer. Oh, he could easily kill to save someone he loved, but he wasn’t, nor would he ever be, a stone-cold killer like me. My club brother had too much love and compassion in his soul to taint himself with the soul of the dead. He was angry and upset. He had every right to be.
“I’m sorry, Player. Please, give me a chance to fix this.”
“You don’t get it. You’re making the same mistakes again. You can’t fix death, Reaper. It is possible to avoid it for a while, but death always wins. The reaper always gets his soul.”
“Brother, talk to me. When you came home, I should have talked to you. I didn’t because I was ashamed and felt guilty. I still do. There isn’t a night since Massacre’s death that I haven’t thought of him. Wondered what I could have done differently. If I could take it all back, I would brother. For you and everyone else, I would.”
Lowering his gun, he whispered, “It should be Dwayne here and not me. He was always stronger than me.”
“Not true, brother,” I calmly said. “Reggie, you are one of the strongest brothers here. Everything you’ve lived through, finding Catarina, knowing what she went through, then helping her find beauty in the world. Walking away from your brothers to give your wife peace and raise your son, that takes strength. I don’t know if I could have ever done that.”
“I didn’t walk away though, did I?”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Reggie. What you did was best for your family. Cat and the kids will always come first. That’s an admirable trait, and no one can ever say differently.”
“Why did you do it, Reaper?”
“Do what, brother?”
