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Just like a little kid.
I shook my head, telling him not to do anything stupid. Then we walked down the hall. I coughed twice for the guard at the box. He walked over and stuck his key in and unlocked the cell doors in this smaller section of the C wing of the prison. Dagger went in and handled the first cell, as I went in the second and found an older man sitting on his bed reading the Bible.
The rival club tattoos painting his flesh were wrinkled and faded. There really was no reason to end him, his life was already over. He wouldn’t survive, not in here. Not as old and frail as he was.
I had grown so accustomed to my job in the prison that I didn’t even flinch when I took someone’s life. I didn’t second guess my choices or decisions. Even now I was calm, knowing I was about to send a soul to his fiery damnation with my own hands.
Truly, there was no reason to end him, except that I wanted to. I hated being the warden’s personal hit squad, but the familiarity on the old biker’s face from a night that still haunted me was enough to put a smile on my face.
While the biker hadn’t been part of what happened in the past, I remember him being there. I could still see him watching as my boys encircled my bike, and we rode away with my life forever changed.
“What’d you do?” I toyed with my knife as he finished the scripture and closed his fraying bible.
“It’s what I didn’t do,” he explained. “I should have stopped it then.”
My memory lane was held hostage from the night he was speaking of.
“Who wants you dead?” I ask as I feign interest.
“Caleb.”
His response should have shocked me, but Caleb is the villain in most everyone’s stories. Caleb is the Sergeant of Arms in a rival club. He is as evil as they come, but when he came up against me, I earned my place in my club, a title - my name - and I awarded him a scar.
Why the warden would take orders from him was confusing, so I lingered a little longer, as I saw Dagger walk past the doorway to handle the other cell.
“Anything you want to say before this happens?” I asked, as he made the sign of the cross and laid down on the bed. He gave me a pleading look, and it hit me that one day I could be him. If I ever made it as long as he had, I’m sure they would send someone like me in to cast me to hell where I had belonged since birth.
“Tell her I’m sorry I walked away. Tell her it wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” he rambled.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“Caleb was supposed to get her pregnant. To have a child that belonged to both clubs, so that when Mad Dog stepped down or died, the baby would seal Caleb’s place as leader of both. It was just supposed to be a power play to control everyone and everything,” his voice broke.
“He stabbed her,” I spoke with an anger that even shocked me. The rage inside of me was coursing through my veins, strangling my ability to show compassion, but it wasn’t time yet. He still had the answers I wanted. I quickly cooled as I noticed the same copper strands in his eyes that she had once had in hers.
“Why do you have her eyes?”
“I used to be her family, but not since I put on my cut. Not since I stood with Caleb and his father.”
“Caleb took my life that day and you did nothing, but watch. You were her family, and all you did was watch!” I seethed, wishing I had killed him already, but knowing that would be letting him off easy.
“Going against them would have resulted in my death, but doing nothing has killed me every day since.”
I decided to have mercy on him, to let the past stay in the past, and let the man who knew he had fucked up go to hell without violence. Nothing I did at this point would hurt him more than the guilt-ridden beating he was giving himself. When I looked into his eyes, I saw a tortured soul.
I’m a soulless monster, but yet my heart beats when I think of her.
Maybe the calm she made me feel was the reason I wanted to go easy on him, or maybe I just didn’t feel like getting dirty.
I elected not to give him the painful death I usually strived for. Most of the time it was my personal agony that enraged me to end people like him brutally, but all he was guilty of was being a bystander - a cowardly witness. I made a list of reasons why showing compassion for this man’s death was a good idea and at the top of the list was the beautiful girl who got hurt that day, but even through her trauma she wouldn’t want me to hurt him. He wasn’t the one who stabbed her.
I took the pillow and held it tightly to his face as his instincts kicked in and he tried to fight me. I held him down and let his body thrash and flail until his arms fell, and his body lay motionless. I waited until he lay there, completely immobile, for several minutes. Almost as if I wanted to keep out the angels trying to take his soul to Heaven and leaving an opening for the demons to carry him off to hell. Minutes later, I took the pillow from his face and looked down at the man who was now with the Reaper and on his way to an eternity of torture.
It wasn’t enough.
Flashbacks from that night flickered in my head as rage consumed me. I stared into his eyes and remembered what he saw that night. I lost my calm demeanor as my heart raced, and a furious need for revenge consumed me. Because of my compassion, he would never suffer for what happened and would never feel the loss I felt from that night. Once again, he was a coward and drifted off where he didn’t have to feel pain.
I took my blade and started stabbing him. Nine times in the heart for the nine stitches it took to close the president’s daughter up that night.
