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Sonny shrugged his shoulders. “This kind of job isn’t something I usually do but Galen needs to know that he’s crossed a line and we’ll do whatever it takes to take him out. It’s riskier, of course, because she’ll be found. But that’s the point. Don’t fuck with us,” Sonny stated with a half-smile.
“I should be so scared right now,” Avery whispered as she bit her lower lip.
“But you’re not?”
Avery glanced at him quickly and shook her head again.
Sonny may be a monster in the eyes of other people, but he didn’t want Avery looking at him that way. Everything he did was for the club. It wasn’t personal and it wasn’t lashing out in anger. It was planned, and had purpose, as weird as that sounded to outsiders. Had his work turned him into a psychopath? Or maybe he was always that way to begin with? Whatever the case, he didn’t want Avery to see him as anything other than a loyal man, true to his club and their way of life. Always protecting their own.
“We’re not normal, so no,” Avery answered.
“Fuck normal. What’s that? I haven’t ever experienced normal.”
Avery exited the main route and took the highway headed east. “Not even growing up?”
Sonny’s body tensed. He hated talking about his past, but he supposed he couldn’t avoid it forever.
“No. My dad left when I was three and we never heard from him again. My mom couldn’t cope as a single parent and became an alcoholic. At first it was just drinking on the weekends. Then every night after she came home from her waitressing job, then every day. The years went by and it got worse. She spiralled and took her anger at him out on me. Apparently, I look just like him. The marks on my back were her way of punishing me for his sins.”
“I’m so sorry, Sonny.” Avery placed her right hand on his left thigh.
The touch grounded him more than he’d care to admit. He place his hand over hers, holding tight.
“I managed ‘cause I didn’t have anywhere else to go. By the time I was twelve I was almost numb to the pain. And I’d grown a lot, so I began to fight back. And when I was sixteen, I’d had enough. I packed up my shit and left. I never looked back.”
“How did you find Longford?”
“When I left Fort McMurray, I hitchhiked and found my way to Drumheller. I got work at a body shop there. I’d always been good with mechanics and loved cars and motorcycles. Anyway, one day, a guy rode into the shop on this sweet-looking Harley and man, I was in awe of that bike. Anyway, we got to talking about sleds and he told me he lived in the country, with no one around to bother you, and it sounded good. So, on my day off I drove out to Longford and checked it out. Been here ever since.”
“And the club? How’d my dad recruit you?”
“You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?” Avery exited the highway and turned onto the country road that led home.
“He was the guy in the bodyshop.”
“Ahh, okay. And he invited you to join, just like that?”
“No way. I had to go through the recruiting process like everyone else and pay my dues. But I loved the MC way of life right from the start. Doing whatever the fuck we want and not giving a shit about what regular folks think. All of us are misfits in one way or the other. Gage gave me the home I’d never had. This club means everything to me. I’ll do anything to protect it.”
“I think you just proved that.”
Sonny nodded as Avery pulled up to the gates of their compound. “Whatever it takes.”
23
AVERY
Avery was sitting beside Xander, anxiously waiting while he examined Louisa’s laptop.
Louisa’s emails back and forth with Galen were telling. Had she kept them as an insurance policy or was she in over her head?
Both.
The woman had been a model citizen until three years ago. She’d divorced her husband and he sued for half the business. Louisa had won but with her mountain of legal debts and the pandemic supply chain issues, she was so far in the red she was swimming in her own blood. And that’s when Galen came in. Offering her a solution if she colluded with him. The emails indicate that he offered to help save her company. He’d done nothing of the kind but then Galen wasn’t a man of his word.
But Galen was wrong about Louisa. She was desperate but not entirely stupid. Xander found recordings on her computer, many of them conversations between her and Galen. It gave Avery and Xavier a great lead for the next step in their plan.
