Devil May Care (Four Horsemen MC Book 4) (25 page)

“Yeah, because there’s no such thing as white-collar crime,” she quipped.

Lex had a point. There were doctors and lawyers doin’ crooked shit, too.

“Besides, Dad, I can rely on you. You’ve always been there for me.”

“Yeah,” he said and he could feel burning hot tears gathering in his eyes. “You can.”  Fuck, he shouldn’t have come.  Saying goodbye was too fuckin’ hard.

Lex seized his arm, reading his face. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Is something wrong? The doctor—”

“No, baby girl. I’m fine.” He kissed her forehead. “You’re right. I want you to marry whomever makes you happy. That’s all I want for you.  A happy life, full of love and laughter.” Then, he pulled her into a bear hug, holding on to her a long time. “You should have everything you want.”

She pulled back and studied his face. “Okay, now I’m really scared. Talk to me. What’s goin’ on?”

“Everything’s fine. Now, drink your milkshake,” he lied.  Captain put on that blank Horsemen expression and willed himself to calm down. Eventually, she settled down and he got her to talk about school and her friends.

And then he just listened, soaking it all in, savoring his last few moments with her. She was the best of him, no doubt about. The one thing he’d created in this life that was good and decent. She’d be alright. She had her mother, her stepfather, Eddie, and the club.

 He kept telling himself over and over, like a mantra.

Until he believed it.

***

Later that morning, Eddie sat on the sofa, absently petting her dog and staring sightlessly at some daytime talk show, she couldn’t quite follow. Ruby sat on her lap, gazing up with big, sad eyes the way only a beagle can.  

After sobering up, she’d eaten some toast and took a shower. And managed to get dressed, though putting on heels or makeup was out of the question.  But she almost felt like herself again.

She’d even gotten some perspective on her situation. Joker’s cheating colored her view of the marriage. Everything was tainted by it. But would she rather not know? And live in some kind of misty-eyed memories of a life she never had?  Hell, no.

She’d never been someone who shrank from the truth. And she’d come to another harsh realization. Because of the RICO case, the club had changed, and she’d changed, all for the better. She couldn’t give Captain a free pass for what he’d done, but she knew it’d had ultimately been for the greater good.

But she still needed to sort all this out, figure out how she felt about Captain now.

And then there was the not so small matter of what the club might do to him. She’d been too preoccupied with her own pain to contemplate the consequences for him, but if he came clean with the Horsemen, they would kill him. Unless he had some proof to support his story.

This was all kinds of fucked up.

Just then, her cell rang, and she picked it up “This is Eddie.”

 “It’s Lexie. I’m sorry to bug you, but I’m worried about Dad. This morning, he came to visit me and he was acting…
funny
.”

“Funny how?” Eddie asked.

“I don’t know.” She sighed into the phone, making the line crackle. “Like I think he was trying to tell me something bad, or maybe…maybe, he was saying goodbye.” She started to cry then, sobbing into the phone. “Eddie, is he sick or something? Did the doctor’s give him more bad news?”

Eddie mentally replayed her encounter with him. Yes, that’s exactly what it had felt like. He’d given her the ring, told her how much she meant to him.
Shit.
He’d been saying goodbye to her, too, and she’d been too shocked and hurt to notice. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from swearing a blue streak. He fully intended to come clean with the club and by the sound of it, soon.

Dammit. The brothers might be persuaded to see the bigger picture, but he needed to go in there with more than a story.  The question was, could she stand by while it happened?  Maybe the ring she
still
hadn’t been able to take off her finger was an answer to that question.

 “Kid, it’s okay,” she soothed. “And no, your dad isn’t sick.”  

Eddie couldn’t tell Lexi what was going on, that was Captain’s place. Assuming he got out of this alive, he’d fill her in. And if he died, well, then she’d do nothing to tarnish his memory in Lex’s eyes, and she’d make damn sure the rest of the club followed her lead.

“Eddie, please tell me what’s going on!”

Eddie had to save him, if she could.

“Lex, I have to go. I’m going to handle this, I promise.” She crossed to the table by the door, and tucked her Colt in pocket of her hoodie.

 “But what’s this all about?”

“Let me give you the short but not sweet version. Today, the past is coming to light. Things set in motion long before you were born.”

“Take me with you. I can help!” she pleaded.

“I can’t, honey. This is my fight, not yours. And I’m going to try like hell to win.” She grabbed her purse and checked the windows and doors, locking them.

Lex sighed into the phone. “Bring him back to me, Eddie.”

“I will,” she said, as she headed to the front door.

 “Can you at least tell me where you’re going?” she asked.

She bit the inside her cheek. There was really only one card she could play. “To make a deal with the devil.”

Chapter Nineteen

For a long time, Captain stood staring at his brothers, trying to memorize their faces, live in this moment. They were all seated at the table, joking and laughing. He had a lot of love for the men in this room, they’d been through some terrible shit together.

  After he spoke, they wouldn’t see him the same way– that’s if he was lucky enough to live. Once he did this, shit wouldn’t be the same. And this meeting would end with a trip to the desert. It’s what he deserved for his crime.   Fuck. Not like he really had a choice anyway. He had to do this.

With a sigh, he smacked the gavel against the wood of the table. It made a sharp, hollow sound. A death knell. He usually started with old business, so he’d better get it out in the open. 

He was about to introduce some really fucking old business.

“Brothers!” he said, to shut them up.

They turned to face him.

“This is going to go a bit different today. We won’t be standin’ on ceremony. It’s been gnawin’ at me for a few decades now, keepin’ me up at night, so I might as well get it all out in the open.  I’ve been lyin’ to you. For years.”

The room got quiet. You could have heard a fuckin’ pin drop. They were usually a raucous crowd, that he had to shout over.  And while he might be the president, no one had absolute control of a group of rowdy bikers.

Today, he held them in the fuckin’ palm of his hand.

 “So, what the fuck.  I'm callin’ it a day. Doin’ what I gotta do. I need to tell you somethin’ about the RICO case.” He glanced at Goat who watched him with a neutral expression. Shit, he really didn’t want to disappoint his mentor.

“Back in the day, before the case, I’m the one who tipped off the FBI. The feds were crawlin’ up our asses, looking for a reason to bust us, and I gave them one. I called the tip line and told them the location of a meet. We were runnin’ coke from Mexico to Las Vegas and we had a meet set with our distributor. They wouldn’t have been able to pin anything on us until I tipped them off.”

Another, long, tense silence. Captain forced himself to wait it out, and let it sink in.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Duke finally asked.

He knew they’d ask him the question and he’d been thinking about it a lot in these past years. “There were a lot of reasons, but I wanted to protect the club.”

“By ratting them out?” Ryker asked. “Ratting
my dad
out.”

Captain glanced at Goat. “We were into some bad shit at the time – coke, guns, whatever paid well.”

“Yeah, but you know what you signed up for,” Axel said quietly.  “If you had a beef with how they earned, you shouldn’t have prospected for the Horsemen.”

Captain nodded. “I know. But I didn’t know how deep this rabbit hole went until I got involved.”

Shepherd’s face was neutral, more curious than tetchy. “We all know the club wasn’t what it is today. But why didn’t you try to change it from the inside?”

Shep had the unique ability to not be judgmental and he appreciated that. If he had any hope of surviving this shit storm, Shepherd was it.

“At the time, I couldn’t think of a better way to solve the problem. The brothers in the club weren’t like any of you. Most of them had drug habits.  They wanted to line their pockets. We killed people, extorted people, dealt drugs in neighborhoods.”

In their old clubhouse, they used to do lines of blow, the brothers would pass out with needles in their arms.  They played fuckin’ Russian roulette with their lives.

“Fuck you,” Ryker growled. “Yeah, my dad had his troubles, but he was basically a good guy.”

“I stand by what I said,” Captain said quietly. “Except for Goat. Goat was the only solid member, but he went to jail shortly after I arrived. I couldn’t have changed the club if I wanted to. And there was something else.” He doubted they’d believe him, but he’d throw it out there, let them make of it what they would. “Joker was getting ready to sell out the club.”

Ryker shot to his feet. “You’re a fuckin’ liar. My Dad would never betray the club.”

Shepherd grabbed the gavel and smacked against the table. “Everyone cool down. We’re going to hear him out, before we decide what to do.”

With a glare, Ryker sat back down.

Captain continued his story. “Joker was screwing Loretta Beauregard. Apparently, her dad signed off on their relationship as long as Joker renounced his club. He had to make one hell of an exit, too. To prove his loyalty to the Raptors, he had to serve up some of the Horsemen brothers.”

It would’ve been a bloodbath. Captain figured turning them into the FBI might mean some of them would live. He knew they’d try to fight, but he hadn’t counted on how high the body count would be. Or that Viper would sign on as an informant, which had essentially gutted the club.

Ryker snorted. “So sayeth the rat.”

Axel frowned. “Hang on. What did Loretta look like? Was she a tall woman? With long straight black hair?”

Both Captain and Goat nodded.

“Fuck. I saw her with dad.” Axel turned to Ryker. “I think you were too young to remember, but dad was supposed to watch us this one time, after we got back from story hour at the library.” He pursed his lips. “I can’t remember where mom was, but dad wasn’t there. We were at the library for an hour or so and when dad finally showed up, he had this girl with him. She dropped us off at the house in this awesome white corvette. I kept thinkin’ how pretty she was and what a cool car she drove.  Dad made me promise not to tell mom, said he had been working on a surprise for her.”

“Dad was fucking her?” Ryker asked, jaw clenched.

Axel nodded. “From watching them interact? Yeah. I didn’t put it together until now.” He glanced at Captain. “That wouldn’t have gone down well with the Beauregards either. His wife steppin’ out on him.”

“Yeah, and Buckley Beauregard killed her in a jealous rage, after finding out she’d been fucking Joker,” Goat said. “I don’t think Buckley ever found out about the Raptors’ plan. Or he would’ve cut them down like dogs.”

“Did the Raptors retaliate?” Axel asked. “Loretta was his kid.”

Captain shook his head. “Too scared to, I expect.  The Raptors and the Dixie Mafia would’ve gone to war,” he explained. 

 “That still doesn’t excuse what you did,” Duke said. “You turned your back on your club, went to the feds behind their back.”

“And we only have Axel’s word for it who was a kid at the time,” Ryker said. “Do you have proof?”

 “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “I happened to overhear a conversation one night. We were all at the clubhouse and everyone was passed out, except me. Joker phoned his honey. And I was drunk, but not that drunk.  I heard him whispering to her, tellin’ her he was setting up a bogus run for the guys, but I don’t have any hard evidence.”

Shep surveyed the room, but everyone had gone quiet. “Is there anything else you’d like to say?” he asked.

He shook his head. There was nothing else to say. He’d finally told the truth, and regardless of the consequences, it felt damn good to lay the burden down.

“Okay then. We have a decision to make. Will Captain meet the Pale Rider?”

Occasionally, a member had to be held accountable. More often than not, the situation called for an ass whuppin’, but from time to time somethin’ more severe was in order. The Pale Rider patch was given to a brother who took care of the club’s wet work. Right now, Duke and Captain were the only ones who had Pale Rider patches.

 “I’ll take him outside,” Ryker volunteered. “I don’t need to deliberate,I’ve already made up my mind.”

Captain had no doubts about Ryker’s vote. The kid had been itching to fuck him up and now he had the perfect excuse. Not that he didn’t deserve the beat down, but he’d rather get it because of what he’d done, not because Ryker was pissed at him.

“That’s a fuckin’ bad idea,” Shep said.

“Yeah, no shit,” Captain muttered under his breath.

“I’ll keep my hands to myself,” Ryker promised.

“Fine. See that you do,” Shep said, giving him a hard look. “If I see a mark on him, we’ll have words.”

Duke withdrew a couple of zip ties from the pocket of his cut, and tossed them to Ryker. “Here, use these.” His eyes were blank, evidently getting prepared for what he’d have to do. “You might need them.”

Ryker bound his wrists and then marched him outside the door, before sitting him down a steel bench against the wall. Captain couldn’t overhear what was going on inside, but he doubted this vote would go his way. The story was just too thin.

Well the next time he betrayed his club for the right reasons, he’d get some fucking documentation.

Ryker stood over him, arms crossed over his massive chest, a muscle working in his jaw.

“You should get back in there, son,” Captain said. “You gotta vote.”