Sinner: Devil's Sons MC (26 page)

“What problems, Rayan? I’ll try to help you any way I can. Just, please, please take me home! We don’t have to meet Sam.” Afia dashed the tears from her face to try to see the road clearly. It was dark, and she was scared if she looked away, she wouldn’t even get to see her last minutes. Sniffling and trying to compose herself, she struggled to talk some sense into her truculent sibling, but Rayan wouldn’t hear her.

He waved away her plaintive cries to turn around. Ahead, a single headlight speared through the darkening evening traveling toward them, and he let out a chuckle at his good fortune. “Lady Luck, you’re too kind.  Shut up, fool girl. There’s hope yet. I’ll see to it that you do as you need to do. There might still be time for you to marry Jabar so he can cancel the debt I owe him. Let’s make sure that bastard, Sam, finally learns what ‘stay the fuck away’ means.” He gunned the accelerator and sped toward the approaching motorcycle. He eased into the oncoming lane, still traveling at full speed. The muscle car’s engine growled and roared and the wheels gripped the road as he pressed onward.

Afia gasped in shock as she realized what he was trying to do. It was Sam. “No! No, I won’t let you do it!”  Mustering her courage, Afia flung herself at her brother, tearing at his arms. “Get back on the other side, Rayan! This isn’t a game! You’ll kill him!”

“Better him than me!” Rayan fought her off, losing control of the wheel in the process. She saw the motorcycle speed past them, but the Camaro continue its headlong rush. Afia saw her life flash before her eyes, the good and the bad.  There was the squeal of tires as the car tried to stay on the road, but the vehicle slid off the asphalt and the dewy evening grass whistled slickly beneath the wheels.

The car jounced down the steep incline of the shoulder of the roadway toward the thick tree line, and she let out a terrified scream, flinging her arms up in front of her face. The Camaro plowed into the trees with a sickening crunch and scrape of metal, glass shattering. It was the loudest, most horrific sound she had ever heard in her life.  The force of impact threw her hard against the back seat, hard enough for the blow to knock the wind out of her and momentarily knock her unconscious.

She would have been thrown about like a rag doll if not for her seatbelt.  Rayan was not so lucky. He wasn’t wearing one.

With a painful sharp inhale, Afia opened her eyes, wincing at the pain in her head and neck. “Rayan?” she cried out, unbuckling her seatbelt and painfully pushing forward.  Her brother was no longer in the driver’s seat and the windshield was completely shattered. She looked ahead in sheer horror to see his crumpled, blood-stained body in a heap on the hood of the white car.  Smoke hissed around him, and he was unmoving, not making a sound.

Sobbing and shaking her head, Afia crawled over the shards of glass, not caring that her hands and knees were getting torn to shreds. She couldn’t get either of the front doors open. The car was battered and smashed like an aluminum can. She had to climb out through the busted window, across more glass and the steaming hot hood. Oblivious to her own pain, Afia fought her way to her brother.

“Rayan, wake up!” she cried.

A car door slammed at the edge of the road. Afia looked up in a panic to see strangers rushing to her aid. “He’s not breathing,” she whimpered. She covered her mouth to keep the helpless sobs down.  Someone dragged her from the top of the car.  Then, Afia heard a familiar voice, as more men clambered down the hillside to the wrecked Camaro.

“Afia!”

Sam pushed past the people gathered around the wreckage. He had been right behind Rayan, had seen the madman try to run the other motorcyclist off the road. Rayan hadn’t realized Sam had shown up to the Amini house in his Pontiac instead of on his bike. When Afia had called for him to come pick her up from the supermarket, he was only a few blocks away from the house. Sam had pulled over at the meeting point to wait for her, but he had seen Rayan’s car speed past, and he had seen Afia in the back seat. 

Sam had called the police and pursued the white Camaro in the hopes that once Rayan stopped, he could get Afia out of the car. But, Rayan hadn’t stopped.  He had crashed. Sam’s heart plummeted to his feet as he surveyed the damage.  Afia was covered in blood when he pulled her into his arms.

“It’s all my fault, Sam. It’s all my fault!” She cried inconsolably.

Sam shushed her and gently set her aside to see what he could do for Rayan.  The rest of the gawking strangers were standing around, shaking their heads, but no one seemed to have hope for the other passenger of the wrecked car. Sam moved forward and quickly assessed things. He knew cars. He knew engines. This one was likely to blow. “Everyone move back. Get back! There’s a chance of an explosion.”

His shouted orders galvanized the crowd to back away from the car, and Sam reached up to try to pull Rayan away. At that moment, the younger Amini groggily turned his head and weakly pushed Sam away. “Get…away, swine.”

“Rayan, there’s no time for this. Now let me help you!”

“Rayan, do as he says!” Afia cried out. Sam glanced back. She was too close. He gestured for her to back away. Someone from the crowd of onlookers grabbed her arm and pulled her back. 

Sam turned back to Rayan. “Can you move? You’ll have to help me. Ease forward on the car, if you can?”

Rayan shook his head. “I told you, I don’t need your help.”

“Let me help you!” He heard the ticking, and he knew he was running out of precious time. Sam reached for Rayan, but he couldn’t pull the heavy deadweight forward without Rayan at least using his elbows to push himself up. He struggled anyway, hoping he could get him free. “Rayan, everything that has happened between us has happened for a reason. Not to separate us but to bring us together. Think of Allah’s will, Rayan? Would he put us here in this same place at this point in time for me not to help you? Now, please! Come to me.”

Rayan gathered up the spit and blood in his mouth and spewed it at Sam.  Sam stumbled back, and the hood of the car erupted in flames. “No,” he groaned. He tried to fight through the fire to get to Rayan, but the flames licked at his suit jacket. Sam ripped off the jacket before he was burned any further. Rayan started to cry out in pain.  The flames leapt higher as something in the engine popped loudly, and Sam jogged away from the inferno, snatching Afia in his arms so he could cover her ears and shield her eyes.

She screamed out in agony along with her brother—though Sam tried to protect her. Even as the police arrived and then the firetruck and ambulance and the crowd dispersed, she cried. Sam drove her to the hospital, knowing there was no way Rayan would make it.

Everything else happened in a blur.  She called her parents from the hospital phone as Sam stood next to her, lending whatever support he could in the darkness that was the day her brother died.  “He was trying to run a motorcyclist off the road,” she sobbed into the payphone. “The Camaro crashed, Baba. He thought it was Sam, but it wasn’t.  He wouldn’t let us help him. Sam tried!”

When the Aminis got to the emergency room and found her sitting, staring blankly at the floor like she was all cried out, Rashad Amini sank to his knees with a loud wail that echoed through the emergency room.  Afia grabbed her mother before Fatima could collapse. Sam tried to approach. He couldn’t watch Afia and her family suffer. But Afia looked up at him dully, eyes vacant. She shook her head. Her brother was dead. “You have to leave,” she told him.

CHAPTER 27

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bionca said again.

“I should have done something,” Afia sobbed.

“What could you have done? You said Sam tried to get him down,” she stopped herself before going on and saying more that might upset Afia in this fragile time.

Afia had moved back into the apartment the day after the car accident, and her parents had let her. They couldn’t stand the sight of her. Fatima and Rashad were convinced that had she never gotten involved with Sam, Rayan would still be around, and perhaps that was true. Afia couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

Sam had called over and over, and she hadn’t answered any of the calls. She didn’t know what to say to him. She didn’t know what would become of her life, her future, now that everything had happened. She spent the next few days trying to assist her family with funeral preparations. Though they were upset with her, they didn’t excommunicate her completely. Still, the relationship was stiff and formal. Rashad barely spoke to her at all. Fatima was curt and short with her. Neither of them seemed to understand that she hurt as much as they hurt.

When Sam showed up at her door the day of the funeral, Afia was stunned and saddened, but she let him into the apartment with a wan smile. He took her into his arms and held her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry all of this happened.”

Bionca stepped out of her bedroom with a sheepish apology. She was the one who had called Sam over. “I had to let him know it was today.”

Afia nodded. “It’s okay, friend. I needed him.”

Sam hugged her closer. “Do you want me to go with you to the funeral? I’ll understand if you don’t. I just don’t want you to be alone,” he murmured against Afia’s black hijab. She looked beautiful in a long, filmy black dress that tastefully showed off her curves but modestly covered her.  He pulled back to stare into her eyes.

“I want you to be there,” she whispered. He swiped away a falling tear from her cheek. She leaned into his palm. The love she felt for him was like a stabilizing rod that strengthened her. His presence was a kind of cure for the depression and sadness lingering like a malaise in her system over the death of her brother. She knew her parents wouldn’t be happy to see him, and she knew they would be less than pleased to see her. If Sam didn’t go to the funeral with her, there would be no one for her to lean on. Bionca couldn’t make it. She had to work.

Sam was already dressed in an attractive black suit. She buried her nose against his chest and inhaled his woody scent, finally feeling at peace. 

They took her car to the funeral. The minute her mother saw her, Fatima got Rashad’s attention, and he glowered. He marched over to the couple climbing out of the Fiat and spat one word. “Go.”

Afia looked up in stunned disbelief. “Baba, I’m here for Rayan.”

“You choose to be with this man after what he’s done to us? He’s the reason your brother isn’t with us anymore, and you bring him here? I say, go. You’ve chosen, so be it. You are no longer a part of this family Afia Amini.”

Sam stepped between them. “No, Mr. Amini. I’ll leave. I only intended to pay my respects. You don’t have to send Afia away from the funeral on my account. I apologize for intruding.”

Rashad pushed him back. “This isn’t about a funeral,” he growled.  Fatima grabbed at her husband’s arm, but he gently pushed her away. “This is about Afia giving up her values and her morals to be with you. If she stays with you, we will disown her. That’s final.”

Sam looked at Afia in alarm. She was trembling with embarrassment and anger. There were guests filing into the funeral, which hadn’t yet started. Passers-by were watching the tense discussion—though the conversation was too quiet for anyone else to hear. Still, it was appalling to think that her parents would choose this day of all days to make such an announcement. He put his hand to Afia’s lower back.  He thought about the plans they had made for a future together.  He thought about how tempting it was to whisk her away from the conflict and show her he could make her happy, but he could never ask her to choose between him and her family. It wasn’t fair.

“It’s okay, Afia,” he murmured sadly.  He was willing to give up the dream of marriage to keep her family intact.  Fatima and Rashad were her last remaining links now that Rayan was gone.  Perhaps at some point in the future, there might be a chance for Sam and Afia to be happy together, but he had to walk away now. “I’ll get back home. You need to be with your family.”

He pulled away from her, intending to walk up the block and hail a cab, but Afia grabbed him by the wrist and halted him. “No,” she replied firmly. She turned back to her parents. “Maman, Baba, I love you both. I respect you both. But, I love this man. I could’ve accepted your edict he not come to the funeral. However, I won’t accept cutting Sam out of my life completely. If that makes you feel I am choosing him over you, then you’re wrong. I choose to keep and love all of you. It is you who choose to cast me out for that love.”

“It’s final,” Rashad replied resolutely. “We disown you.”

Afia inhaled shakily, realizing this was truly it. “Goodbye, Maman. Goodbye, Baba. Let’s go, Sam.”

Sam was amazed by her bravery and resilience. He wordlessly walked around the car and opened the passenger door for Afia, and he climbed in the driver’s seat. He cranked the ignition and paused. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He pulled away from the curb and eased into traffic, feeling bittersweet. “I’m lucky to have you,” he murmured. “I love you. Just know that I don’t want you to sever ties with your family on my behalf, and I’ll do everything in my power to help them to eventually come around.”

She looked him in the eyes. “I know, Sam. I love you, too. Like I said, I didn’t choose you over them. I chose to love unconditionally, and they did not. I pray someday my parents come around. But, if they don’t…I’ll love them regardless. It’s time for me to have a life of my own now. I want to live that life with you. So, in answer to the question you asked me weeks ago, the answer is yes. I want to marry you, Sam Elison. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. We were made for each other.”