Raiden (Satan’s Angels MC #2)

Chapter 6

Ella

T here have been a few times in my life where I’ve felt officially fucked, where I’ve thought to myself, there isn’t going to be a tomorrow . I’ve fought my way out, screamed and clawed my way back, but tonight, the only way we’re going to fight this darkness is to sit still and wait it out so that we don’t wander into danger. Walking around in the pitch black will only ensure that one or both of us gets hurt because we can’t see the damn ground. There’s also the danger that we’ll get ourselves even more lost by wandering deeper in the wrong direction.

I know it’s coming, but I’m still surprised when Raiden stops. “We need to call it a day.” The blue black is turning to straight pitch even as we speak. “We should sit back-to-back.”

Like we have a fight on our hands. I’ve got your back and you’ll have mine.

I like to pretend I’m not afraid of anything, but the truth is, I am. Often. I’ve learned to live through it, breathe through it, and listen to it. Ignoring your instincts is the dumbest thing you can do. We have a fight or flight mode built into us for a reason.

We sit down in a black so complete there aren’t even stars. I don’t know how that’s possible given that I never saw it cloud over. Maybe it’s too early yet. Maybe they’re coming. Our backs aren’t touching, but they’re close. The night chills off fast and I’m thankful for my leather jacket. Raiden only has a t-shirt on under his cut, but he doesn’t shiver. I’m close enough that I’d feel it if he did.

The bugs are relentless, the mosquitoes homing in on our warmth.

“Motherfucker,” Raiden curses, with a smack that sounds like it’s palm to cheek.

“Tell me something,” I whisper after a few minutes. At this rate, the night is going to be six million years long.

“Hmmm?” He grunts.

“Have you killed anyone?”

He snorts. “Went away for drug charges. Not murder.”

“Gray’s never gone away. You said that he’s done what he had to.”

I get another gruff growl. “Is this confession time? Do you have something weighing heavily on your mind, but you want me to go first so we can compare tragedies?”

“Asshole,” I sass, without heat. “Fine. I’ll go first. I’ve killed three people. What you said about hard drugs is true. It turns men into animals.” The dark night closes around me, more comforting than suffocating. “I was new to the biker world and na?ve, or dumb.”

He stiffens. It’s probably a good thing I can’t see his face, but he offers that same dry sarcasm, bordering on humor. “What’s changed?”

“You’re such a prick. Do you want to hear the story or not?”

“Not really, but the night’s going to be long.”

Disarming. In the face of hard memories and even harder emotions, sometimes what a person needs is to be heard and not judged and that’s what Raiden is offering.

“The club’s main supplier was this seedy gang that Zale was doing business with. Sharing territory. My dad knew it wouldn’t work out, and I think his hope was that the other gangs in the area would cause trouble and they’d kill each other and leave it all for us. He’s smart like that. He knows when he doesn’t have to even lift a hand.”

“My guess is not so smart. Someone lifted a hand. You killed three men.”

He’s good at keeping his voice neutral. I can’t tell what he thinks about his new forced wife being a murderer.

“I knew there was going to be a meeting. I overheard my dad talking about it at a club cookout. I waited and watched for hours that night and then I followed discreetly in a rental car so they wouldn’t know it was me. The city’s big and they were riding down the freeway. There was plenty of other traffic. They eventually went to an industrial area. It was hard sticking so far behind and not losing them, but driving around until I found the horde of chrome and metal parked in front of an old warehouse wasn’t that difficult. I found a door open and snuck inside. My dad wasn’t there, but his VP was and five other men. It was a lot of talking and it turned ugly. I don’t know if they were just being careful or if it was an ambush, but the warehouse was full of their men.”

“That’s a bad situation to be in. You didn’t have to be a part of it. You could have left before anyone saw you.”

“That would have been extremely cowardly.”

“Or smart.”

“I didn’t leave.”

“I guessed that.”

The memories are hard, graphic, and painful. I can still taste the smoke and blood of that night, but Raiden’s dry tone, disembodied by the night, the heat of him at my back, is like cleansing water on the stains.

“I had two guns with me and extra clips. I emptied everything I had and since it was so dark, no one knew where the bullets were coming from. Eventually, it was just the club’s enforcer, Machete left. He literally carried two. Nine rounds only gets you so far, even with extra ammo. I couldn’t just leave him there to get slaughtered. I got to him, he tossed me his other machete. We cut our way out.”

“Are you kidding me?” His normally deep, rough voice sounds detached.

“I wish I was. It was a bloodbath. The kind of gore you see in movies. I wasn’t thinking. One minute I was scared and then the next, I was just… this machine, killing right alongside Machete, with a machete. I say three, because that’s how many I know I killed for sure. I don’t know how many I shot before that. It was impossible to tell what bullets hit who. The rest that I had maimed, the club brothers who got called in we got out, finished off. I remember the floor was straight blood. I was covered from head to foot. It was the worst horror scene you could imagine.”

The silence of the night closes in on me. Tears sting my eyes. I’ve never spoken about that night. Machete filled everyone in and when my dad asked me for more, he could tell he wasn’t going to get it. Some people lock trauma so deep inside themselves, they can’t ever dig it out. It was too soon then, but it’s been years now.

Maybe it’s the black surrounding me that made it easier to confess. I was scared at first, but now it’s comforting. Like I can say anything into it and it will take it and consume it and send back only comfort.

“I heard once, from a guy passing through Hart, that the land has a heartbeat and a memory. Everything is alive. Trees. Grass. Moss. Rocks.”

I tilt my face up. There are still no stars.

I’m not allowed to go on club runs or rides, but I’ve always enjoyed riding my bike at night. I love getting out of the city and letting the constellations guide your way as they have for people across millennia. It’s a heady feeling, knowing that the ancients looked to those same stars to find their way.

“Alright, since you went first, I’ll give you something.” He’s made up the rules. I was just asking a question because I wanted to know the answer. I didn’t need him to match me truth for truth, but I stay quiet, letting him speak. “My mom and dad pretty much pretended I was dead after I went to prison. Before that too, but that was really the point of no return. When my mom was diagnosed, my dad called me. I picked them up from the doctor’s because he was a wreck. His calling the clubhouse because he didn’t even have my number—it was an unspoken apology. We never did say we were sorry. We never truly made anything right. I’m not even sure they apologized to Lark for cutting her off either for years, telling her she couldn’t come home as a single mother.”

“What the fuck?” I didn’t know that. “Is Gray’s daughter not his?”

“She is.”

Raiden tells me the whole story, about how Lark always loved Gray. He finally saw her as a grown woman when he took her to her prom because Raiden was in prison by then. Gray looked after her and checked in on her when she went to Seattle for college. When Lark found out she was pregnant, it was the worst possible timing. Raiden had just been shanked by some asshole he had no beef with when he was in jail. Lark took a hard look at what life would be like, raising a kid with the club’s president, which she didn’t fully understand before, since Hart was always peaceful, and she’d been sheltered from what club life was really like. She did what she had to do to protect her child. She stayed away for years, only coming back when she found out that her mom had cancer and didn’t have long.

“Jesus,” I breathe. “I had no idea. They act like they’ve been together forever. Maybe that’s why they’re so fiercely protective of each other. I’m surprised you didn’t kill Gray when you found out.”

His forceful swallow is like a gunshot in the quiet night. “Zale almost did that for me. Lark fought for him. She fought me and I went to the club. We all rallied around him because the hard and short of it is that we love him. Gray was always going to be our prez. Anyone can step into the job, but no one would do it like he does.” He pauses and shifts. I hear the muddled sound of his boots shuffling along the ground. “How long was Zale watching us? Gray figures it had to be months. Zale knew everything, as a former insider, but he also waited until Lark went to Gray’s. She had Penny with her that night.”

I shift, but it does nothing to alleviate the pain in my chest at knowing what that little girl went through that night. “I don’t think he ever stopped watching. I never knew much about it, honestly, until recently, when he came to me and asked me to come here.” I wait, but he’s quiet. “Gray seems like the kind of man who sees injustice in the world and wants to make it right. That’s the kind of club Satan’s Angels are. I… don’t believe that it’s real or that it can work. That’s why I’ve scoffed at it. But, if it fills some of the emptiness in the world, maybe you’re right to try.” That’s as close of an apology as he’s ever going to get from me.

He knows it too.

I hear him shift, the creak of leather, another hard swallow.

I’m amazed at how easily we’re speaking now, when all we hurled at each other before were taunts and barbs. I don’t know what’s changed, besides getting lost out here together. We only have each other to depend on.

Even before we got lost, he was sorry. I could tell he was trying to say something about it all day. I locked myself away in my little room in the club so I could think. Search. Try and get my head on straight. It sounds cheesy, but I want to do the right thing. Be a good person. I don’t want to betray my dad, but he’s the one who told me to come up here. I trusted my father because he seemed to move mountains for me before, but what if that’s only what I thought? It’s hard to know someone who just appears in your life out of nowhere. I don’t regret going with him, but looking back over the past years, I can see how everything changed and shifted. How I’ve become a different person.

He talked about his parents, so I match him with another truth. “I miss my mom. I’m sure she’s in my heart, but that feels more like a meaningless platitude. I miss not having her to go to, to call, to ask for advice, just to laugh with. I miss literally everything . When she died, I went straight back home. I sat with her body in the funeral home for hours, not making a sound, but I wish I had screamed and lost it and been an animal. Losing a parent is hard. That’s all there is.”

“I’m sorry that before this is all over, you’ll probably be an orphan.”

I choke on my outrage, swallowing it back with bitter understanding. I don’t have to ask him how he can plan for peace, ask for a truce, and still want to murder my father. The answer is pretty obvious. That anger burning inside of him like his own cancer is never going to go away. Five years is a long time to get hollowed out. His thirst for vengeance must be unquenchable.

“Hate just works against logic and blinds.” My stomach rumbles loudly, an embarrassing blessing in disguise. I would never mention my discomfort, especially when there’s nothing to be done.

“I shouldn’t have left the bikes and the supplies. I’m an idiot.”

“They’re safe there. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The most harm it’s going to come to is a bear.”

“I was thinking more about us.”

I shrug, even though he can’t see it with his back to me. “I’ll live.”

“You’ve hardly drank anything. I’m the one with the water.” The backpack unzips, then the bottle is thrust my way. “You weren’t going to ever ask, were you?”

“No.” I take a small sip and try not to start greedily chugging it back. This might have to last longer than until morning.

“This is probably the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I hold the metal bottle in one hand, the top off, craving another sip, but I want to force myself to wait a few minutes and savor it. “Tell me about you. What were you like when you were younger?”

“Before the club?”

I smile into the darkness. I didn’t expect an answer. “I guess so. Were you a jock?”

“You’d think so. I’m made like one, and I did play sports, but only because my friends were into it. Not to belong, but for something to do. Hart’s pretty small. There’s not a lot going on. I liked working with my hands. Liked… numbers. I’m still doing the club’s books even though I’m technically VP now. Gunner moved aside for me, but if it’s possible to have two men share the position, I’d be grateful.”

What an odd duck my husband is, as a man and especially as a biker. What man wants to share power with anyone?

“I stepped into it when shit went down. I never wanted it, but I’m getting used to it,” he says, answering my unspoken question. “I just want to be beside Gray. The club is everything to me, but it’s his sun I always craved.”

Anyone less might think that’s more than a friendly statement, but being so close to my dad’s club, I’ve seen the way brotherhood is redefined there. A good number of men end up in clubs or gangs because they don’t have family, and they didn’t fit anywhere else and to them it’s not just brotherhood. It’s a sacred bond that could never be put into words.

My ass is numb from sitting on it and my back is starting to ache. The night’s chill is rising up from the ground, into my bones. I stretch and can’t help a shiver.

“Are you cold?”

“A little. I’m mostly just uncomfortable.”

“Lie down.”

I cap the water bottle. I’m not too proud to spread out along the ground. It’s not the least bit comfortable. There are sharp things—god knows what—digging into the whole length of me, but at least I can stretch my aching back.

I go completely still when I hear the rustle as Raiden moves. He slides in behind me and edges up so that our bodies touch, spine to spine. My stomach clenches. My breath catches. Heat spirals down from my belly, landing in a throbbing ache between my legs.

He doesn’t turn and wrap his arm around me and hug me in against him. He doesn’t get mushy and spoon me. I’m still a stranger he doesn’t trust, the enemy’s daughter, the MC princess of the wrong club. I might be his wife, and we might have had a conversation that involved us not wanting to stab each other, but that’s one step. I didn’t expect him to let down his guard and get any closer than he is. This man is an outlaw, a biker, and he spent time in prison. That does something to a person. He’s dealt with betrayal, trauma, and some unexpected truths over the past few months. He has his own life, his own feelings, and I have mine.

When we fuck, I have no doubt it will be spectacular, but I don’t expect cuddling or sweetness before or after. Even in my old, semi-respectable life when I dated regular men, there wasn’t much of that. I wonder, if after all the bullshit I’ve been through, if I’d even be up for it.

If it was anyone else, that answer would likely be a hard no.

If it’s not a no with Raiden, it’s just another reason I should keep a proper distance between us.

I’ve never felt such a contradictory way in my life.

“No one’s thoughts should be that loud,” Raiden complains. “Go to sleep if you can. I’ll stay awake.”

“To keep watch against the bears?”

A heartbeat of unspoken accusation shimmers in the night like a cloud above us. I know what he’s truly worried about. Maybe not up here, but everywhere else. It’s a hard life, always looking over your shoulder, especially for a man conditioned to being locked in the most dangerous sort of cage.

“They’re not here anymore. My dad or any of his men. I’d tell you if they were or they were planning on betraying you.” A niggling, horrible thought slithers inside my skull. Would you even know? Would you see it coming?

He doesn’t respond. That’s the end of it.

Despite the cold and the hunger, the whine and annoyance of the insects, my thirst that I’m pretending doesn’t exist, all the overwhelming change that makes my brain buzz like an old lightbulb that won’t ever shut off, I tunnel into the silent parts of myself, the dark and the expanse of nothing where I sometimes go when I don’t want to think or feel much of anything.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t help to have Raiden at my back, hard and huge and warm.

It’s probably best that all we’ll ever be in this marriage is the way we are now. Back-to-back out of necessity, slightly protective of each other, breathing the same air but never understanding one another fully, our hearts and souls guarded.

I couldn’t afford anything less even back before my father.

I can afford it even less now.