Raiden (Satan’s Angels MC #2)

Chapter 21

Ella

Z ale Grand is sitting in the back corner of Hart’s only five-star restaurant. He didn’t buy the place out and it’s full of snotty elites and the few who don’t mind paying forty dollars for an appetizer. They keep shooting us looks back here. Zale’s not wearing his vest, but he does have a faded brown leather jacket stretched over his huge frame and with his usual denim, his long, gray hair flowing over his shoulders, and his huge beard braided and shot through with gold rings, he looks every inch the dangerous biker that he is.

He looks good despite the stress of his job. His features haven’t gone to craggy, his skin is still tanned and taut but not leathery. He had me when he was twenty and Gray a few years later. He’s in his mid-fifties, but looks more like early forties, compliments of working out daily and eating sparingly. His poison has always been whiskey, but even that, he tempers.

He’s alone in here and I wonder where his men are. He never goes anywhere by himself. I looked all around when I entered and was shown to the back corner by a stuffy middle-aged woman, but I saw no one. Bikers stand out even when they’re trying to blend in, plus, I know everyone from his chapter and a lot of the men from others.

Gunner followed me here on his bike. We parked them together and walked in together. I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t branch off to stand or sit ominously not far, but when I sat down at the table, he sat down in the empty seat beside mine.

He glowers when my dad leans across the table for me to kiss his cheek, but then again, that could also be his regular face. “Hi, dad.”

“Widow.”

I make a pretense at dinner, picking up the menu to glance at it. Zale called this place a steakhouse on the phone, but it’s the highest end kind. No barbeque style here.

I trace the contours of Gunner’s face out of the corner of my eye. He’s still frowning, but he has been since I met him at the clubhouse’s back door to ride over here. I’m not sure what Gray said to him. It was just me and Raiden in the meeting with him after we showered.

The servers here are wearing the usual high-end attire to match the dining experience. Ours is a young man in a crisp white shirt, black pants, and a carefully folded black apron tied around his waist. He manages not to look at us like we’re scum of the earth as he takes our order, but the just barely civil attitude grates. Gunner’s not wearing his cut either, but all three of us are clad in entirely too much leather. I opted for leather pants and a black leather blouse, but I’m wearing my boots, and my hair has seen better days after being squashed under a brain bucket all the way here.

As soon as our server vacates, my dad drops his voice. He picked this corner for a reason, I have no doubt. He likes the wall at his back when he doesn’t have his men, but it’s also an out of the way, out of earshot place to talk.

“I want you to bring up our business,” he tells me in gravelly, conspiratorial tones.

I blink back, a little stunned even though I’m stupid for thinking that this conversation could go any other way. I knew this wasn’t just some daddy daughter dinner. He could have said something so much worse, but his suggestion about bringing product here and having the club sell it has far greater implications. He’s not just talking about simple drug deals.

My eyes shoot to Gunner, but his face is clinically impassive and cold. He’s not going to show whatever it is that he feels, if that’s anything at all.

“Dad…” I try to gather myself enough to articulate all the reasons that won’t work, the club might shift product over the border, but they keep this town clean of hard drugs. He might as well be sitting here declaring war. I’m a mess and trying not to show it. Zale hates nothing more than weakness. “You know Satan’s Angels aren’t in that market. They haven’t been and won’t ever be, personally or otherwise.”

“You’ll convince them.”

Does he seriously think that I have that kind of pull? “They aren’t going to take it kinder from me than they would straight from you. You were with the club long enough to know that it’s never going to happen. You can’t use their refusal as a way to- to end the peace.”

Zale looks at me sharply, displeasure stamped into his face. His lips twist into an ugly sneer. He doesn’t have to ask me where my loyalties lie. I can hear the unspoken accusation as if he’d showed it.

I’ve never felt brave like I do now, imagining Raiden’s gentle, reluctant smile. I truly do want him to have a period of happiness, even if it doesn’t equate to ever after. There isn’t an ever after in real life. There’s only highs and lows, dips and cliffs, lulls between when a rough lifestyle calls for action. Their club has been luckier than most, but life has been coming hard for them lately. I want to give a good man, deserving of happiness, even just the smallest amount of joy.

In the past, I never would have been brave enough to stand up to my dad. Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken off the childish lenses that filtered him out to be a sort of hero. My appetite for blind obedience in the name of love has sorely decreased.

“I wish this could have been just a happy dinner between a dad and a daughter,” I whisper, quiet but not uncertain. “I wish you could be my dad first. I thought you cared about me after you offered to give me justice for what happened with that prof, but I can see now that was just part of an act all leading up to something greater. You never do something without expecting something in return. Honestly, I feel like I’m just an object to you. Something you can use any way you want to increase your power.”

Zale’s cold green eyes settle on my face with unnerving intensity. For a second, I’m glad that it’s not just me here alone with him. Whatever gratitude Gunner feels for my father, I know he’s here on my side of the table tonight—he’s here for his club, not the man who brought him into it. “You think you’re not just a pawn to them,” Zale mutters in that carefully neutral tone, but he’s not good at hiding his emotions like Gunner. I can see the anger simmering just below the surface. “You’re wrong. With me, you get what you get. With them…”

“I’m so tired.” Interrupting. That’s another thing I’d never dare do to Zale in the past. “I don’t know who’s acting. I don’t want to know. I just want to go back to Nevada and now I can’t even do that without being legally bound to someone else.” Truth and lies. I don’t know what’s being reported back to Zale from inside or outside the club, so I’ve decided feeding him a mix of both is the best way to go.

“You can get an uncontested divorce. I’ll find someone who will push it through.”

“But I’d have to rely on you. Do what you say. It’s always do what you say. Have you ever once asked me what I wanted?”

The concept is utterly foreign to this man who is so used to having men bow down and cater to him. I can literally see his mind whirring, slowed down only by the rage he’s trying not to let loose. How could I ever have mistaken this for love? I guess if you want something badly enough, you’ll do anything to see it, especially when you don’t want to even think that it might never exist at all.

“I should have known you just wanted something from me when you showed up so late in life.” I curl my hand tightly around the fancy cloth napkin at the edge of the plate setting in front of me. “Mom was right to push you away. You were both young when you had me, but she rose to being a parent. She loved me. She knew that your one and only love wasn’t even your club. It’s power.”

Zale’s control slips, but he manages not to bang his fist down on the table and make all the dishes rattle and jump. “You will obey me.”

“How? Even if I wanted to, do you think that I have so much power in a forced marriage that my husband would just agree to go against the one hard rule the club has? I can’t just persuade Raiden to do whatever I want, and Gray? What power would I have over him? I think you’re vastly overestimating the allure you think I have.”

“The only thing I’ve done is underestimate.”

“Me.”

“My son.”

Of course. Of course, it would be Gray. But from the tightness contracting Zale’s whole face, I know.

“You sent those dealers from Seattle,” I hiss under my breath. “The club suspected all along, but I didn’t want to believe it. Fire is quite predictable.”

A flicker of alarm sparks in Zale’s eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do. Dad. I’m not stupid, but I am tired. I’m not going to be able to convince anyone to move product. If that was your whole plan, that I’d be your dealer and liaison up here, I have other things I want to do with my life. I wanted to teach. I wanted to help share knowledge, not ruin people’s lives. I won’t be a part of this.”

I can’t see under the table, but I’d bet anything that Zale’s hands are clenched into fists on his lap. “You think for a second that those fuckers weren’t planning on betraying me and taking the power for themselves, you take a good look at how they’ve already twisted you around and convinced you that I’m the bad guy.”

“I didn’t say that. No one’s convinced me of anything. I want you to be my dad, not someone who turns me into a drug lord.” To me, that seems like a reasonable ask. “I don’t want to sell people things that are going to tear their families apart and ruin lives. I don’t want to destroy the community I’m living in. I thought that you sent me here because you cared about me, and you wanted me to thrive and that was your plan. Honestly, I was so stupid and blind. I thought you were truly wronged, and I wanted to help you fix things. You didn’t kill my brother the night you could have so I thought you wouldn’t because deep down, you loved him. You wanted vengeance, but you didn’t want to kill him. I know now that you put an innocent man in jail for half a decade over an assumption. The club voted to take you down because they saw what road you were travelling. I came for peace because I thought you genuinely wanted that. I shouldn’t have trusted that you’d uphold a peace pact, but I didn’t want to believe that my own father could be so dishonorable.”

I’ve made Zale so angry with my little impromptu burst of bravery that he can’t even speak. He sits there giving me a death glare, grinding his teeth while he tries to work out whatever it is that he can put out there to try and convince me back into the bullshit fold.

“I’m not in love with my husband, but I won’t betray him and his club.” I might as well finish if he’s not going to verbally beat me down or give me his fake, manipulative style of care. “I won’t just run away. I’ll see this through to whatever end and I’ll make my life accordingly. I’m not a tool. I’m a person. A human being. Your own damn daughter.” I push back from the table, trying wildly to suppress the sudden urge to cry. My burst of bravery is only going to last so long before my chest caves in like a blast site.

I won’t sit here and beg Zale not to hurt good men or destroy the lives of their families and the people of this city. He never has listened to me, and he won’t start now—especially not when I’m pulling away from him.

I stand up abruptly, my knee banging the table, the cutlery and glasses jumping. Gunner is up in an instant, hovering at my side. It feels a lot like he’s waiting for me to take the lead on this. I have a feeling that if I stabbed a fork near my dad’s hand, Gunner would attempt to cut it off with a butterknife. Zale might have been the one to find him, to hammer out the family made of rough, ragged, stitched together, lost, half-broken men that is Satan’s Angels MC. He carried on where his father left off, creating something special that by some miracle, works. It might have been Zale that found Gunner and allowed him entry, giving him the family he never had, but my dad is on the opposite side of the table now. He’s no longer an Angel. I have only to say the word and Gunner would attack him like a dog.

But I won’t do it. Gunner doesn’t deserve to be used like a weapon.

“The club works because each man is connected to the other. They thrive as a unit. You were the one who wanted more than that and lost sight of the important things. I’m not twisted up and I know I’m not wrong. I just didn’t know the whole story before I came here because you didn’t tell me.”

“I gave you the truth.”

I stare sadly back at my dad, knowing that I need to go because I’m attracting all sorts of unwanted stares from the people at tables around us. This isn’t the kind of place for any sort of altercation.

“You gave me your truth, but it’s not the truth. You need to stop. Go back home. Learn how to be happy. Stop seeing ghosts and demons where they don’t exist. You need to let the past go and try to make the best of what you have now, which is a whole fucking lot. You could be so much more, Dad.”

His huge hand flexes on the table, silver rings flashing in the dimmed lighting. I’ve never seen Zale Grand so angry. He looks like he’d take pleasure in wrapping that hand around my throat and choking the words and the life right out of me.

“Goodnight,” I tell him simply, disappointment, anger, fear, and a gut-wrenching sadness jarring together inside of me to cut off my breath.

I cut a path straight through the restaurant, Gunner at my back. He follows me silently out into the cool fall night. It’s going to be a frigid ride home on our bikes, but I could use the chilling fresh air to ground me.Raiden, Gray, Lark, and Penny are at Raiden’s dad’s house. He wanted to call off the dinner, but I wouldn’t let him. I think wistfully for a second about going there, the longing in me pulling me apart, but riding straight there from here doesn’t seem safe. Zale knows everyone and everything about this city. He could show up there anytime he wants without having to rely on me to lead him straight there, but I still won’t go there and bring potential trouble right to that doorstep.

We had to park well down the street, but my brisk steps and Gunner’s eerily silent ones, eat up the sidewalk in far less time than it took us to walk here when we arrived. A single minute can change a lifetime and all those moments I just spent in there have fundamentally changed me like molecules in an experiment getting irrevocably altered.

I glance behind me at Gunner, his bike staggered just behind mine, as I slam my helmet onto my head. “The clubhouse.”

He nods.

I should have known that my dad wouldn’t just let me go. You don’t get the last word with Zale Grand. I thought it was weird that his men weren’t in sight, but I knew they had to be here.

I’m about to kick my bike to life when I see the sets of shadows converge, closing in on us. Men wearing the Berserkers cuts surround us like a black leather fog, closing a ring around us.

I could ride my way out and I have no doubt that Gunner would fight and kill his way out without blinking, but I’ve had my fill of blood. Holing up at the clubhouse won’t change anything. It won’t make this nightmare go away. I won’t ride off, I won’t cower, and I won’t hide.

I get off my bike and stand straight and proud beside it. “I’m Widow Grand and you will not touch me,” I shout at the assembled circle, most of the faces hid by black bandanas pulled up to obscure them, but I still recognize a few of the men by their hair and eyes. If Skinny Bones thinks I can’t see the skeleton tattoo carving down the side of his shaved head, he’s laughably wrong. “I don’t care what my dad told you. You’re out here to ambush me like I’ve done something wrong, and I haven’t. You want me to go with you? Fine. But you will not bind me, and you will not touch me. Is that clear?”

Two men with dark eyes and dark, greasy hair pulled back into thinning ponytails glance at each other. One cracks his knuckles anxiously.

“Okay, Widow.” Creed pulls down his bandana, stark blue eyes flashing. He’s mid-thirties, not an officer of the club, but built like a tank and not afraid to get his hands bloodstained. I’ve seen him crush the face of his own club brother in a backyard fight at one of the club’s grills over the guy winking at the club whore who was supposed to be with him for the night. He pulls a few long zip ties out of his pocket. “You come without a fight on your word, but we’re still binding you. We have our orders, yeah?”

I throw back my head and laugh wildly, spilling my torment and all my aching emotions into the psychotic sound. I present my wrists anyway, in front of me because it’s easier to break a hold like that if I get the chance and I need to.

Creed binds me and gives me a quick pat down that makes Gunner growl.

I didn’t dare speak for him and I knew that asking for him to be left alone would be akin to the impossible.

When one of the men still cloaked in black tries to grab Gunner’s arms, he bursts into violent action, moving faster than I was aware was humanly possible. He punches the man behind him in the face, breaking his nose in a spray of blood. A half a second later, he’s moving in on a second and third, slamming his fist repeatedly into the throat of the man closest to him until he drops to the ground, gurgling sickly. He stabs two fingers into the eyes of the third and he drops beside the other, screaming horrifically.

Creed grasps my bound wrists and starts to drag me away. The men in this club only have so much loyalty to each other. Gunner bends and yanks a small, evil looking blade from beneath his jeans where he’d hidden it strapped above his boot. He tosses it from hand to hand, looking gleefully at the circle of five men around him.

Vastly outnumbered, he’d still probably have the odds in his favor if there was betting on this fight.

I think these men realize it too.

No one attacks, but that just lets Gunner go on the offensive. He picks one, slashing out madly. A spray of blood bursts across the sidewalk, blooming like a flower. There’s another horrible gurgle and the weight of a body hitting concrete.

The next two attack together. One goes for Gunner’s legs and the other tries to grab him from behind. Two quick slashes of that knife and they’re both on the ground, one screaming and grasping at the side of his head where his ear used to be, the other holding his hand against a nasty slash in his chest, blood bubbling from between his fingers.

For a second, I have hope that we can get out of this, even if we leave one hell of a mess in our wake that is going to cause all sorts of problems for Satan’s Angels, but that fragile, glass-thin dream shatters with the sudden burst of three loud shots.

I whip my head around wildly, trying to discern their direction. I don’t see who fired the gun until Gunner drops, silently writhing onto his side to wrap his hands around his thigh and knee.

My dad stands silhouetted by shadow and streetlight, an evil grin slashed across his face. I barely recognize him looking like that, a man possessed, a beast gone mad, eyes wild and wide in a rugged face flushed with triumph. I recognize the rings on his hand first, silver gleaming against the dark pistol.

“Let’s fucking go,” he curses, shaking his head at his men. He knew I’d be an easy target, counting on the fact that I wouldn’t hurt members of either club, but Gunner? He’s annoyed like he didn’t expect him to be a problem.

He hasn’t killed him, but he does leave him and his own men behind on the street, bleeding out, groaning and whimpering in agony, some dead and some who very clearly need a doctor and fast .

“Call a fucking ambulance!” I yell at Creed, but he shakes his head, mouth a grim line, and turns me around, marching me quickly down the sidewalk in front of him.

I struggle, trying to turn back and look at the carnage, trying to see if Gunner is moving.

“Creed! Please! Those men are your club brothers!”

He snorts. “Fucking idiots fucked this up. You think our president is going to forgive them? They’re better off there. If either of us wants to keep the skin on our hides and our fucking appendages attached to our bodies, we’ll shut the fuck up and let him do as he pleases.”

Up until this moment, I clung so hard to that foolish, childish notion that I meant something to my dad and as such, he wouldn’t harm me. For the first time, a chilling fear sinks so deep into my bones that it twists my stomach and makes saliva gather bitterly at the back of my mouth like I’m going to vomit.

If my dad would take me and leave the rest of Satan’s Angels and their families alone, I’d happily go.

But I know he won’t.

Everything I was afraid to believe in, everything I didn’t know I wanted until I suddenly did, the tenuous future that I was building here and a shot at happily ever something, even if it was never destined to be an after, lights up in flames, becoming ashes in my head and heart.

My dad’s men came on bikes. They were waiting for us in that alley as an ambush. All he had to do was call them as we were walking out. I expected a trap and walked right into one. All I can think as I’m loaded into the back of a black panel van and driven by Creed with my dad in the front seat, is that I’m so thankful that Raiden and Gray weren’t with me, but even that fades into a sick sense of dread when the shock clears from my brain and I can follow the breadcrumbs my dad’s so obviously left behind.

Gunner is the kind of man who looks like he’d know how to tie off his own leg and get help. My dad doesn’t leave loose ends. He wants Gunner alive for one reason. So he can tell the rest of the club what happened and that my dad has me. He’s counting on Raiden and Gray wanting me back. Or is he going to hold me for some ridiculous ransom until they agree to move his product?

Whatever his plans are, we pull up in front of a motel on the edge of town. He’s clearly got his men stationed here, judging from the bikes lined up in the crumbling asphalt lot. The place is a dump, one long row of dilapidated rooms with faded old pink stucco and a crumbling office with a flashing vacant sign where of course only the V is lit up.

Zale isn’t trying to hide. He’s making it easy to find him and utterly obvious where he is. He either brought enough men with him to obliterate his old club if they try anything, or he thinks he knows my brother and Raiden. He believes they won’t move against him with all their might.

Creed hauls me out of the backseat, wrenching painfully against the zip ties cutting into my wrists. I could break them, but at the sight of doors opening from every room and men spilling into the lot, I know there would be no point.

I could get myself loose, steal one of their bikes, and what? Create another chase where someone could die? By now, some of the Angels are probably reaching Gunner. They’d know everything. I don’t have to warn them. He’s done that already. There is no point in me leaving and risking my life or the lives of anyone else, including innocent people out there on the streets.

I refuse to cower or feel shame. I dig deep and come up with my inner badass. I wear my attitude proudly, like a badge and a shield.

Creed slams into the closest room, shoves me to the bed, and leaves.

It only takes my dad a single minute after he stomps into the room to tear that false bravado to shreds.

He slams the door so hard the whole room rocks and looms over me. I’ve never seen this dark, shadowy menace on his face before. I’m not stranger to Zale’s anger and cruelty, but I’d failed to see the madness that lies at the root of him, devouring his lifeforce like a parasite.

He strokes my jaw and tsks at me when I flinch back. “Don’t forget who gave you this happiness. It was me. I’m your everything. I’m the one you obey. I made this world for you, and I can tear it apart. Just ask your husband how easily his world crumbled.”

Zale is still a good-looking man. A few of the guys in the club are hard, their faces mirroring either the weariness in their souls or the evil, but not Zale. His face hides so fucking much.

My heart slams into my throat. “What you did to Raiden was an injustice!”

That earns me a sharp tug to the zip tie so that it cuts into my flesh. Another second and one meaty fist twists into my hair, snatching up a handful since I’m wearing it down. Zale tugs so hard that tears sting my eyes from the pain. He holds my hands down so I can’t reach up to try and claw his away.

“This is my world, Widow. You still don’t see that. I thought you were supposed to be smart. You’re beautiful, but that’s about all I can claim to have given you. If you think I didn’t know exactly the kind of woman Raiden would fall all over, think again. I watched that boy grow right alongside my own son. I patched them into the club myself, honoring our family legacy.”

“You don’t know him at all. You don’t know Gray either. You’ve built all this up in your head. You’re a liar and a manipulator, you’re seeing ghosts that aren’t there.”

Zale gives my head a shake but releases my hair when I cry out. He belts out an uproarious laugh like he truly finds causing so many people pain, amongst them his own children, to be funny.

“Either way, you want to see your husband, your brother, and the rest of their sorry little club live, you’ll do what I say and you’ll convince Raiden and Gray to do the same. I’d hoped you’d see the business sense of moving our product here and do this the easy way, but I figured you’d give me trouble, so I came prepared. I have no doubt they’ll do anything to get you back. Their code of honor knows no bounds. Gray is just like my dad. Can’t see into the future. Can’t understand self-preservation or see the need for change. I was trying to take the club in a direction that would have seen them thrive, but they called that greed and wanted me gone.”

“Only after you betrayed Raiden and everything you stood for.”

“The fact that you’re in love with a man as pathetic as him only shows that you’re not fit to be a part of my legacy.” Zale grasps my hair again, forcing me to look up at him or have a handful ripped from my scalp. It’s hard to hang onto my pride when tears of pain are coursing down my cheeks and there’s nothing I can do to stop my body’s automatic reaction to the blistering pain searing across my scalp.

“The only reason I’m here right now is because your brother was weak enough to show mercy. He doesn’t want to cooperate with helping us move product to eventually facilitate a full chapter up here, then he’ll taste the consequences.” He releases my hair but grasps my cheeks in a vicious pinch. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll give you another chance to prove your loyalty. You might be good enough to be one of the club sluts, or I’ll find you another husband. I’d even marry you off to one of my officers. You see what a reasonable man I can be?”

I want to spit at him but with the way he’s gripping my cheeks, I can’t do anything other than glare hatred at him.

I don’t know what I can possibly do, but I finally understand that I have to make a choice. My soul, or Raiden’s. My dad or my brother and his club. Even if I don’t stay here, if Raiden and I don’t work out—because nothing is ever certain and it’s so damn early—I know what I have to do.

There is no world that will ever be safe for Raiden, for Lark, for Penny, for Gray, for any of the goodhearted outlaws that I’ve come to care about, while my dad is in a position of power.

I told Raiden we needed to remove him.

He doesn’t need to be removed. He needs to be put to ground.

And I’m the one who needs to do it.

We’re alone in this room. His men are outside and if I kill my own father, there’s more than a decent chance that they’ll kill me straight out.

I only hesitate for a second, just to shore up a plan and search the room with my eyes for a weapon before I lunge forward, bring my knees up between my bound wrists, and snap the ties in half.