Tyrant (Satan’s Angels MC #1)

Chapter 5

Tyrant

Five Years Later

A feral beast claws my brain, slashing through nerves and tissue, begging to be free. If only I could split my own head in half to let it out. I blink into my room, trying to focus on the bookshelf on the opposite wall. I’m meticulous about my books, the titles all lined up and sorted. A haze blurs my vision, doubling it up. My stomach twists its way into my throat.

I try to get vertical, but just that small movement brings bile racing up my throat.

I grab the trash can from the side of the bed before vomit erupts in painful heaves. I was fine this morning. The migraine came on without warning. They’ve been getting worse to the point they incapacitate me. I’m just lucky that I didn’t have club business this afternoon. It’s a nice fucking day and the place is pretty much deserted.

The beast isn’t done with me. My stomach keeps heaving over and over, until nothing’s left but strings of saliva.

“Jesus Christ, Ty. What the fuck?”

Not as deserted as I thought, apparently.

If this was anyone else, I’d have the club doctor over here in a minute. There’s no fucking shame in being sick, in taking care of your health—physical and mental. I’ve seen more than one of my brothers do more than cry. They’ve wept at times, broken and hurting, and I’d beat anyone bloody who ever said that made them weak.

I don’t allow myself to be seen like this, to have a breakdown with anyone watching. Men have to have faith in you when you’re leading them, and getting caught with my head over a trashcan, puking my guts up, vulnerable as hell, isn’t going to inspire much confidence.

I look up and meet the dark, agonized eyes of my best friend, the former golden child who gave up everything for this club, including his family and five years of his life. His heavy hand lands on my shoulder and he looks me in the eye over the rim of the trashcan.

“Gray.”

“I’m not Gray when I’m here,” I remind him, voice too sharp, laced with my own humiliation.

He lets me grip the trashcan until my knuckles are white. My stomach is still all over the place. Setting it aside seems inadvisable.

He sweeps back my long hair like I’m a teenage girl, drunk for the first time. He makes a manbun at the top back of my head and secures it with an elastic from the nightstand. The guy has hardly any of his own hair to speak of—it’s always cut short—but he does a grand job of sorting mine out.

I would die before I ever put my hair into a manbun, and he fucking knows it.

I try and swing for him, but the only thing that gets me is another round of retching. It’s worse this time, now that I have less in my stomach. My entire body shakes, and perspiration breaks out over my skin, sticking my black tee and my grease-stained jeans to my body.

“Fuck this,” Raiden mutters. He produces his phone from his back pocket. “I’m calling Archer.”

Adam Archer is a legit plastic surgeon, or at least he was before he landed his ass on the club’s payroll years ago. He’s exceptionally good at things like rhinoplasties and fake breasts, but he was also damn good at sewing up knife wounds, casting broken bones, pulling out bullets, and any other general mending that’s required. He came to our attention at one of our clubs, where he made the mistake of running up a large debt in the underground gambling room. We’re not the type who goes around breaking legs, at least not when it’s far more beneficial to have someone like him on our side.

He was grateful that we cancelled the debt in exchange for an underground room at his clinic. He found a new building and relocated, transforming the basement into an illicit, secret hospital. He never asks any questions. It was understood years ago that if he wanted to keep his practice, his fancy house on the side of town where Hart’s elite reside, and his handsome, clean cut, silver fox look intact, then he’d shut his mouth and give us what we want for the foreseeable future. He might be a good surgeon, but putting his own face back together would have challenged even his considerable skills.

I try to snatch Raiden’s phone away, but my vision is still doubled and all I see is a blurry version of his face as he dodges me. He eyes me hard, his finger on the screen. “I’m going to ask you something and you’re going to answer me honestly. You’re my brother in every way and you owe me the truth. Is this a stomach bug, or is something seriously wrong?”

“Just something I ate.”

Raiden curses under his brother and punches at the screen.

“Fine. Fine . It’s a migraine.”

He crosses his arms and spreads his legs, a pissed off giant, dangerous in every way. “How long?”

“They come and go.”

Another stab at the phone and he brings it to his ear. I currently see at least four. The pain is slowly morphing into a monster that blackens the edges of my vision and acid burns at the back of my throat.

“How long?”

I can hear the phone ringing on the other end. I’m a mess. I can’t even get up off this bed and tackle that phone away from him.

“I don’t know. A year, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“A year.” Five. Ever since your sister left, destroying me without an explanation or a goodbye.

He winces. He’s been back here for just a little longer than a year. He hates that he didn’t notice, or rather, that I hid this so well from him. We don’t keep secrets from each other. Never have. Lark obviously not fucking included. “Trauma induced?”

“Not that I know.” What do I know, though?

“It’s probably not a tumor if it’s been going on this long.” His lips curl back in a snarl. “Or anything serious, or you’d already be done for. A year?” He doesn’t look like he wants to shake me. He’s pale, nearly bloodless.

This . This is why I haven’t said anything. This is why no one should know. I’m the one who takes care of everyone else. It’s not supposed to be the other way around.

“Archer.” The club has his private number. When we call, he answers. No. Exceptions. “It’s Raiden. I need to bring someone in. Immediately. We can be there in thirty minutes. I need a guarantee of total privacy on entry and exit.”

My eyes sting. It’s from the force of the puking, not because the tone of Raiden’s voice says he’d cut out the eyes of anyone who saw me going into that place just because I don’t want any of this becoming public knowledge. We basically run this town. In the club, we can be real with each other, but outside of it? People can’t see us as anything other than what we want them to see, or we’d lose control fast.

“I’ll need some kind of scan for head trauma.” He doesn’t sound so calm and rational now, not with his voice rising with anger. His hand twitches at his side in impatience. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t have it? Get it. You have forty minutes. I’ll give you an extra ten because I have business here to take care of before I leave. I don’t want excuses. Get it done.” Raiden ends the call and swears under his breath again. “Fucking doctors. We’re getting this done. Today . You’re not putting it off, even if I have to dress you up in a fucking Halloween costume and take you to some real hospital.”

“It’s just a fucking migraine,” I say, then start dry heaving again.

“If you’d had them as a teen I wouldn’t be concerned, but to start getting them as an adult… I want you checked out.”

Raiden moves around my private room. It’s the prez’s quarters, one of the largest in the clubhouse. It belonged to my grandfather and my father. Both gone now. I never feel their ghosts haunting the place, just the weight and obligations that bear down on me. For all the extra space, the room is stark.

I never needed much. Never cared about amassing wealth. Every cent I have that didn’t go on my own small house on the edge of town, I’ve poured into my bike and the club.

Raiden grabs a fresh black t-shirt out of the dresser, adds a pair of jeans to the stack, then pauses and shakes his head. “I love you, bro, but I’m not dressing you like a baby. Get your shit together while I get you some water and let’s go.”

He would absolutely dress me, and tenderly too, if I needed it, but I appreciate his attempt to leave a shred of my pride intact.

It nearly makes me empty my stomach again, but I get into the fresh clothes and tug on my worn pair of boots.

“Here.” Raiden is back. He hands over a stick of the bubblemint gum he’s always chewing. Until I realized it was more of a nervous tic than for enjoyment, I used to want to punch him for chomping it in my ear all the time. “Your breath stinks.”

I jam it into my mouth, take one step, and bend over, dry heaving.

“Stop.” A strong hand grasps my shoulder. “Seriously. You’re in a bad way. Let me take you to the clinic and at least get you some kind of medication for this. You have this whole club to run, an entire city to worry over. Even if everything is okay inside your thick skull, I can see how that would be enough to give a guy an aneurysm.”

He helps me down the long hallway, out the door, and into the parking lot. Not the compound where we park our bikes, but into the lot where the deathtraps and cages are kept. He steers me to his old baby blue fifties truck. I want to die from the pain ripping me apart. I want to die from the embarrassment of this. I want to die thinking about what Archer is going to do to me in his goddamn basement. Normally when one of these bastards hit, I just want to sleep it off, not go on a fucking ride.

“I know you’ve stitched up knife wounds and set your own bones,” Raiden sighs as he thrusts me into the truck and pulls the seatbelt he installed over my shoulders. “You’re as tough as they come. No one would ever doubt it.” He dabs me on the end of my nose with his index finger and grins a shit eating grin that I want to plunge my fist into. Then he hands me a trash bag, “Don’t you dare puke in my truck. I like it a whole lot more than I like you.”

I lean my head against the narrow back window and take shallow breaths while he walks around to the other side.

The guilt of how badly I betrayed him kills me. This man who is so good and straightforward, so exceptionally gifted, that even though he only ever wanted to be Raiden, most of the guys call him Robber because he’s so good at making criminal funds disappear into legit channels. My guilt only ramps up when we’re about halfway to Archer’s hellhole and he turns to me, clearly troubled. I saw what Raiden’s face looked like when he went away, and it wasn’t anything like this.

“Ray?”

“It’s my mom.” A sigh winds out of him at the next red light.

I forget all about the pain in my head, which is monumental considering it’s still blinding.

“She’s sick. Came out of nowhere. That’s why I lost my shit seeing you like this.”

“Sick?” It doesn’t matter what I think about Mabel Gardiner and believe me, I couldn’t have a lower opinion. She abandoned Raiden, pretended he didn’t exist, and then she did the same to her daughter. The way Raiden looks at me, totally fucking wrecked, is the only thing that matters right now. “Pancreatic cancer. We found out a few days ago. She’s got a few months left and the only thing we can do is try to manage the pain.”

I try to exhale, but all my breath spools up in my lungs. I want to say something, but the words are trapped inside. It’s just as well. Words are useless. “I… shit,” I finally mutter. “Why are you here with me? You don’t have to be at the club. Don’t worry about your—”

“I want to be at the club.” His hand curls into a fist on the wheel and he stops the gas harder than necessary, grinding through the gears on the old beast as soon as the light changes. He doesn’t even notice, which is a real testament to his inner turmoil. When he got out, he bought this truck and took her straight to our garage, poured a ton of love and care into her. Probably a lot of frustration and fear too. Five years is a long time to be out of the world. “I have to be doing something other than feeling fucking helpless.”

I don’t want to ask about her . I’ve spent so much time trying to banish her, but she’s my ghost and she’s never going to leave me. I knew that the second I stared down at my best friend’s little sister, all grown up and heartbreakingly beautiful. She begged me to love her, she opened my eyes to the fact that I already did, and then she changed her mind and took off.

Sent me a text because she wasn’t even brave enough to call.

I’d be a cold bastard if I didn’t ask, so I force the words out. “What about Lark?”

“She’s coming back tomorrow.”

That slams into me like a truck blindsiding us at full speed. I turn my face to the window just in case Raiden’s watching.

He isn’t. I give him a sidelong glance a few minutes later. He’s focused on the road, shifting through gears and double clutching with ease and focus again.

“I’m picking her up from the airport. She had to get things straight with work, find a house sitter, get one of her friends to look in on her cat. She’s holding it together for Penny, but I can tell she’s a wreck.”

She changed her mind, she left, she informed me over text, and then she moved to Ohio, changed her number, let another man love her, and had his child.

I had to hear about all of that secondhand from Raiden over the years, and still, he told me not to drag her back or put a detail on her because she wanted to be left alone.

He stares at me as soon as we pull up at another red. “I know what you’re thinking, but this trumps everything. Any and all mistakes. You feel me?”

I wouldn’t classify abandoning your children because you were ashamed of their choices, a mistake. Lark left. She moved on with some prick who knocked her up and left. Mabel and Henry told her not to come home. I had to find that out from Raiden on one of my visits to the prison. He wouldn’t let Lark visit, but she did write. He was so damn angry, but he stayed true to his promise to her.

“Gray.”

There’s a lot said in just my name. It doesn’t diminish my scalding rage at all.

Is it any wonder that Lark cut off all contact with everyone but her brother? She never wanted to come back here. Hart was something she left in her past, right along with me. She forgot because she had to. She moved on because that’s what it takes to be strong. She’s happy now, dating some proctologist or podiatrist, whatever the fuck he is. Some doctor. She’s done well for herself, according to Raiden.

Every time I hear her name, I want to line my gun up with my chest and shoot myself straight in my soft, pathetic, stupid heart.

It’s taken all my own willpower not to bring her back here, kicking and screaming, and make her mine. My woman. My wife. My partner, my old lady. Mine . Because she moved on, implying I was a mistake, I never could find a way to explain what happened to Raiden. My cowardice has haunted me.

“We’ll be alright. It’s just a rough patch. We’ve got through them before, and we will again. It’s going to be bad for a few months and I’m worried about Lark and how she’ll react to being back. If I was her, I’d hate this place too.”

“Let me know if there’s anything we can do. For real.” For Raiden, I would do anything, even get over how much I despise his parents.

He nods, taking a turn too sharp. Archer’s clinic comes into view. “Let’s take care of you before we worry about that. You look like death and I’m not going to lose anyone else I care about anytime soon.”