Authors: Kaylee Song
Aidan
I pounded into the bag over and over again. Slam after slam after slam. It wasn’t because I was angry. No, it had everything to do with my training. I needed to stay in shape, stay strong for Emma.
For the club.
“You ready to spar?” I turn to see Desmond Quinby walking towards me. He’d already warmed up.
“Yeah, man.”
He was one of the only people I talked to outside of the club. I didn’t have a lot of friends before they gave me a job, gave me a life, but he was home from the Middle East and the same age as me. Retired, though. Not wounded.
We met one of those PTSD groups the VA promoted. He’d asked anyone if knew any good gyms and I was the only guy to suggest one that wasn’t a chain.
When he signed up the next day, we started talking. Turned out, he was a damn good boxer. So we became sparing partners.
“You sure you don’t want in on the next fight? I bet Bart could get you in.”
“Nah, man. You know.” I didn’t take a fight, not even when I wasn’t earning any money.
“I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to keep tempting you.” He grinned and punched his gloves together.
Desmond was always trying to get me to fight. He swore I was excellent and that I’d attract a lot large audience.
Trouble was, I had no interest in it.
I stepped into the ring and nodded at him, making sure my mouthpiece was in place. There were three essentials for this sort of thing: gloves, headwear and mouthpiece. Neglect one and you’d be hurting. We never tried to destroy each other, but we didn’t show mercy either.
The point of it was to improve our accuracy, our ability to dodge, and our strategy.
He got out the first few punches. I dodged two, missed the uppercut and then landed one of my own.
It went on like that for a good thirty minutes before Bart called for me.
“Aidan. You need to come here.” The long ass cord of a phone was trailing from his hand.
“What?”
“It’s your shop. They say they need to talk to you.”
I hadn’t told the guys I was with an MC. In fact I’d been very careful not to say anything at all about it. They knew I was a mechanic and that I worked with a bunch of guys I hung out with. I wore my vest, but changed out of it quickly most days. If they knew I was cut, it was because they weren’t stupid. Either way, I didn’t expect them to understand.
“Great. I’ll be right there.”
I climbed down from the ring and threw off my gloves, grabbing the phone.
“What’s up?”
“Whenever you’re done playing Mike Tyson, get your ass over here. We found him.”
“Samuel?” I asked.
Strike was tracking down a man. Rage was tracking down another. And now, so was I.
We all had our fucking vendettas.
Today was my lucky day.
“Yeah. Wanna get moving on this. Now. Strike gave us a call. Got a location.”
Strike had been more than willing to help look for the bastard. He didn’t even consider it a favor that needed to be paid back. One of the pompous bastard’s more surprising quirks was the fact that he hated men who beat on women. He said the only place for that shit was in the bedroom.
“I’ll be right over.” I handed the phone back to Bart.
“What?! You’re leaving already?” Desmond asked, “We were just getting started, man.”
“Yeah, I got work shit. You know how it is.”
“I do. You be careful, I know that place. They ain’t so innocent, man.” He was talking about the club, and I knew it.
I just nodded.
I needed to get the fuck out of there and find that bastard before I took my anger out on someone else.
Emma
I clung to my gym bag as I entered the little gym. I was on my own, but Aidan had picked up everything I needed.
I headed right to the women’s locker room and changed, making sure to put my hair up.
I looked in the mirror. The woman staring back at me was a little bruised up still. She barely looked like me. But she was alive.
I’d been all smiles for Aidan and had stayed at the clubhouse to avoid scaring Kim, the truth was that I felt strange these days, more vulnerable. I felt like a fourteen year old again, but without my old lack of context.
Back then I hadn’t fully understood how ugly it could get. I’d seen it, but there was a difference between seeing pieces and seeing the whole picture.
The whole picture scared the shit out of me.
I had felt so safe on campus, and I’d taken that for granted. No every time I went somewhere, I was carefully looking over my shoulder. And I kept questioning myself.
Problem was, I should’ve known better than to go out on my own. I’d been stupid. Some warped part of my brain kept telling me I deserved what I had gotten.
Aidan had disagreed. He wanted me to know my own strength and to be able to defend myself.
I sighed and rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen up. I had made a promise to him that I would try this. I might as well get my head in the game.
It was tough, though. I felt so conflicted.
A part of me knew I was strong, but there was still this deep vulnerability that had me blaming myself for what happened. I knew basic self-defense, and I was strong enough to handle the men at the bar. Samuel hadn’t gotten the best of me because he was stronger. He was quicker, sure. I was out of practice and he… well, he never stopped ‘practicing’ with those fists.
No, Samuel had overcome me because I’d let him get in my head.
I didn’t need strength training. I needed to get back in the habit. To get my body back to the point where it was all second nature. Then, even if Samuel did fuck with my head, my body would still be able to react.
I felt steadier now that I knew what I needed, and I slammed my locker shut and headed out to the main room.
“Emma. Good to see you again.” Bart smiled at me. “You ready to start beating the shit out a bag?”
“I think so.” I grinned at him and followed him back to the corner where all of the speed and body bags were.
“It’s not that hard, really. Have you ever done any fitness videos with kickboxing or anything like that?”
I shook my head. I walked, I ran, and I did play a few intramural sports at school, but I never actually got into boxing. “Just the defense training. A few years back.”
“Well that’s alright. Just. Show me what you’ve got.” He gestured to the bag. “Punch it.”
I planted my feet and hit it as hard as I could.
“Good. Good. Set those feet apart, solid now. Move back and forth. See? You’ve got that. When in doubt, always make sure you’ve got that center of gravity. We just need teach you a little bit of control.” He eyed me a moment, then patted the bag. “Plant your left food behind your right.” He got into position and then so did I. “Right, very good. Now use your hip as you punch.”
I did as he asked.
“Good, good. Again. Again. Again.”
I punched over and over again, stepping back to switch up my feet as I went back and forth between arms.
Before I knew it I was going at a good speed, laying into the bag. It felt so good to be at this stuff again, like my body craved the exertion.
“You’re a natural kid. Keep practicing while I go handle some stuff. I’ll be over at the desk if you need me.”
Somehow I lost track of time. I focused on that bag and my own strength, savoring the burn in my body.
Pop, pop-pop-pound. Pomp-pomp-pound
. I kept at it until some of the poison began to ease out of my soul. It felt so good to get it out. To take control, as Bart said.
One. Two. One. Two. I embraced the rhythm, let it build faster.
Take control of my body, take control of my own strength. For too long I’d been living in a world where I let everyone else control me. Where I didn’t recognize my own ability to make things happen.
For years, I hadn’t let anything stand in the way of my studies. But lately I had gotten in my own way, getting complacent, ignoring the fact that if I just sat down and figured it out, I could focus on school and enjoy Aidan at the same time.
Nothing was impossible.
I’d learned a long time ago, I could do anything if I fought for it.
Succeed or die trying
.
I had gotten myself out of the hellhole I had lived in as a child.
I provided for myself every day.
I worked and went to school full time.
I did it, not always on my own, but I did it.
I had strength. Power.
And I wasn’t going to let people push me around. I was in charge of me. I could defend myself.
The past year or so, I’d just been acting tough. I had forgotten that I really was strong. I focused on pounding the bag, but I also thought about my entire life. About everything I’d been through and everywhere I was going.
It was easy to see how much I’ve done when I was thinking about it. And I wanted to do so much more. But I needed to let the past be the past. Resolve it and put it behind me.
I needed to overcome it.
Pound. Pound. Pound
. Solid hits.
Yeah. That felt right.
I made up my mind. I was going to give my mother a call. But first, I wanted to beat the shit out of this punching bag.
Aidan
“This the place?” I pointed to a little hovel in McKees Rocks.
“Yeah. This’s the place.” Thrash shook his head in disgust. It was a shit hole of a place, and I swore from the worn paint and the sagging roof that it was going to fall in on itself at any moment.
“Go in the back or the front?” I asked as we came closer.
Thrash checked a window. “I don’t think it matters. Look at these junkies, man, they have no fucking idea what’s going on.” He walked up to the door and turned the knob. It wasn’t even locked.
We were greeted with vacant stares as we entered into the home. The air smelled putrid. The stench of human excretions and chemicals from the drug cooking made me want to turn and flat-out run right back to our bikes. This shit was sick.
But we had to find him. He needed to pay for the shit he was doing to Emma.
Fuck. He needed to pay for
this
. A looked down at a bag of bones at my feet. He was naked except for a ratty t-shirt, his limbs covered in dirt and track marks. How many lives had Samuel ruined with this shit?
We weren’t blind. Most of his customer base was made up of women, but there were enough men – some emaciated, all twitching – to make me wonder what the hell he was up to.
We had to search around for someone who was able to still speak. The one he found was only a little better than the rest.
“Where’s Samuel?” Rage asked.
“What?” the man mumbled, looking around as though a ghost had spoken in his ear.
“Samuel. Where is he?”
I asked looking around. There wasn’t a fucking sober person in the place. He should’ve known better. This shit was dangerous, and he didn’t even have protection.
How the hell had this bastard lived this long?
“Uh, check the basement, man. If he ain’t there, he’s out. You wanna score?”
“No man, just need to talk to Samuel.”
We walked through the hallway, trying doors until we found one that led to the basement.
“Always the fucking basement,” Thrash muttered as he walked down the creaky wooden steps. The stairway was so narrow and steep we braced our arms on the walls as we descended to keep from falling.
The basement was actually in better shape than the rest of the house, the walls waterproofed and painted. It was like a little apartment.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find a bed down there, one large enough for Samuel and the four women he had in it, but I was a little shocked to see what was happening.
It was a fucking orgy. Two of the women were skin and bones, while another jiggled with every movement. Heroin was not kind to the bodies of well-rounded women. The last girl looked like she was still new, but the bruises on her made me ill.
Jesus fucking Christ
.
I choked down a mouthful of vomit, and that got the attention of the bastard in the bed.
“What the hell?” Samuel shot up, and we all drew our guns, backing off the stairs.
“Freeze, motherfucker.”
Thrash tilted his gun back to the staircase. “Ladies, you need to leave.”
The women who had noticed us looked at Thrash, confused. The other two just kept going at it. They were too busy kissing and touching each other to realize what was going on.
They had to be high as fuck.
Rage backed Samuel back off the bed, while Thrash and I swooped in to watch his back. Just in case any of the women got any ideas.
“Get out of here, you hear me?” Thrash pushed the writhing pair with his boot and they started. One actually growled at us, her eyes wide and vicious.
“Do as the men with the guns say, girls. Get your asses up out of here. Now!” Samuel barked at them. They ran past us and up the stairs immediately.
Shit, some of them had to be underage. They didn’t look old enough for this shit.
My blood boiled. This shit was not going to fly. My finger itched on the trigger, but I held my hands steady, glancing at Rage.
As for Samuel? Fucker rose up, naked and unafraid, and walked over to his desk.
“What the fuck, man? If you wanted some smack I could’ve hooked you up. You don’t need to come barging up in here. This is my place of relaxation.” Samuel wasn’t high, but he was a little drunk.
Good.
I wanted to smash his head on the walls of that basement, watch the bones and blood and guts smear down the paneling.
“Could hook you up with some pussy, too. Use a rubber, but they’ll fuck anything.” He smirked, glancing down at where to two girls had been at it.
That was it. I grabbed him and slammed him against his own damn wall.
“What the fuck, man?”
He didn’t seem to know who I was, so maybe he wasn’t stalking my girl that closely.
“You think it’s okay to fuck with little girls? To beat up women and leave them for dead?” I slammed him against the wall again. A trickle of blood travelled down his face. He had bitten his lip.
“You fucked with the wrong man’s girl, motherfucker.”
This time his pupils dilated and his eyes registered me.
“Ah, so that’s what this is, huh? A friendly visit to beat me up because your little whore screwed me over first? I was just getting my pay back.”
“Emma isn’t anyone’s whore.” Rage said, his voice was measured, like he too was teetering on the edge. “Do you know who we are?”
His eyes travelled between us. He might not know we were an MC, but he knew we were a helluva lot of trouble for him.
Rage kept his voice even. “You don’t fucking mess with anyone in my club. You understand? That’s how you end up on the wrong side of us, and on the wrong side of the family, too. Is that what you want?”
Samuel didn’t say shit.
I punched him in the face. Once. Twice. “Answer, motherfucker.”
He hissed with outrage, spitting blood on my shoe. “You think I don’t have connections too? This shit is not going to blow back well on you.”
I kneed him in the face.
“Doesn’t fucking matter, because you’ll be one dead cockroach. You think anyone is going to care about a piece of shit pimp like you?” I asked, sneering. “Motherfucker, I will end you.”
“Wrath –” Rage started, but I held up my free hand.
“What would you do if it was your girl?”
“… This motherfucker would already be floating in the river. You know that.”
“Hell, yeah, I do. I’ll throw his ass in the Ohio when we’re done with him.” I socked him right in the fucking jaw, and this time I felt teeth crunch. He howled, flailing away from me.
He’d run Emma out of her home, he’d made her feel unsafe. He fucking put her in the hospital and he was going to pay for it.
But I’d looked her in the eyes and told her I wouldn’t kill him.
God dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit…
I wanted to break his neck. Just brace my hand around his jaw and shoulder and twist. God help me, I did. She’d never have to know. We could lie. She’d never find out.
But I made a promise.
So I released my hand from his neck and grabbed his arm instead, using all my force to bend it back until the familiar snap of bone greeted my ears. And then I smiled.
He screamed in pain. “
Fuck
!”
“Fuck you.” I spit on him. “You are a lucky motherfucker,” I whispered in his ear. “I made a promise not to kill anyone. And I guess you are anyone. So I’m going to let it fucking go. This time. You leave Pittsburgh, you leave all this shit, you hear me? You don’t talk to Emma or her mother. You get the fuck out of here. Now. Because if I hear you blew me off, I’ll kill you. This is the only warning you will get.”
He looked from me to Rage and Thrash. They stood over him waiting. There was no mercy to be found in them.
The fucker got the hell up and took off running. He was a creepy little shit. We’d have to ask Strike to keep an ear out for him. But men like that preferred to keep their skin intact.
“Well, that was quick, and mostly painless,” Thrash said as we headed back up the steps. “I’m so fucking sick of basements. Why does every fucking creep have to be in a basement?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I just shrugged.
Rage stopped me at the head of the stairs, his expression serious. “You took charge. I’m pretty impressed. But you need to understand. Loose ends have consequences. That motherfucker might not leave town. He might prove to be a real pain in the ass.”
“I made a promise to Emma.”
“I know man, but loose ends, you know? They have a way of coming back to you.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, like he was thinking of one of his own issues.
“Eh, well. Let’s get going. We’ve got other shit to do,” Rage said. “Just got a call from Strike, you ready for another round with the motherfucker fucking with him?”
I nodded, if Strike was going to do all this for me, then I sure as hell owed him some loyalty, too.
“Good, cause first we gotta go to church.”
Rage was right. This was just the beginning.