Code dictated that although the Bastards might rip your eyeballs from the sockets in retaliation, they wouldn’t kill your wife and kids in the process.

Innocents were left untouched.

That was until Chop laid his hands on my girl.

MY Thia.

The Bastards were now more like a terrorist organization, bound not by loyalty, but by the orders spewed from the mouth of a power-hungry, soulless tyrant. My brothers used to be soldiers, but somewhere along the line they turned into nothing more than obedient dogs tethered by Chop’s very short leashes. The kind of thugs who do the dirty work, tag cells while they’re inside, and contribute little more to the overall good of the club.

There was no more “good-of-the-club.”

The brotherhood part of it was long gone, and in its place was a dictatorship dripping in motor oil, leather, and lies.

When I took off my cut, I didn’t know who I was anymore. The man in me was lost throughout years of thinking that my old man was somehow more than a mere mortal because he was the one who held the gavel and passed down the orders.

Until Ti.

She made me realize that I didn’t need the club to be a biker.

I can live and I can ride.

I can love and I can kill.

It was both the man and the biker in me who was going to put a bullet in Chop’s skull and end this shit because I knew he’d never stop until I was in the ground.

“You first old man,” I muttered to myself.

Code dictated that a brother couldn’t kill another brother.

It was a good fucking thing I wasn’t a Bastard anymore because if and when I got free of those cell bars, the hurt I planned to inflict upon my old man would make what Eli and his pussy ass men did to me look fucking tame by comparison.

Then there was the little matter of my mother suddenly coming back from the dead.

Sadie.

My mother’s name was Sadie Treme. For some reason I hadn’t remembered that until I found myself sitting across from her in the visiting room wondering how the fuck she was even alive.

The bitch could at least have given me the courtesy of staying dead.

I didn’t trust it.

I didn’t trust her.

I had enough shit going on without having to think about the woman who gave birth to me escaping the fucking reaper, only to crawl her way back to the land of the living.

Throughout the years I rarely allowed my thoughts to wander to the woman who gave birth to me. Chop said she was a traitor, so I believed she was a traitor. Rats didn’t have a place in the club or a place among the living. “We don’t give rats a second thought after they’ve been put down. Rats are pests and the only good rat is a dead rat.” He’d said that the very night he’d caught Sadie trying to escape Logan’s Beach with me in the passenger seat. Hours later, he dragged her into the woods and put her down like a fucking rabid dog.

What’s weird is that I don’t remember crying then. A son should cry for his mom when she dies, shouldn’t he? I racked my brain to try and remember any sort of tear shed, but the memories never came.

What did come back were other memories, like the way her long brown hair had almost touched her waist back then. The way her hazel eyes had lit up when my old man paid her any sort of attention. The way she never wore any makeup around her eyes, but her lips were always painted bright red. The way she never sung me lullabies, but was always humming tunes by Tanya Tucker and Waylon Jennings everywhere she’d go.

Those memories couldn’t have been of the same Sadie who sat in front of me in that visitation center. No, the woman who twisted her fingers and kept peering down at her lap was just a shell of the free spirit I remember dancing to the Willie Nelson song she kept playing on repeat on the club jukebox.

She was alive and breathing, but there was something about her. Maybe it was her sunken cheeks or sallow complexion. Or maybe it was the defeated vibe she was giving off that made me wonder if maybe my old man had succeeded in killing her after all.

Sadie and Chop had gotten together when Sadie was only sixteen years old. She was a runaway turned club whore. Five short years after I was born she was gone and that was that.

Then there she was. Almost twenty five years later, sitting across from me, looking me over with her mouth agape as if I were the fucking ghost at the table.

“Why are you here?” I’d asked, not sure of where else to start the conversation or even if I wanted to have one.

“Honestly, I thought I knew and now, actually being here, I’m not really sure why I came,” she’d said meekly, biting her lip and looking everywhere else but me.

“I thought you were dead,” I countered, stating the obvious.

She nodded. “I thought I was, too. Turns out, I was wrong.”

“What does that mean?” I was already over the vague answers, especially when all it caused were more fucking questions.

“It means when your father pulled the trigger I thought I was dead, but I woke up and was surprised then that I was alive as you are now, but I wasn’t free. I was locked somewhere.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, “but the details are fuzzy. I escaped, but honestly I don’t even remember how. As soon as my mind started to clear, I sought you out.”

“You think Chop kept you somewhere all this time?”

Sadie nodded. “Yes, but I don’t know where.”

“How the fuck didn’t you know where you were for twenty fucking years? You don’t think that sounds a little fucking crazy?”

Sadie lifted an arm onto the table, palm up, and pushed up her long sleeve. Her forearm was littered with pockmarks in varying stages of scarring from pink to white. “I do know it sounds crazy,” she said, her eyes finally meeting mine, “but that’s the truth.”

“Say it is the truth, there is still the little matter of why the fuck he would do that,” I pointed out. “Chop has a reason for everything, even the fucked up shit had a fucked up reason. This?” I said, using my hand to gesture to her arm. She pulled her sleeve back down. “I can’t think of any reason for this.”

Sadie continued to tug her sleeve over her hand. “The why doesn’t matter now, Abel. It’s not important anymore. The why doesn’t let me move forward.”

“So why aren’t you already moving forward then? Why come? You don’t think Chop will know you were here? He’s got eyes everywhere, or did twenty-five years of being drugged and locked up make you forget all that?” I said sarcastically, throwing her ridiculous story back in her face. Bitch could have been a junkie who’d recently found sobriety and just wanted to make excuses for her absence in my life for the last three fucking decades.

Ding-dong motherfucker. Chop shot her. Came back out. Told everyone she was dead. Bitch looks alive to me so even if her story isn’t the truth your old man is balls deep in whatever did happen. Ghost Preppy chimed in. I’d been hearing him a lot less since I met Ti and was glad the little fucker was still around. I placed my elbows on the table and covered my mouth with my hands to cover my smile.

Preppy was right, but there was no way I would ever know if she was telling the truth. I wouldn’t put long and prolonged torture past Chop, but why would he lie to everyone about it? There was more to the story, and I didn’t know if Sadie was lying, or if she truly didn’t remember.