Thunder Road: Walk The Edge Part 29

Breanna opens the folder and I lose her the moment she spots the crossword code. Her eyes narrow and dart and her expression completely smooths out. She lays the bylaws next to the code and her eyes dance between the two pages. Her fingers flitter in the air as if she's writing on a chalkboard. If I didn't know better, I'd guess she's in a trance.

It's because of those demons she mentioned that I'm permitting her to have a crack at the code again. If she has a chance of finding my answers, then I have a shot at doing what the club is desperate for me to do-to let go of Mom and finally trust them.

"It's a cipher," she says to herself. "A cipher. So how does the key go into the lock?"

Her fingers skim over the bylaws and she flinches, reminiscent of the day she solved the puzzle in cla.s.s. My muscles tighten and nausea spins through my gut. What if this has nothing to do with Mom? What if this is old or new bulls.h.i.t between the Terror and the Riot and I'm dragging Breanna into a world that will make her a target?

The need to protect her bulldozes through my veins. I can't lose her. Losing Breanna is not an option. My hand flicks out to seize the paper. "I change my mind-"

She's faster than me and is on her feet and across the room. Breanna grabs a pencil and stabs holes into the code-taking out the letters and numbers that are supposed to contain the answers. It's like her mind has fractured.

"What are you doing?" I demand.

She ignores me, tearing at the letters and numbers in such methodical movements that I'm not sure she's aware of anything beyond her thoughts.

"Breanna!" I shout, but she rips out the last number and then slides the paper she mutilated over the bylaws. My world stills, but Breanna tears another piece of paper from the folder and begins to write.

A slow pulse forms in my brain. Letters poke out through the bylaws and the first word is a name. All the years of twisting comes to a head-it's my mother's name. It's Layla.

The first code, the one that caused me to forbid Breanna to continue, said to consider this our warning shot.

"Razor," Breanna says as if she's attempting to talk me off a ledge. "Look at me."

I can't. I can focus only on my mother's name. In the detective's file, that code was the first and the one containing my mother's name was the second. The first code a warning-the second one...

"Razor," she says again. "You don't know for sure what it means."

Yeah, I really f.u.c.king do know. Anger reverberates between my muscles and bones. The Riot killed my mother and everyone in this club f.u.c.king knew. Everyone but me.

I round for the door, feeling like a freight train. My fists ball at my sides. The answers are coming, even if it means beating the h.e.l.l out of someone.

Breanna's voice calls behind me, but it's like she's on the opposite end of a long tunnel. She sure as s.h.i.t is shouting, but there's a vibration in my brain driving me now. The storm within me has been building for years and I'm seconds away from destructive landfall.

Oz bolts from the kitchen, clutching my biceps, shouting, but I don't hear any words. Just a loud buzz, just my brain cracking in half. He's pulling on my arm, but I'm a bull going for the target. My hand slams into the screen door and I'm on the front porch.

Chevy had been laughing, but his face falls. He plants his feet and tosses out his arms in an attempt to slow me down. Another yank back and it's Oz still pulling on my arm. The buzzing in my brain gets louder, Oz and Chevy are in my s.p.a.ce, but they can't halt my momentum.

The guys from the board are at a smaller bonfire near the tree line. They're laughing. Talking s.h.i.t. Enjoying the fact that they've tried to play with my life. Yelling. Loud shouts. It's near me, but the chaos controlling me makes it incoherent.

Each man glances up and, like Chevy, they stare at me like I've lost my mind. I have. I've gone f.u.c.king crazy. Pigpen's on the move. His hands are a stop sign and Eli's hustling fast to the left, his mouth spewing something, but I'm tracking my father.

He tosses down his beer and has the nerve to act like he's concerned.

"You can't hit a brother! You can't hit a brother!" It's Oz and Chevy. They're tackling me. Reminding me of a club rule. f.u.c.k the club because the club has f.u.c.ked me over.

I'm fighting them like I'm the Colts' offense, but when I gain no ground, I look my father straight in the eye. "The Riot killed her. The Riot f.u.c.king murdered my mother!"

It's silence. A stillness that causes a cold chill to slither down my spine. The buzzing is gone and my two best friends are no longer battling me, but curling their fingers into my arms as if to hold all three of us up.

"All those years." A wave of hurt crashes into me. "I blamed myself. I carried her death like a cross, and this club, this family, let me slowly die because I wasn't worthy of the truth."

"Who told you?" Anger replaces my father's shock. "Did you visit the detective?"

Oz and Chevy release me as they also regard me like I'm capable of that type of betrayal. "That's what you think of me, isn't it? Disloyal?"

"How else?" Dad shouts.

"Enough!" Cyrus expects compliance. "This isn't the time or the place."

"There's never a time or a place!" I yell. "We're doing this now!"

Cyrus steps in front of me and he's not the man I've claimed as a surrogate grandfather but the bada.s.s biker I've seen take men down in a brawl. "Either you take your girl home or I have someone do it for you. Seventeen and here this time of night is nonnegotiable."

His eyes sway to beyond my shoulder and my stomach knots. Breanna. f.u.c.k me, I forgot about Breanna. On the front porch steps, Emily has an arm around Breanna's shoulders and the two prospects a.s.signed to Emily's protection have created a barrier at the bottom of the steps. I abandoned her, just like I promised I wouldn't.

I swing my glare back at my father. "There was a code in the detective's file. Two of them. I took pictures."

There's a muttered curse behind me as they solve the puzzle of how I figured it out.

"I never talked to the detective again. Doing it would have made life easier, but I'm loyal." I shove the words like a knife into his heart. "Nice to know what everyone thinks of me."

As I walk for my girl, Eli captures my arm and exerts enough force that I stop because I'm too f.u.c.king exhausted to throw a punch. "What?"

"There are moving parts to this problem. s.h.i.t you can't begin to comprehend. You get her home, then you come back here. You're still a part of this club and that is a f.u.c.king order."

Am I still a part of this club? Was this cut mine to begin with? Was it nothing more than a pity offering from men who don't respect me?

Eli releases me, and as I continue toward Breanna, I remember what she's said about her family, about how happiness in numbers is an illusion. Maybe she's right. Maybe no matter how much faith we try to put into the idea of family, in the end, we're f.u.c.ked.

RAZOR.

I FLY INTO the open s.p.a.ce near the clubhouse going double what I normally do. Kerosene's running in my veins and I'm thirty seconds away from someone striking a match.

Breanna appeared lost when I dropped her off. She hugged me, I hugged her and it was difficult to let her go and return to this nest of liars. My fists are aching to punch someone for this entire d.a.m.n day. Everything's a f.u.c.king mess and I don't know how to stem the bleeding from the multiple hits I've taken.

The party that was supposed to be for me is out of control, just like I am on the inside. I stalk through the crowd and a couple guys call my name, wondering where I've been, and one girl has the nerve to slip in front of me like I'll skid to a halt because she's wearing next to nothing. But I'm on the warpath, stopping for no one.

I'm up the stairs and don't bother knocking as I enter the boardroom. There had been conversation, but it goes silent when the door shuts behind me. All of them are here, all of them seated at the long wooden table, and they all look at me. Each and every member of the board including Cyrus, Eli, Pigpen and my father.

Pigpen hooks his foot around the metal folding chair Eli sat in weeks before and it sc.r.a.pes against the tiles. The floor beneath me pulses with the beat of the turned-up ba.s.s from the music downstairs. My steps fall in time with the rhythm. I take the seat, and this time it's not Eli sitting across from me, but my father.

We're eye to eye. His green ones peer into Mom's blue ones. There're a million questions in my head. A heart full of anger, rage that belongs to a man, but there are times when I'm before my father that a part of me feels like I'm ten.

A cramping in my gut.

Ten.

Years have pa.s.sed. My body has aged. Knowledge has been gained, but a piece of my soul has remained frozen.

The board's right-I've never moved past Mom.

"Did you love her?" I ask.

Dad jolts as if the question shocks him.

"You fought," I continue. "A lot. So tell me if you f.u.c.king loved her."

Dad rests his arms on the table and leans toward me. "I loved her more than I loved anything else in my life. You're my son, and you've gone through h.e.l.l, but ever question my love for her again and I'll lay you out."

I nod and on the outside I'm still as stone, but that ten-year-old boy on the inside collapses in tears. Lots of tears. Tears that I have never f.u.c.king shed.

"I was on the phone with her while they chased her," he says. "I listened to her as she was begging for me to help. I listened as she understood we weren't going to get there fast enough and I listened as she told me that she loved me and you more than she loved her own life. Did I love her? Yeah, I loved her and I had to listen helplessly as the woman I loved died."

I drop my head into my hands and wetness burns my eyes. She loved me. My mother loved me.

"Your mother drew the Riot away," says Cyrus in a quiet voice that's too sorrowful for the loud noises seeping in from below. "When she came out of work, she found the code stuck under her windshield and she knew the Riot was near. She didn't know what it meant, but she knew it was bad. She called your father, he told her to get to the clubhouse, but she refused to go there."

"Why?" My voice comes out cracked.

There's silence in the room, and when I glance up, most everyone is focused on the table, but Dad's watching me. "Things were building up to bad with the Riot. It's why your mom and I fought. Same s.h.i.t that had gone down with the Riot years before was happening again and she was scared for me."

Because years ago, Dad almost died in the fight for Emily's safety. Dim memories of hushed hospital rooms and the man I believed invincible in a bed. Mom in tears by his side, Olivia whispering to me that he was strong and me clinging to Cyrus's hand like if I let go I would tumble down a dark hole.

"Olivia was watching you and your mother refused to draw them anywhere near you, which meant she wouldn't come anywhere near the clubhouse."

It's too much. Too f.u.c.king much and I breathe in but the air doesn't reach my lungs. "Did she know about the code?"

"Yes and no," Dad answers. "She saw a different piece of code once in my belongings. Your mom was quick. Realized by my reaction when I saw it in her hands it was related to the Riot, but didn't know much else. This was that messed-up period after Eli was released from prison. The Riot was p.i.s.sed he got out on parole and they wanted to renege on the deal made to keep peace between our clubs. They demanded we hand over Eli. We told them to go f.u.c.k themselves. So we began negotiating. Communicating through the code and short meetings."

"Why code?" I ask.

"Law enforcement has always been after them," Eli explains. "Made them paranoid. They didn't like putting anything in writing. Face-to-face meetings were risky for both sides-too many p.i.s.sed-off people with guns. We first used the code when they found out Meg was pregnant with Emily. She knew all their different ways of translating the code. When the stakes between our clubs were being raised and they felt that law enforcement was on the edge of cracking the code we were using, they stole a copy of our bylaws, sent the code to Meg, and she knew how to decipher it. That's how we've always communicated with them. The code worked. Kept our people safe while we tried to keep the Riot calm."

"Eventually," Dad adds, picking up the thread, "when it was clear we weren't handing Eli over to them, they sent the list."

Cyrus slides a piece of paper in front of me and I recognize my father's handwriting. Dad must have been the one to translate the Riot's message. The name at the top is my mother's. The next Olivia's, and it goes down the line of the wives of club members. Anger ripples through me. "They were willing to go after women?"

Eli's seat creaks when he adjusts. His legs are out straight, his arms crossed over his chest, and it's one of the rare times he won't make eye contact. "When holy h.e.l.l broke out over Emily and her mom before I went to prison, the Riot went after club members. After I lost custody of Emily when I went to prison, they decided to make it personal."

My hand slams on the table. "Why the f.u.c.k didn't you take the warning shot seriously? I saw the message. Breanna broke it. They warned you this was coming."

He lifts his dark eyes and the regret swimming in them smacks me in the stomach. "Both codes came together and we got it five minutes before your mother called. We didn't even have it completely deciphered before your mother was being tailed out of the parking lot."

"Why did they leave the code with Mom? She wasn't Terror."

The room falls silent and all eyes are on Dad. Finally, he speaks. "They wanted me to find it. Guess they figured she'd call, figured I would find it in her car if they abducted her, or if they did mean for her to go over the bridge, I guess they thought I'd find it in the aftermath. The Riot wanted me to know that I couldn't save the woman I loved from them. They wanted to show that they were in control, that they held the power."

"Razor," Eli says, "I would have handed myself over on a d.a.m.ned platter for your mother, but I was never given the chance. Your mother was the warning shot."

My body sways as if I've been sucked into an undertow. My mother never had a chance. She never had a f.u.c.king chance and she drove away from help to save me. My lips turn down and it's hard as h.e.l.l to ignore the raw ache in my throat. "Was she forced off or did she go over to save herself?"

Dad and Eli shrug their shoulders to show that they're both haunted by the unknown.

"She died on impact," Eli says. "Your dad stayed at the clubhouse talking with her while the rest of us tore off to try to catch up. She told your dad that they were coming up beside her. Our best guess is that they tried to cut her off at the bridge to force her out of the car and that's when she went over. Maybe she lost control of the car. Maybe she saw that as her best chance at life. I'm sorry, but we don't know."

Fear. My mother's last emotion was fear. My fingers tunnel in my hair and I pull, hoping the physical pain can somehow wipe this internal agony away. "Why not tell me? Why lie to me about how she died?"

"You were ten," Dad says like he's experiencing the same pain. "When I walked in Olivia's house with your mother's blood on my hands, I went down the hallway and found you on that bed with your friends and with your arm slung over that dog. You looked peaceful. I couldn't wake you and look you in the eye and tell you that I f.u.c.king failed you. That your mother died because some a.s.shole club ran her off the road and I failed to protect her."

I thrust back the seat so that I'm no longer at the table and settle my elbows on my legs. My foot begins to bounce on the floor as the sadness and anger within me builds to the brink of explosion. "But I'm not ten anymore. I haven't been ten for a long time."

"No, son, you haven't, but there were eight other names on that list and we had to make sure no one would suffer the same fate as your mother. We did what needed to be done and we secured everyone's safety. Olivia, Rebecca-the two women you loved the most after your mother would have been next."

It's not an answer and this insanity that has always crawled along my skin demands the truth. "I spent eight years of my life thinking she left me on purpose. Eight years of thinking I wasn't enough."

"We didn't know that's what you thought. We-"

"Bulls.h.i.t," I shout. "That's f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.t, and you know it. Why didn't you tell me?"

Dad collapses back in his seat. "Because I promised not to."

"Because the board told you not to?" I demand.

A muscle in his jaw jerks and his eyes pierce me. "Because the last words your mother said to me were to make sure you never joined the club, and if I couldn't promise her that, that I never tell you what happened, because she knew me."

He pounds his hand to his chest. "She knew how broken I was on the inside. She knew how f.u.c.king crazy I'd become after her death, and she didn't want those demons inside you. She knew what I would do if she died, and she sure as h.e.l.l didn't want you to grow up and become the dead man I am. She begged me before she went off that bridge to make sure this war did not become generational. You and I both know that if I told you, that if you grew up knowing that the Riot was responsible for your mother's death, this entire club would be at war. She knew that when you became old enough, you would be leading the charge."

"It's too late." All the anger, all the pain pours out. "I'm already dead. There's nothing inside me. The first time someone told me she chose death over life, I died and it's too d.a.m.ned late for me now."

"That's not true." Dad's expression turns into a plea. "Maybe it was, but I've been watching you. Over the past few weeks it's like seeing you reborn. The boy who loved his mother. The boy who laughed when his mother laughed, I've seen him."

I'm shaking my head. "It's not me. It's being around Breanna. She loves me, but I'm still dying." Every second of every day, I'm still withering.

"This girl may love you, but you had to alter something inside you for the changes we're seeing. Someone's love can only hold together broken pieces for so long. The glue, that's you-and I've been witnessing you piece yourself back together."

It sure as h.e.l.l doesn't feel like I'm on the mend. "You're wrong."

"I'm not, because I've loved you and so have half the people in this club and we've never been enough. She might love you, but you're happy because you're loving her back."

"I've loved you back."

"You haven't," he says with finality. "Not fully. You can't fully love someone unless you trust them and you have never trusted any of us."

He leaves it unsaid that I somehow found a way to trust Breanna, but not them. It's like I'm on a forsaken merry-go-round. The ride starts. The ride stops. We never go anywhere but in circles. I slump forward, too heavy to hold myself up. Too heavy to continue to shoulder all the s.h.i.t that constantly tears me apart. "She's never lied to me."

"You're the same as me. We keep our promises. I made a promise to your mother and I love her enough to keep it."

"Even if it hurt me?"