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  Savage Redemption

  “My life was all about revenge until I met her.”

  I want them destroyed.

  The Anarchists killed my father, haunt me and my brother, and seek to destroy my club, the Savage Kings.

  For years, I have stopped at nothing to annihilate them.

  But for years, I also never forgot her.

  She was everything to me.

  She brought joy to my life.

  And I had to leave her without explanation.

  But a chance encounter has brought her back to me.

  And now, everything has changed.

  My life is now all about having her—and nothing can stop me.

  * * *

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  Darkened Souls

  Carter Steele

  Contents

  1. Petey

  2. Anna

  3. Petey

  4. Anna

  5. Petey

  6. Anna

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  1

  Petey

  My hand shook as I stared at Brock’s name pop up on my phone. The hairs on my neck stood up as I heard Anna’s concerned reply to me. I rose from the bed where I had just made the best love I’d had in years, walked out of the room naked, and found a chair to sit down in. With a deep breath, I answered the call.

  “Brock, what’s going on?” I said. “You know you’re only supposed to interrupt me in the case of an emergency.”

  He wasn’t stupid. I knew that’s why he was calling me. I just wanted to believe that he had somehow forgotten that and was calling me to make a stupid joke.

  “I wish that wasn’t the case, Petey,” he said, and I could immediately tell by the tone of his voice that something very unfortunate had happened. “I need you to come to Main and 4th Street. And hurry before Sheriff Jones gets here.”

  “Brock?”

  “It’s an officer, Petey.”

  He hung up. I stared at my phone blankly. He wouldn’t have called if an officer had an accident. There was only one plausible scenario.

  One of our officers had been killed by an Anarchist.

  The Anarchists had officially announced they were ready for war. And they were doing it by striking us where it hurt the most.

  The phone fell out of my hands. I buried my head into the table, feeling defeated. All that work that the club had done to defeat the Anarchists, and like a hydra, they’d just grown more heads after we’d cut off several other ones. I normally advocated calm and patience, but this was testing the limits of my understanding with that.

  I turned around to get my clothes on when I saw Anna standing in the doorframe, having put on a night robe over her naked body. She looked so beautiful, and yet she looked so scared. She swallowed and stood in place.

  “Petey?” she said. “What’s happening?”

  I had only told the truth to her so far. I saw no reason to stop that, especially since this was going to make the news anyways.

  “An officer in the club has been murdered,” I said. “And judging by the way Brock spoke to me, it was probably because of an Anarchist.”

  “Jesus…”

  Her voice trailed off. I had to remind myself, as her eyes welled and her lip quivered, that she did not know the world of violence like I did. Losing a friend or even an acquaintance in the club never got easier, but the days of cursing out God, breaking things, or going on a drunken bender in response had long passed. Now, such tragedies were marked with a grim acceptance that all of us were going to die; some of us were just going to have more peaceful last moments than the rest.

  “Are you going to go?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s an officer. I have to.”

  “Do you?”

  Oh, Jesus, I can’t be having this right now.

  “I do,” I said. “It’s the club, Anna. The club—”

  “I thought you said at the restaurant that you had the night off from club duties.”

  Christ, seriously? I was trying my hardest not to show my contempt for Anna’s selfishness, but it took a lot more effort to hide a judgment than it did excitement.

  “Yes, if the club duties involved keeping a lookout or a patrol,” I said slowly. “But when tragedy strikes the club, we take care of it. If your mother suddenly died tonight, you wouldn’t want to stay here with me, would you?”

  I moved past her to get my clothes on. But when I tried to go through the door, Anna wouldn’t budge.

  “That’s family. This is different.”

  No, it’s not. Not even close. Not even slightly close.

  I took a deep breath, raised my hands defensively, and then dropped them as I tried to find the right words.

  “You ever hear the saying, you make your own family?”

  Anna nodded.

  “You know how some families don’t have idyllic upbringings and have their own fights?”

  Again, Anna nodded.

  “The club has been there for me for the last fifteen years. I owe them everything in my life. If they need me, Anna, they come first. OK? I would have absolutely spent the night with you tonight if anything other than this happened. But it did, and so I had to go.”

  A tear streaked down Anna’s face. I found the sight ridiculous and a bit of a red flag; I guess an empathic tear wasn’t a bad thing, but she sure didn’t seem to appreciate what the club meant for me. The first rule of the Savage Kings was the club came first. We weren’t inflexible in that regard—the birth of a child, for example, could excuse absence from a lot of things—but the principle was absolute. We had to safeguard our devotion and commitment to the club.

  I kept waiting for Anna to say something more, to criticize me or yell at me. I waited for that spark that would turn a brewing tension into a loud yelling match.

  But it never came. Maybe she just recognized I wouldn’t change. Maybe she knew it wasn’t worth her time.

  Or… maybe she recognized that, because of this, we wouldn’t work out.

  I refused to entertain that thought any longer. I had to take care of club business, but as soon as that happened, I would come back to her. There was an adjustment period in all of these matters. Some adjustments just took a little more time to adapt to than others.

  I finished getting dressed and put my hands on Anna’s shoulders. A few more tears had fallen, though she had avoided turning into a hysterical mess.

  “I’ll come to you as soon as I can,” I said. “Even if that means coming to one of your classes. You can forgive me if I pay later, right?”

  Anna didn’t laugh at the joke. She just nodded silently, her lips incapable of moving. It suddenly seemed very inappropriate for me to kiss her. So, feeling entirely unsatisfied, I just pulled her in for a hug, kissed the top of her head, and then wished her good night.

  I got all the way to the door before I finally heard her gasp in a prelude to tears.

  * * *

  I arrived on scene to see almost everyone from the club already there. I had put my thoughts of Anna behind as soon as I had shut her door. I hadn’t considered what her inevitable crying meant or what me leaving meant to our long-term relationship, if you could even call it that. I was only concerned about the officer who had been murdered.

  It obviously wasn’t Brock. I doubted it was Landon, given that Brock had not lost his shit on the phone. That left Parker, Zane, Tyus, and William. None of the four had some special status that made them more or less likely of a target, although Parker’s military background made me think that he wasn’t the one who had gotten killed. Then again, a surpri
se bullet kills a Marine just like it kills a civilian.

  I hopped off my bike and ran over. Brock saw me and walked over. I also saw Zane standing over the body, leaving just three possibilities.

  “Got here as quickly as I could,” I said. “The hell happened?”

  “Setting up patrol and I guess the Anarchists figured this would be the edge of our perimeter,” he said. “They attacked and took out them out.”

  I sighed and pushed past Brock to see who had fallen. The prospect was someone on the verge of earning his cut, a man named Dumbbell that we had affectionately nicknamed as a means of suggesting he get in the gym. The sight of him lying on the ground, a bullet wound in his head, was painful enough.

  And then I saw the officer.

  “Tyus…”

  I crouched down and examined him. He’d taken multiple wounds to the chest and to the head. There was no chance that he had survived for long; the number of wounds suggested that someone had decked him, only to come over and deliver several gratuitous rounds.

  I stood, my hands on my head, reeling. Tyus’ death hit me because of how long he’d been in the club before becoming an officer. He wasn’t as old as me, but as far as service time in the club went, he had guys like Zane and Landon easily beat. He was someone I could easily see being a lifer.

  And now, he was dead in the street.

  “Sheriff Jones is on his way,” Brock said, more to the group than to me specifically. “I’m going to remain behind to talk to the Sheriff. Everyone else, go home.”

  A few grunts and questions came up, but Brock held firm. I didn’t react in any way; I kept staring at Tyus, wondering what the hell he was thinking when he’d gotten shot. He had spent so much of his time devoted to the club, and now he was gone.

  I knew that he had once had a girlfriend that he had talked about marrying, but it hadn’t gone anywhere. He’d never wanted kids; he said that the club gave him all the children he needed to take care of. I gave a tragic laugh at that memory.

  Was it enough? Did Tyus feel happy with that decision? Or did he secretly yearn for more?

  “Petey.”

  I snapped out of my haze and turned to see Brock.

  “You can go home if you want.”

  But I refused to allow it.

  “Tyus is a brother of ours,” I said. “And on a night like tonight, I think I can best help by being here. You can’t be out here on your own, anyways.”

  That was a lot more of an altruistic answer than was actually the case. But Brock didn’t question it. He just nodded, patted my arm, and pulled me in for a hug.

  “I’m sorry, brother.”

  We’re both sorry for many, many reasons.

  It’s gone from one of the best nights in recent memory to easily one of the worst.

  2

  Anna

  Tears streamed down my face as the sobbing and crying that I had held in for the previous five minutes all came flooding out. I fell to the floor, slumped against the wall, and let everything come gushing out.

  Just because we’d moved from sexual to romantic didn’t mean that anything had really changed. Petey was still the guy that could sweep me off my feet, leaving me ungrounded and unable to recognize what was quick and what was slow. If relationships could have a theme, ours was most certainly “too much, too quick.”

  If I had been able to detach for just a second, if I’d been able to realize what he was involved with and who he was, I would see that I could never be number one. What sort of a naive idiot had I been…

  I looked up to see if I could grab some wine. I hadn’t restocked.

  “Well, isn’t that just great,” I said, laughing as my eyes squinted and more tears fell.

  Out of wine. Out of love. Out of luck. Must be something really wrong with me if I keep falling into these relationships. First, Jason has the passion of an ice cube. Next, Petey has so much fire I get burned. What the hell is wrong with me?

  Nothing, Anna… nothing.

  Petey wasn’t going to magically change. Even if we got married and had kids, he was still probably going to put the club first. If, on our first night, he went out… OK, yes, he went out because one of his friends got murdered, but given how the club life seemed to intrude on his personal life rather frequently and without regard for what we were doing, it still felt the same.

  I wondered about his deceased wife, Kathryn. Had she had to deal with this? How had they handled his commitment to the club? Had she threatened to walk away at any point?

  It wasn’t even like I had anything to walk away from. Yeah, we had gotten closer faster than most, but we still were new to each other. I didn’t really owe him anything. That was especially true since he was going to be this way forever.

  And yet, when I thought about cutting the cord and telling him it wouldn’t work, I got scared.

  It had been years since I’d met someone who could excite and invigorate me like Petey could. If I told him it wasn’t going to work out and ended it, who was to say that I’d meet anyone worthwhile anytime soon? And it wasn’t like I was in Los Angeles or Phoenix. I was in Romara, a town that might have had a dozen or so other eligible men, with no guarantees that they were a good match for me other than that we would both be single.

  I held my phone up, going to my text messages with Petey. I should say something. I should at least say we need a talk about us and if we can be anything. But…

  He said he was coming back to me tonight as soon as he could. I have to trust him on that.

  I just hate that he had to leave in the first place.

  And I knew myself well enough. Even if I wanted to break up with him—as if we had anything to break up—I didn’t have the courage to do it this early.

  There was a reason, after all, Jason and I had lasted so long, and it wasn’t like it was because we both desperately fought for each other.

  * * *

  I fell asleep on the floor waiting for Petey to come home. I didn’t hear a knock on my door until the sun had almost risen. I opened it, actually annoyed.

  “I thought you said you were going to come over as soon as everything was over,” I said, trying to wake up to the morning sun.

  “And I have, I swear to it,” he said, putting his hands up defensively. “At the risk of sounding gruesome, when someone dies in a murder, there’s a lot of things that need to be done. You need to talk to police, you need to safely procure the body, you—”

  “OK, OK, I get it,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”

  Petey entered. I shut the door weakly behind him and brewed some coffee. I offered him some, but he declined, saying he was going to go home after this.

  “So this is more of a late-night snack than breakfast,” I said dryly.

  Neither of us laughed.

  I made myself a couple of eggs with some potatoes and hash browns. I gave Petey some eggs and a thick sausage link at his request. I didn’t know how he stayed skinny devouring food like that, but then again, he had just seen some of his friends die; it probably wasn’t fair to expect him to eat normally.

  “So tell me about the men that died,” I said, trying to be empathic. “I’m sure they were great.”

  “They were,” he said. “Tyus and and a prospect we nicknamed Dumbbell.”

  “Dumbbell?” I said, a slight grin forming on my face.

  “Yeah, it was our way of encouraging him to lift weights. Was skinnier than the sausage on my plate.”

  I snorted and laughed once. When Petey didn’t change facial expression in the slightest, I cut my laugh off. I guess he wasn’t at that point of reminiscing.

  “And the other one?”

  “Tyus. That’s his real name. We just liked it so much. Not everyone gets nicknames.”

  He took a sip of water, his eyes staring straight ahead. The poor guy looked, well, like he hadn’t slept all night.

  “His death is tougher. He’s…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. I let us eat
in silence long enough that it felt like we could close the book on this particular dialogue. I felt I’d given him the chance to get some things off his chest, but he didn’t seem interested in the slightest.

  “Petey,” I said. “I’m sorry I reacted the way that I did.”

  Petey just nodded. He still didn’t smile.

  “It’s OK.”

  “Can I ask you something, though?”

  He nodded.

  “Are things about to get worse or better for your club?”

  Petey put his hand on his cheek, poked at his plate a bit, and took a sip of water, barely moving his hand to do so.

  “Worse,” he said. “We’re going to launch a retaliation on the Anarchists. These types of things escalate and continue until one side emerges victorious. We’ve come out every time so far by virtue of our skill and resources, but the Anarchists are fighting more and more dirty by the day.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well… are we going to work then?”

  Petey looked over at me, still resting his face on his right hand. For the first time all morning, he gave me something of a warm smile.

  “Yes,” he said. “You came into my life at a weird time. But I like you, Anna. I want to make this work. I’ll put in the time to make it work.”

  Unless it comes at the expense of your time with the Savage Kings. And, given that it’s going to get worse…

  It’s not going to get better, is it? You and I will plan something, and then you’ll have to cancel it so that you can do work instead. You’ll try and be emotionally available to me, but as more people die, you’ll become more distant and cold. You won’t be as open to me as you are now.