Finding Kyle(57)

“He’s just a little boy.” The man begs me, hoping to appeal to any bit of humanity within me.

I reach my arm backward without taking my eyes off the man. My hand is immediately filled with the smooth wood of a baseball bat that’s passed to me from one of my brothers. Zeke ordered me to impart this particular message, but I didn’t ride alone tonight. He wanted witnesses along to make sure I did the job and did it right.

“And now, that little boy is going to watch his daddy pay the consequences for double crossing Zeke,” I tell him quietly. “Consider it a learning lesson for him. It will probably even save him some pain of his own in the future because it will teach him that you keep your word.”

The man coughs and more blood bubbles from his mouth because his ribs took a pounding from my boots as well.

He wheezes and, as I raise the bat, I hear his little boy start to cry. The man raises his hands defensively and begs one more time, “Please.”

It falls on deaf ears as I bring the bat down hard on his kneecap. The man shrieks, and his wife starts to cry piteously. I don’t turn to look at her. Instead, I mark my target for his other knee and bring the bat down hard. The man screams again, clutching at his knees with bloody foam frothing out of his mouth.

“Learned your lesson yet?” I yell as I bend over him.

“Yes,” he moans as he curls inward. “Yes, yes, yes.”

It sounds genuine to me, but I know every detail of this will be relayed to Zeke, so I’m nowhere near able to quit. I’m expected to make this painful, but more than that… I’m expected to truly prove my loyalty to the club.

I raise the bat and bring it down again, this time against the man’s ribs. His back arches, and then he curls inward again, trying to shield himself as best he can as I rain down blow after blow upon him.

Sweat is pouring down my face from my efforts, and my Mission brothers behind me are egging me on harder. I only stop swinging the bat when he loses consciousness.

The kitchen goes silent, and I wipe my forehead on my sleeve. I drop the bat on the floor behind the man I just beat to a pulp, perhaps even killed. I’m satisfied that it will get me full privileges into Mayhem’s Mission.

It’s just a job, I tell myself. I have to do this for the greater good. I’m doing this to bring this club down.

I turn away from the carnage to walk out of the kitchen, my eyes sliding past the wife and son still huddled on the floor, knowing I won’t be able to bear looking at them.

Just as my boot hits the threshold of the doorway that leads out, I hear the small, terrified voice of the little boy ask, “Did you kill my daddy?”

Bile roils within my stomach, rises quickly up my throat, and, for a brief moment, I think I may compromise this whole undercover operation by spewing vomit all over. Instead, I swallow it down, harden my heart, and turn to look at the little boy. His brown eyes swimming with tears, he looks at me pleadingly to tell him that it will all be okay.

I shrug my shoulders. “Not sure, kid. Maybe I did.”

I vaguely hear the wife’s sobs, but I’ll never forget the way that little boy looks at me, tears now spilling down his cheeks. Eyes accusing me, hating me… fuck, I don’t know what they’re doing, but to me, they’re condemning me.

Turning my back on the little boy, his sobbing mother, and the carnage I created, I walk out of the house and resign myself that if I hadn’t before, I’d just earned my one-way ticket to hell no matter if this mission is ultimately successful or not.

My body flies straight up on the bed, a silent scream held still in my throat. I’m frozen for a moment, not disoriented but completely still immersed in the memory.

A soft hand touches my back, and Jane sits up in bed beside me. “Kyle… what’s wrong?”

I shake my head and give a little cough to loosen my vocal cords. Still, I’m practically croaking when I tell her, “Nothing.”

“You’re soaking wet,” she murmurs, her hand sliding up to my shoulder. She shifts in the bed, comes to her knees, and brings her palm to my forehead. “You’re not running a fever though.”

Jane is naked in front of me in the moonlight, her breasts full, her stomach flat, her hips rounded. I should want to push her down onto the bed and fuck away my misery, but all I want to do is bury my head in her chest and cry.

Jane’s hands come to palm my face as she leans in to whisper, “Baby… what’s wrong?”

I shake my head again, and my voice is a little clearer when I admit, “Bad dream.”

She tilts her head. While I can’t exactly see the depth of the sympathy she has in her eyes, I can feel it when her arms come around my shoulders and she presses her body into mine, locking herself in tight. I’ve never needed consolation before. Shunned it, actually.

But with no shame in me, I band my arms around her and pull her down into my lap. My face goes into her neck, and we just hold onto each other for an infinitely long time. Her naked skin on mine, the sweet scent of her hair, and the even more delicious scent of us combined together.

My heart rate slows and the image of that little boy finally disappears.

Finally, Jane’s fingers slide up, and she massages my scalp gently as she observes with blunt honesty, “This isn’t like you, Kyle.”

“What’s that?” I mumble into her neck, but knowing damn well what she means.