HARD KNOX(47)

When Uncle Jakey calls personally it only means one thing.

Someone was dead.





twenty-nine



(knox)



NOW



I stepped into the chapel and the guys were all lined up, waiting for me. Liam was first and he grabbed me, hugging me. I swallowed down the emotion and went with the motion of the sign of respect from my brothers. This wasn’t just about losing our President, this was also about me losing my father.

The old man… Hammer… was dead.

Murdered in prison.

When I got to Slam, he squeezed me so tight, I felt my back pop. “I’m so f*cking sorry, brother. We’ll f*cking fix this.”

“Thanks, bro,” I said.

Behind Slam was an empty chair with King’s cut on it. That one hurt bad. Really f*cking bad. I wondered if King would even find out about my old man’s murder.

Then there was Uncle Jakey. A whiskey bottle in his hand. A big frown on his face. He was too far back from the group.

“Now what?” he asked me. “Huh? This is what happened. This is what we get.”

I took the words, knowing this was how Uncle Jakey showed grief and cried.

He took a big drink of the whiskey and then threw the bottle against the wall. It shattered and we all stood there in silence.

I blinked hard and fast. I let it all sink in and process. The worst part was that I had to leave Ana alone. I told her what had happened and she started to cry. She begged me to stay, clawing at me, but I needed to be with my brothers. I needed to get all the information and then act upon it.

Normally I’d just be straight with hellfire but I had a family.

“Everyone take a goddamn seat,” Uncle Jakey said.

He stumbled to the head of the table.

We all sat and each one of us lit up a smoke.

“I got the call from Chuck,” Uncle Jakey said. “He said it couldn’t be stopped.”

Chuck was one of many of the employees at the prison that worked for the Reap.

“How?” I asked.

Uncle Jakey touched his neck. “Quick. Bloody.”

“Retaliation,” I said. “For what he gave me. For the MC.”

“The Family?” Slam asked.

“Don’t jump so far ahead,” Uncle Jakey said. He reached with his left hand and grabbed my forearm. “We got the guard who set it up.”

“What?” I asked.

“It was fast,” Uncle Jakey said. “Chuck, Brian, and Winston were able to arrange something. I was calling for a while, Knoxville. I wanted you in on this. I wanted you to hear it all.”

I had been too busy proposing to Ana and then f*cking her.

“It was your buddy,” Slam said. “Porter.”

“What?” I asked. “Who the f*ck was here?”

Turned out that Slam, Matteo, and Ari were all there while Uncle Jakey was on the phone with Winston as they gave up the information needed about my father’s death.

My father had been murdered late last night. A guard took him to another holding room because there was drug trafficking in his cell. That was a cover to get him out of the cell. Then Porter himself showed up and killed my father. Of course, Porter couldn’t have been acting alone in all of the situation, but he was the one who did it.

Vinny was pissed that my old man had given up the information to me. I found out that my old man had worked a deal with the family on the inside. Protection, drugs, everything. That hurt a little bit worse than him actually dying.

I stood up from my chair and walked to the wall.

“Knoxville, sit down,” Uncle Jakey said.

“No,” I said. “My old man was a f*cking rat.”

“No,” Ari said.

“Yes,” Slam said. “Face it. Tell the truth. He was a f*cking rat.”

I looked back at Slam. I could always count on Slam telling it like it was.

“That he was,” Uncle Jakey said. He slowly stood up. “He wanted to make sure the Reap stayed quiet. Okay? He and I had talked about it for a while. He didn’t want this life to consume the rest of you all. Like it did to King.”

“King is serving his sentence,” I said. “He did a crime, he’s paying for it. Just like we all would. This isn’t about pride. Hammer decided his own fate when he got into bed with Vinny.”

“Maybe he had no choice,” Uncle Jakey said. “The pressure was on for a long time, Knoxville. More than you understand. Local and Federal eyes were everywhere. We couldn’t push them away fast enough.”

“So he just sold us out?” I asked. “Then he never told me about it? Only to… what… give me intel that would help the club but secure his murder…”

“He did for you and the Reap,” Uncle Jakey said. “That’s why, okay? And when it happened, our men went to work. The guard who set it up is now dead. Our men did it. Men with Reaper’s Bastards ink in their arms. We know all of the truth. Hammer took the fall for the MC because the family tried selling us out. So when Hammer went down, so did their plan. The club took a step back and Hammer spent every day on the inside working, hustling, learning all he could. So he gave to you, Knoxville, the information that keeps us in power. He died with honor, defending his MC. Like a good President would do.”