Soulless (Lawless #2)(72)

“What the f*ck is going on?” King asked as we both lowered our guns.

“Boss, we tried to call you right after you left, but you didn’t answer your phone, so we got here as fast as we could,” Wolf said, jumping back inside and shuffling around in the darkness.

“We went to the back building to see if there were any mattresses to replace the old ones out there, and that’s when we heard screams. Not just one either, but a bunch of f*cking screams. The entire inside was lined with mattresses to muffle the sound. In the floor there was some sort of manhole looking thing with a chain. We snapped it with some bolt cutters. Down inside were like…makeshift cells with dirt floors and zero light. There were tons of them. Some were empty and some had skeletons with skin rotting off their faces. And some Prez…were alive. Whores I ain’t seen in a long time, even Lance.”

“Lance?” I asked. Lance was the brother who Chop had declared a traitor at least five years back and who he claimed to have killed while out on a ride.

“It’s gotta be where Chop was keeping your mom all those years,” Munch said, waving his hands around in the air like he was painting us a picture. “Dude was sick and f*cking twisted, but none of us knew he was running his very own Bastards’ prison.”

“Fuck,” I said, “that’s impossible…”

Munch stepped aside to make room for Wolf and Stone, who between the two of them were maneuvering something heavy.

“It’s not impossible, because it f*cking happened. Look,” Wolf said, emerging from the darkness. Between him and Stone, was an emaciated body, his arms draped around their shoulders, his head down and wobbling from side to side as they walked toward us. His hair so dirty, I couldn’t tell what color it was and his clothes were nothing more than blood-stained rags.

“What the f*ck is going on?” I asked. “Why the f*ck did you bring Lance here?”

“He alive?” King asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Oh, yeah, he’s alive, all right,” Stone confirmed, walking toward us with the man’s head bobbing around loosely with their movements. They had to be lying. I’ve seen my fair share of corpses and this looked very much like one of them. Maybe even worse. There was no way a man in that kind of condition could still be f*cking breathing, but sure enough I heard a strained gasp for breath as they approached.

King looked over to me. “Why would Chop…” he started, but I knew what he was asking and we didn’t have to wait long for an answer, because Lance’s head popped up and suddenly we were face to face…with a ghost.

Who wasn’t Lance.

“As I said, there were dozens of ’em down there,” Wolf said. “Only five or six alive though.”

“No f*cking way,” King gasped, dropping to his knees in the driveway. I would have dropped too, but I was too stunned to move a single muscle. Too stunned to even look away.

Too stunned to f*cking breathe.

The ghost looked between myself and King, and before passing back out, he managed to choke out a few raspy words.

The greatest goddamn words I’d ever heard in my entire f*cking life.

“Miss me, motherf*ckers?”





BONUS SCENE




Thia

Four years later…


“Mama, tell me a stowy,” Trey said, yawning and rubbing his eye with the back of his little hand.

“Which story, baby?” I asked, as though he didn’t ask for the same one every night.

“The one of you and Daddy,” he said, climbing up on my lap.

“Okay sweetie,” I said, covering us both with the blanket and brushing his angel soft white hair out of his face, and as I did every night, I kissed the familiar freckles below each of his eyes. “When Mommy was ten years old she met a big biker…”

“Daddy!” Trey cheered, knowing the story well after hearing it a million times. That’s when I noticed Bear standing in the doorway, wearing his cut, wiping grease off his hands with a rag, listening to our story time.

“Yes, that’s right, it was Daddy. He was so tall and so strong. He walked right into the store where Mommy was, and the second he smiled at her she just knew…” I trailed off when Bear flashed me that exact same smile, bringing all the feelings flooding back to me in a rush.

“Knew what, Mommy?” Trey prompted, pulling at the collar of my shirt. “What did she know?”

Bear and I locked eyes. “She knew that he was her forever.”

I finished the story and tucked Trey into his bed. I turned off the lamp and gave him one last kiss. “Mama, can you sing to me?” I looked up to Bear who had to cover his mouth to stop himself from laughing out loud. This is how it went every night. Just when I thought Trey was all settled in, he’d request just one more thing and just like his father, I found it very hard to say no to him.

“Sure, baby. What song do you want to hear?”

Bear chimed in, “Sinatra.”

I sang my little boy to sleep that night singing “Fly Me To the Moon” as his father listened on and I couldn’t help but feel a presence as the song ended and Trey’s eyes finally fluttered closed. I knew Grace was there with me and my boys just like she promised she would be.

We were the family I’d always wanted.