Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(7)

He looked at Keely and did not allow the look on her face to penetrate.

“The window?” he asked.

“It’s messed up,” she told him.

He nodded and looked down again to Dutch. “You’re goin’ with me. We’re fixin’ the window.” He turned his attention back to Keely. “You got Jag.”

She nodded.

He then looked at the doc or nurse or whatever he was. “How many stitches?”

“Probably …” he started, still working, “seventeen, maybe a few more.”

Hound grinned at Jag. “Boy, when you get bloody, you do it up big. First battle scar.”

Jag grinned back.

He felt that particular comment didn’t win a soft, grateful look from Keely, but he didn’t look at her to get her pissed.

He wrapped his fingers around Dutch’s shoulder and said, “Let’s roll.”

“’Kay, Hound,” Dutch muttered.

“Later,” he said to Jag, turning to go.

“Later, Hound,” Jag replied.

His eyes skipped through Keely. “Later.”

“Later.”

With that, he and Dutch took off.

When they did, like he always used to do when he was with his Hound but hadn’t in a while since he’d reached the age to stop doing it, the situation made him need it, so Dutch found then held Hound’s hand.

And seeing as Dutch had reached the age that Hound had lost that from his boy, instead of reminding him it was time for him to think about being the man he was becoming, like he always used to do, Hound let him.



Three years later …

Using his fist in the collar of his tee, Hound pushed the kid up against the brick wall.

Then he got in his face.

He was the perfect mix of his old man and his momma.

Fourteen and already a heartbreaker.

“Am I gonna have to make another visit?” he asked.

“Piss off, Hound,” Dutch Black bit back.

“Scrappin’ at school. Skippin’ classes. Caught with your hand in the pants of a fifteen-year-old girl. Two months into your freshman year and already suspended twice. This is not Black’s boy. This is not Keely’s son. This is not you. Straighten the fuck out,” Hound warned.

“You don’t know dick about who I am,” Dutch returned.

That was a lie and a ticked one at that, and they both knew it.

But Dutch was gearing up to shut Hound out and Hound could not let that happen. Not when he was fourteen and the measure of the man he was going to be was at stake.

And Dutch was already falling down on that, acting out, doing stupid shit, driving his mother around the bend.

Hound needed to sort this shit out … and now.

“Slit the throat of the man who took out your dad,” Hound fired back and saw Dutch’s eyes get large. “Man who ordered his death took my bullet first, through his right eye. Vengeance is not taken lightly. Vengeance is earned and meted out in the way it’s bought. And bottom line, vengeance is carried out in the way the reason it’s deserved demands. I didn’t blink before I fired that shot. I didn’t hesitate before I drew my blade across that throat. And this was because the man who demanded that vengeance was your father. The woman who deserved that vengeance was your mother. And the boys left behind who wouldn’t know the straight-up, solid, steadfast, down-to-his-boots good that was your father, needed it. Black made you, kid. He raised you or not, not only the goodness of your mother but the man he was means you live, you breathe, you fuckin’ exist to make them proud. Are you hearing me?”

“You … you killed them?” Dutch asked.

“Fuck yeah, two proudest goddamn moments of my life,” Hound answered.

“Whoa,” Dutch muttered.

Hound had nothing to say to that.

“Ev-everybody talks about how fuckin’ great he was,” Dutch said.

“That’s because he was fuckin’ great,” Hound replied, easing up on his fist in the kid’s shirt but not getting out of his space.

“I … Jagger doesn’t even remember him.”

“But you do.”

Dutch stared up at him.

“You do,” Hound repeated. “And you know. You know you lighted his world. You know he was prouder of nothin’ than him and his woman makin’ you.”

Dutch’s handsome face got ugly.

“He was so proud, why’d he get dead?”

“Because he wanted to live clean and he wanted to do right by his family. He wanted to slide into bed with the woman he loved and not bring filth into it. He wanted to make pancakes for his boys on Sunday and eat ’em with you, tasting nothin’ but goodness in his mouth. Because he was all in to fight for that. Because he was willing to die for it. And it’s just life that sucks in ways too mammoth to fully comprehend that he was the man among us who did. Not a brother who’s got a patch wouldn’t have taken his place. Believe that, Dutch, because it’s the straight-up, motherfucking truth. And I would have been first in line. And that would not have been for your mother. That wouldn’t have been for you boys. That wouldn’t have been for Chaos. That would have been for Black.”

Dutch was searching for some smartass shit to say to that.

But he couldn’t find it.