Loving Me, Trusting You(5)

Kimmi flips some red-orange hair over her shoulder and adjusts the sunglasses on her face, pushing them up and flicking her tongue across her lips.

“One of you boys better answer me real quick or I'm going to get angry here, and you don't want to see me angry.” She laughs and her earrings sway in the breeze.

“What are you doing with that?” Gaine whispers from behind me, but I ignore him, crossing my arms over my chest and hiding the tire iron in the folds of me leather jacket. From above, the sun beats down on the black fabric and heats me up from within, boiling my rage into a frothing fury. It's one thing to disrespect me, but to disrespect my bike? There aren't even words to describe how I'm feeling right now. Blank, white hot, empty, pissed. My hands are shaking, but I don't let anyone see.

“Where the f*ck is Tray?” Will asks, but I'm sure he already knows. He keeps looking at me with this little flicker in the back of his dark eyes. He knows what happened to his brother.

“How the hell should I know?” Austin begins, arm poised and steady, holding the gun perfectly still. He never wavers, but his eyes slide along the group of men in front of us, taking in their stances, the weapons that he can see, the ones he can't. There isn't a single woman among them. Pity. I'd have liked some of my old friends to see me now, see what they're missing out on.

“He's six feet under if he's lucky. Rotting forgotten in a morgue while the police pretend to give a shit, if he's not.”

Will's nostrils flare, but he doesn't look at me. A few faces turn my way, but they don't stay, hovering there, remembering when I was Mrs. Walker, when I rode with Bested and smiled the whole way, before things changed, before my world was destroyed and my life shattered into fragments that I'm still working on picking up, piece by piece. Behind me, bodies shift and clicks sound loud as jets in the quiet air.

Let's just hope nobody accidentally stumbles upon us. MC business should stay MC business. Period.

“We don't want any trouble now,” Austin says, and I can't help but see the way Amy's lips part when she's looking at him. Even though I shouldn't be able to, I swear I can hear her sigh from here. Ugh. I look at my bike lying f*cked and forgotten on the concrete, glad that I sold off my custom piece last year. Better she found a home between someone else's thighs than get trashed like this. “Tray and Kent had something going on that I don't know nothin' about. We've moved on, and I suggest you do, too. Let sleeping dogs lie if you catch my drift.”

Will takes a step forward and the men behind him shift, muscles tensing, terrible prison tattoos winking at me from empty eyed skulls and the faces of big breasted women. Austin does the same and violence sifts through the air like flour, coating each and every one one of us. Even little Amy looks like she could throw a punch or two. But it's not going to go that far, not yet. This is all a formality here, a chance to strut and throw muscular chests around, grunt like friggin' animals.

“I killed him,” I say, moving just another few inches forward, towards my damaged bike. “I slit that pig's throat and laughed while the blood flowed from him like rain. If I could, I'd have carved him into bacon and sizzled a bite for you to savor.” I grin, and I don't hold back. I don't care how crazy I look or sound, it's nothing compared to the inner turmoil inside of me. I think again of the other girls, the ones that stayed with Bested by Crows. What ever happened to them? Did they suffer the way I suffered? Do they suffer?

I make sure all these stupid f*cks can see in my eyes how much I despise them, how little worth I see in them. If I could, I'll kill each and every one one of them right now, strike them down with lightning and watch their corpses sizzle. The world would be better off that way. Besides, Mireya Sawyer knows how to carry a grudge and she firmly believes in the whole an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth thing. I will extract my vengeance, one way or another.

Finally, I get Will's attention and he swings his 9mm over to me, focusing the sight on the center of my chest. He wants to shoot me just as much as I want to smash this tire iron into his face, but he knows that the second either of us moves, the rest of our people move and neither will benefit. We'll all go down in a hail of gunfire and find ourselves on the way to hell, bodies still and bathed in blood, bikes abandoned.

“You miss my dick, bitch?” he asks me, but I don't respond. I reach out and grab the handlebar of my poor Bonneville, yanking her up with a scream of metal and the cry of an abused engine. She's trashed, absolutely friggin' trashed. I let go and the spirit in the metal dies, flitting away in the heat soaked afternoon to whatever heaven there is for machinery. When she hits the pavement again, she's just a hunk of parts and discarded faith.

“You owe me a f*cking bike,” I say as I turn to face Will fully. He looks out at me from under his dark, shaggy eyebrows and the thin lips under his beard twitch imperceptibly.

“And you owe me a f*cking brother. What are you gonna do about that, Mrs. Walker? Can't exactly head down to the dealership and pick up another.” I smile because I can tell he doesn't believe me. He doesn't really think his brother's dead.

“It's Sawyer,” I say, lifting my chin and squeezing my fingers tight around the metal under my coat, not so much to make sure I don't drop it but rather to keep myself in check, to make sure I don't use it. “Tray and I got a divorce after he raped me. Don't tell me you've forgotten?”