Page 15 of Broken Cracks
“Hey baby, I gotta go back out there. You did good, so good.” I squeeze her hand and share another kiss before I jog back out to the crew, who are as stunned as I was a minute ago.
Slash is pacing with his hands above his head. “I’m going to need my holy water after this. I’ve kissed my cross about five times already. Psych, tell us something man, what does Isabella know? Shit got real in here. I thought I was about to meet Pops.” He drops his hands as Bull stands with his feet shoulder width apart sporting a contemptuous expression.
“Izzy,” I breathe, gathering the string of my scattered words together. “Izzy, she has video evidence of Miguel. He told her if she said anything about what he did to her he would kill her.”
“What do you mean video evidence of what?” Sledge’s daftness pisses me off, and I swing him a dark look, because I don’t want to even speak aloud the vile situation Izzy had to be placed in. Sledge is aware of when I’m teetering on the edge of the cliff face, close to my dark spiral of violence, and slowly he raises his hands up in his own version of a white flag treaty. “Whoa, hey buddy, serious question… please. We just want a little clarity on the situation.”
I shake out my hands; they’re tingling from the adrenaline-fueled rush of the recent events. “Miguel would rape Izzy; she wasn’t his side piece,ever, and he threatened to kill her. She did what she had to do.”
Sledge put his hand on my shoulder as my breathing labors. Every time I say the man’s name, I want to pummel it into the ground. “I’m sorry, brother. What a piece of fucking shit. Okay, she took one for the team, we gotta face it. We work with the Cardez cartel, been supplying them for years. Business still stands, so we know what we do, you know that too.”
I hate what Sledge is saying, and my fingers want to curl up and bust him in the face, but he’s speaking the truth. This is the dangerous life I’ve chosen. The one where any day of the week I can be sent to my death bed. We’ve had so many close calls, but I live for the road, the freedom, the brotherhood—it all comes with the territory and I want to wild out, but it’s my brothers.
“That was before I found Izzy, Sledge,” I cut my eyes at him, giving him fair warning. “But yeah, I feel you. This was the sign up, so I gotta let it ride. Shit’s rough.”
“Dark Angels is what it is and what’s always been,” Bull jumps in. “We run the drugs for the cartel, that’s how it works. It’s how we all eat.”
I crack my knuckles and roll my shoulders back as I stare at him. Bull’s on my hit list; he’s not human in my eyes. Ever since the job has gone to Slash, he’s been acting like a little bitch.
“I’m aware of how we eat, Bull,” I say as I regard him with ill intent, and he shakes his head, moving away from me.Yeah, you better move otherwise, I’m going to finish you off.
I suck in a deep breath, blinking to get oxygen to my eyeballs. I’m out of my mind, ungrounded with all the shit that I have to process. “Shut up and let me finish.” Bull and I size one another up, and Slash breaks it up.
“Keep going man, tell us,” Slash says as Simone and Fiona enter from the fray from the back rooms and sit down on the couch. It’s only by God’s saving grace they weren’t in the room.
“Gilda is Miguel’s wife, and San Carlo Cardez is the main player—and Gilda’s father.” I pause, catching my breath as all three of my brothers listen with open ears, even Bull. The prospects that were in the vicinity during the Cardez intrusion have long gone and are probably rethinking joining a motorcycle club by now, ‘cause Dark Angels ain’t one of them cookie cutter motorcycle clubs. “Izzy and Gilda were close. Izzy is smart and she kept collateral on Miguel. Worked out for us today.”
“Damn, shit is deep. Yeah, she saved our asses up in here.” A deep crease forms on Slash’s forehead as he starts pacing back and forth.
“Bottom line is we don’t need to give Izzy up. It’s all sweet now,” I reason.
"But we do need to get the drugs back,” Bull points out.
Slash’s phone rings, redirecting my pent-up anger toward Bull for wanting to leverage Izzy in the first place.
"Yo, Snatch, what’s good? Yup, be right out. We got the coke back, let's roll." Slash pumps his fist as each of us marches forward to the door. “From guns on our head to getting our shit back,” he murmurs, “What a trip this has been.”
We walk forward in sync, brothers in arms. Serenity is deep in her night slumber; the sky is blanketed with the powered lights of the stars.
As we walk out, Snatch is rolling the MC cargo van door back. He’s got the other patches with him and immediately my gut has the sensation of knives cutting through it. That’s the problem with being a psychic empath induced by trauma. I can sense subtle changes in air pressure, in the mood, in a person, and on top of that, have to deal with the high stack of my own demons. Shit’s a blessing and a curse rolled into one.
“This shit’s too easy,” I say out the side of my mouth to Sledge, who’s standing beside me. There’s an eerie darkness lurking in the layers of the air.
“Yeah, I’m feeling uneasy. Might be because we almost lost our lives earlier… I could use a stiff whiskey and a blunt.” Sledge huffs, rotating his shoulders as we both look up to the van.
“Damn straight,” I whisper as I peer through the dead of night to see cardboard boxes packed against the back wall of the vehicle.
Snatch rode with three patches, and being the territorial guy I am, my main crew are Slash and Sledge. I don’t make it a habit to roll with the other patches as much. I should, and they’re part of the club, but unless I’m riding with them on the regular, it’s a hi and bye from me until there’s trouble. On the strength of the brotherhood, we all take an oath, I’ll defend them. If you’re a Dark Angel, well, you’re a Dark Angel forever. I rub my left shoulder where I have the Dark Angel emblem tattooed in the top corner.
One of them yells out from the back of the van, "Yo, Slash! We got the coke, baby."
He shouldn’t have said that, because at the same time, flashing blue and red lights are coming right to the club’s door in a procession line, it’s as if there’s a funeral going on.
Our funeral.
"Yo, Snatch, I thought you had this covered!" Slash yells, about to pull his hair out.
“My intuition is never off, I told you…” I say mildly to Sledge.