Integrity Has No Bounds (14 page)

“Do you think I’m gonna thank you for this?
You broke the rules, and you got your ass handed to you. There’s a
reason we men don’t allow no women in the group, they got no morals
or loyalty. Did you think I would take you back and pretend that
you aren’t a damn snake? You say you love me, well this ain’t the
way to prove it, and now you damn sure won’t get a second chance
you stupid whore.”

He walked up to her and looked down at the
pathetic mess Candle had turned her into. “I sure hope you think
losing everything we gave you was worth it.”

Her head came up and she looked at him
through the slits of her eyes. “Was it worth it? I thought your
life was worth any sacrifice.” Her head was too heavy to hold up
any longer, and she allowed it to dip back down, feeling the tears
drop onto her hands. “Just go, Donnie Lee. Go home and forget about
me. You’ll find some other whore to play with soon enough. Just go
please, just take the car, and leave.”

Donnie went to the door and was surprised to
find it opened when he turned the knob. He looked back at Tonda and
shook his head, hating to leave her here, but knowing he couldn’t
take her home with him. She betrayed him and every member of the
Kings, now she had to live with the consequences, just as he had to
live with knowing she wouldn’t be coming back and why.

Stevie’s Roots

Thor’s Legion was one of the most feared MC
groups in the country. They were blatant, brash, and outright
outrageous. Citizens in the community loved it there, the town was
slowly getting bigger, but the population was gaining numbers
almost daily. The Legion established its influence long ago, and
the last burglary was over ten years old. No one with a brain in
their head came into Wescott, Alabama, with breaking the law on
their agenda. It would be a revelation for outsiders to know that
the hundred or so bikers that lived in the small township actually
kept the riff raff out. The Legion didn’t piss in their own
backyard, and weren’t about to allow anyone else to take a shit in
it.

That’s not to say they didn’t raise a little
hell away from home. If other communities couldn’t keep their own
places protected, it wasn’t the Legion’s place to moralize for
them. Life as a Thor’s Legion MC member put them as elite in the
few 1% groups, and they enjoyed the benefits.

There were smaller chapters scattered
throughout the Southern states, and a few scattered throughout the
mid-west, Wescott was the mother chapter.

At times, the Feds decided to target them to
investigate. To be fair, there were times the Feds would ask a
favor or two in exchange for information or a less than legal
activity that needed doing, but the chicken shits were too bound by
politics to take care of it themselves. The special favor was never
mentioned again, but money, goods, or charges against one or more
of the Legion were dropped for lack of evidence.

Such was the case of Rolf and June Bug James.
They’d been sentenced to seven years each, but served only three of
those years, and instead of parole, they got community service.
Unfortunately, by the time anyone had thought about the couple’s
children being left to fend for themselves, the state had snagged
Stevie, and Harry disappeared off the radar.

It was a bitter crack in the family structure
of the chapter, and June Bug hadn’t given up finding her kids.
Something bad had to have happened for Harry not to come back to
the club, and the county had no explanation for Stevie’s
disappearance. The foster family had left the state under a cloud
of suspicion, especially given the evidence of a familial
relationship with a top Federal investigator who had an overt
hard-on for arresting bikers, who worked in the gangs division.

Rolf James distained the notions that some
people chose to believe. The rumors were just that and he had no
problem laughing at the more outrageous of the bunch. He was
sitting at the end of the bar listening to the three punks behind
him at the table in the corner discussing him. June Bug was working
the beer flippers drawing buckets and drafts for the thirsty
patrons. He laughed out loud upon hearing one of the few truthful
exploits he was actually guilty of doing, and June turned to see
what amused him. He indicated the table behind him with his thumb,
and she shook her head at him with a smile.

“Man, did you ever see the video of the big
motherfucker tossing that Fed bastard through a plate glass window?
He took six of those sons-a-bitches on and knocked them all on
their asses, sent them to the hospital, and one dumbass stumbled
over his buddy and landed on a chair leg, bloody fuckin mess.

“Ol’ Rolf, there he stood in the middle of
the room like a berserker or some shit. They shot him three times,
blood was drippin’ all over the fuckin’ place and there he was,
roaring like a goddamned grizzly with that Fed hanging over his
head before he threw him. Fuckin’ impressive.”

Another voice chimed in and Rolf stopped
laughing.

“They grabbed his daughter and sent her
inside to talk him down. She got through to him by tossing a
pitcher of beer over his head. By the way, I don’t recommend anyone
else try that on him, he’d probably hurt you bad.”

The shouted enthusiastic approval made Rolf
smile, but the last voice was a female’s voice who teased the back
of his mind. His beer was halfway to his lips when it hit him. The
beer glass bounced on the bar as his attention turned toward the
spot he heard the voice coming from.

There, her back was facing him, and he could
see her hair was still worn long. The blond strands at the end of
the hair wrap were unmistakable in color. He walked up behind her
within touching distance and continued the story while the three
young tuffs watched open-mouthed when the girl turned around
crying, “Daddy,” while the huge man grabbed her and pulled her
tight into his arms, tears ran down his bearded cheeks
unashamedly.

“That girl was the only thing that saved
those cum stains from the slab, they never should have threatened
my family.”

The ear splitting scream and breaking glass
broke the sudden silence caused by the open display of emotion from
the arguably meanest fucker in the group. June Bug ran up to the
two and was pulled into their embrace.

Clapping and cheers began from the table back
by the jukebox, and seemed to roll over the room as they stood
together in the middle of the aisle.

The younger people didn’t know what they were
witnessing, but the elders did, and it was cause for celebration.
History was again being made by the James family. After all, how
many times did the presumed dead rise and walk through your
door?

Stevie Ray James was home.

The small family separated when Jonah and
Bull came in the front door and started yelling for a beer. Jonah
didn’t have time to duck the pitcher of beer that came sailing
through the air toward him, hitting him squarely upside his
head.

Rolf hadn’t even thought about it, when the
fucker came in like that and disrupted the moment with Stevie, he’d
reached down on the table closest to him and heaved the pitcher
before he even realized he’d done it.

“You got your fuckin’ beer, asswipe, shut up
and sit ya ass down or leave the way you came in.”

Stevie was laughing through her tears, and
June Bug held tight to his arm to keep him from further disturbing
their reunion with their daughter. He shook his head and shrugged.
He apologized to no one, that fuck got what he deserved.

“You got some talkin’ to do, girlie, but it
can wait for now.” He looked at June Bug through his own watery
eyes, “Ain’t that right, momma?”

For the first time in years, the woman who
held his heart in the palm of her hand smiled at the affectionate
term “momma”. When they’d gotten out from behind bars, and found
that their children were gone, and that Stevie had disappeared from
the “secure” foster home. A light in her eyes dimmed, she asked him
not to call her that again until they found the kids.

“I love you to death, but it’s like a needle
sticking in my gut every time I hear that word.”

She followed her parents home from the tavern
that they’d taken over when they were released from the “darkness”
as her dad called prison. Her mother hadn’t said much, but she had
kept touching her, and Stevie was beginning to understand how much
her parents had missed her and Harry. When her dad asked about
Harry, and she shook her head, her huge tough father’s shoulders
had slumped, and she saw desolation on his face for maybe a second.
His next expression was narrow-eyed determination.

“When we get home, I want to know.” She’d
nodded, and he nodded. It was one of those Biker things she
guessed. They could say complete sentences with just a nod of the
head to one another.

Her parents had been young when her mom got
pregnant with Harry, at fifteen years old, she watched
sixteen-year-old Rolf allow her father to beat the shit out of him
for knocking his little girl up before she graduated from high
school. The only thing that had saved her from her father’s belt
had been the fact she waited until she was four months along in her
pregnancy to tell anyone, and he was afraid he would hurt the
baby.

They were still in their mid-forties, and
looked great. Stevie remembered how she would come home from school
bringing a friend with her, and walk in on her parents lying on the
living room floor, wrestling around with her dad tickling her mom
on her neck with his prickly beard. She always rolled her eyes and
told them they had a room for that, but her father told her, “The
whole fuckin’ house is ours, anybody that gets a tickle in their
ass seeing us playin’ around doesn’t deserve to be in our home
anyway. Fuck ‘em.”

Those memories had lingered with her over the
years, and seeing them today brought home to her how much she’d
missed them. She wished Harry was there too, but if he was alive,
she had no idea where to look for him, and he wouldn’t leave her
alone and unprotected voluntarily. She felt like a fraud coming
here, they thought she was here because she just found out they
were out of jail. Harry had always told her they couldn’t go back,
that if they went back to the club, their parents would suffer, and
so they stayed away. She hoped that Harry was wrong, because if she
was going to avenge her brother and the damage to the bar, she
would need help.

John might have helped her if she’d asked,
but she wanted to prove that she was strong, she had to do this for
her. John was a Neanderthal and would want to take over the task
she’d set for herself, but it wasn’t his business, and she was the
one that had to live with herself after the fact. He acted like she
was his, but a couple of fucks didn’t make it so. Aside from the
fact that she needed to deal with her parents, she was planning to
kill a man to avenge her brother, and she needed to know what Harry
meant by hurting her parents if they came back. None of it made
sense, but hopefully they’d get it sorted out.

The house was a nice three bedroom, two bath,
with an attached two car garage brick ranch, and it sat right in
the center of the block.

Her parents parked the Road King in the
garage, and she had to smile about the bike. Years ago her father
wouldn’t have been caught dead on such a fancy ride. He was old
school with his preference of ride. It was the main reason June Bug
got her own ride, she complained about the bitch pad numbing her
lady parts.

When Stevie was thirteen she got her own
scoot, but didn’t get a license until after she and Harry had been
on the road for a few years. It was something she planned to remedy
soon, she needed her own bike. No matter where she ended up, or who
she ended up with, she wanted her own transportation.

Riding with John on the bagger hadn’t been a
hardship, but his daily ride, she could sympathize with her mother.
Damn, she had to quit thinking about him like this. He was bossy,
and he was so testosterone driven that he reminded her of someone,
Oh
fuckin’ no
. She realized who he reminded her
of.

The man striding out of the garage, coming
toward her to carry her bag, her father was an older, hairier,
version of the same cut of man as John was. She didn’t have daddy
issues, no one had ever measured up to the man her father was,
until John. Personality wise they were polar opposites, where Rolf
James was large and in charge, John Handy was quiet and reasonable,
as long as you did it his way.
Fuck, just fuck
. It was a
good thing that she wasn’t in love with John yet, she would look
around for a more compatible man.

Her door opened and her father looked at her
with concern. “You okay, baby? You’ve been sitting her staring at
the house for a bit, you ain’t thinking about disappearing again,
are you?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just thinking,
sorry, I seem to be having a hard time realizing that you and Mom
are here and… Oh, Daddy, you have no idea how much I’ve missed the
two of you.”

She slid out of the driver’s seat, and
grabbed him by the arm, holding onto him while he opened the back
flap and pulled the old leather carpetbag from the space. He hefted
the familiar bag and stared at it for a few seconds before giving
her another of those concerned looks. “You sure Harry is dead?”

“No, Daddy, I’m not sure of anything right
now, all I know is that when things got too much for me, I made it
my business to try to find you and Mom. I need help to sort it out,
and who else would understand what is happening if not the three of
us, I have more questions than answers.”

They walked into the house and June Bug
pounced on her baby girl. She held onto Stevie, and there was no
question whether she had been missed. “Baby, I prayed, I prayed so
hard to find you. We’ve hired people to track you and Harry but
nothing came of it. Now you’re here, just walked in the door like I
haven’t been worried sick wondering if you are in a safe place and
happy. You have no idea how happy I am right now. Come on, I’ll
show you to your room. Oh, baby, I am so damn happy right now.”