Swallowing Mayhem (2 page)

Chapter Two

“Prospects!”
A voice
bellowed from the bottom of the stairs about an hour later. I dropped the rag I
was using to wipe off the counter and followed Prospect down. What did they
want us for? Did they catch on about a rat? I hesitated at the thought. Prospect
walked in front of me, into the chapel. I’d never been in there before. I
stayed near the door until Beau closed it. He was a recent patch member and
only because of his lover. I was tense and tried not to look it. The unique
smell of Mayhem’s cigar filled the room. It was subtle in the big room, woodsy
with a hint of cinnamon. The white smoke flittered through the air. There was a
large wooden table here with two old-fashioned guns carved in the center. The
word Outlaw was below the guns in bold lettering. The MC
president
was at the head of the table. To his right was an empty seat for their imprisoned
VP. After that was the treasurer, Whip. Mayhem sat at the other end sucking on
that cigar. I looked away from him quickly. I don’t know why my gaze always loitered
on him. I wasn’t gay. It was illegal anyway. Maybe it was because he looked
like the biggest badass here and as a peacekeeper we’re trained to keep an eye
out for threats. Grim was beside him, silent as usual, slouched in his seat. There
was another empty seat. I’m assuming for Romeo, the
member
 
hiding
at the Underground MC. There
was a rumor going around that he was their president’s lover. Too much of that gay
shit going on.
Then sat Chaos with Beau standing behind him.
Finally, it was Deviant with Tage. This was a packed room.

“What’s going on?” Prospect
asked, frowning.

Apparently he was worried too.

Outlaw stood. “Some serious shit
went down recently.” He watched us both intently then continued. “Things that
should have been confidential were leaked, and it caused the club to face some
harsh situations.”

They were talking about the
bombings but not exactly saying it. Did they think one of us was a rat?
Shit
.

“I’m not saying we have a problem
in this MC, but somewhere, somehow we have a leak.” He sat. “And it needs to be
plugged.” Outlaw was going on forty-one but he wasn’t slacking on muscle. When
he sat, his muscles bulged against his clothes. He usually had stubble on his
face,
but lately
it’d
been growing in, getting thicker. His eyes constantly had bags
under them, which made me think he slept less than he let on. “We’re keeping
things tight around here. No strangers. No friends of the club. Only patch
members are allowed in the clubhouse. We’re not letting anyone in the garage
either. Someone comes for a mechanic, talk in the fucking parking lot. And we
are scanning for electronics every day. You see something, call it in, and then
check it out.” He rubbed his hand through his dark brown hair. “You two
understand me?”

I nodded.

Prospect was the one who spoke.
“Is there...is there some kind of rat?”

Outlaw sighed. “Yeah, we got a
cowardly fuck somewhere but I don’t think it’s in our house. Could be in
another MC’s area but...”

Mayhem blew out a thick cloud of
smoke. “Never hurts to be too careful, though.”

“Exactly.”
Outlaw grabbed
the wooden gavel that was lying on the table. “You both can go now.”

I eagerly followed Prospect out.
My pulse was racing. I was surprised they couldn’t see it against the skin of
my neck. When the doors closed behind us, I let out a breath. They knew about a
rat,
but they had no idea it was me. At
least that was a plus. So why didn’t I feel any better? I still had a nauseous
feeling.

“That was
intense,
” Prospect said beside me.

“Yeah it was.”

“I think something big is going
to go down,” he whispered and headed for the stairs.

Really?
“Like what?” I
followed, talking quietly. The bar was empty.

“I don’t
know,
but the club’s needed more alibis than usual lately.”
Prospect maneuvered around the bar and picked up the rag I’d left there.

While he cleaned, I moved to the
tables. I was about to ask him if he thought it had to do with the peacekeepers
but paused when I heard the sound of heavy boots coming up the stairs. I smelled
him first, the deep scent that I enjoyed too much. The fucking cigar was illegal.
Mayhem trudged up the steps with a frown. Not that he smiled often. In fact, I
don’t think I ever saw him grin.

“Prospect, Outlaw wants you.”

He nodded, dropped the rag, and
headed back down.

“You’re coming with me.”

It took me a minute to realize he
was talking to me. He never said my name or even the name the guys gave me.
“Sure.
What for?”

Mayhem sighed and put out his
cigar on the rag we’d used then stuffed the remaining cylinder in the plant by
the door.
“Got to pick up parts from Harley’s.
Outlaw
doesn’t want us traveling alone. You’ve been volunteered. Now, get in the
fucking truck.” He held the door open.

I shuffled out, moving to the
hover truck that was parked in front. It was on the smaller side because the
hover tech couldn’t hold
over
a certain
amount of weight. The outside was painted
gray
and it had a large logo of an engine with the words Hover Car Parts under it. I
moved to the driver’s side and hopped in. I figured Mayhem would want his hands
free for trouble and with me
driving,
I didn’t have to
go
into
Harley’s. It would have been
great to get that data though.
Maybe.
Ah, fuck.
I doubted myself too much to
be a productive member of this investigation.

Mayhem got into the truck. He sat
with his legs apart. His long black hair was pulled back into a short tail. It
showed off the tattoo of a skull on the back of his neck. It was covered with a
few green vines that wound their way to the sides of his neck.

That was another part of Mayhem
that I constantly stared at. His clothes smelled like a
cigar
and I found myself inhaling deeply. What the fuck was wrong
with me? I started up the truck. I needed to get laid is
all.
I was horny, in a den of testosterone.
Nothing more.
I
drove off, frowning, heading toward Harley’s car parts. It was daylight so the
sun made the city seem brighter, bigger. Almost like the photos of
Earth
I’d seen in school. Behind those buildings
were red hills and untouched sand. But right now, in the sunlight, it looked
beautiful.
Hopeful
would be the word for
it. Hover cars were starting to fill the street. Just enough to let you slow
down and enjoy the view. This was Mars. This was a new planet that we were
living on. The buildings were high enough to create shadows and give our dying
species new life. What we created was amazing but I knew it had flaws. They
became more obvious as we drove through the street. There were only white men
walking around, going to work, getting some frivolous item. I saw one black
man, older with
gray
strands of hair mixed
in. He was following a man around with his hands full of goods. He looked like
he was starving.
So thin that his ragged clothes hung on his
frame.

That bothered me. Why starve the
man? I didn’t understand that. Eating was a basic necessity. My family had
slaves. My father
fed
them, clothed
them,
but he never treated them fairly. The
thought made me frown as we passed the dark-skinned man. Our slaves lived in
old shacks and worked nearly twenty hours a day. What kind of life was that? I
remember as a kid there was this brute of a man. He was all muscle from working
the field. Despite me being rich, despite the fact he was my family’s slave, he
was always nice to me. He’d let me talk about school and any issues I was
having with my father. He was a good guy. We sold him after my mother died. My
father said we had to downsize because of expenses. I never knew if that was
true. Until this moment, I had pushed the memory of that man out of my mind.
Why the fuck did it surface now?
Because I was conflicted.
Yeah. I was feeling bad as I watched that slave walk behind his master. Was it
right to give a human being a master? The car in front of us stopped and our
vehicle automatically braked. A proximity alert went off in the cabin and I
frowned.

“What the fuck
you doing over there?”

I waited for the traffic to move
then kept my foot lightly on the gas.
“Thinking.”

“Well, stop that shit. I want to
get to Harley’s in one fucking piece.” Mayhem’s voice was deep and reverberated
through the small area.

“Sorry.”

Mayhem grunted.

We turned the corner. The dark
thoughts rescinded as we moved between two buildings. The light here was so
bright it made the window automatically tint darker.

“Is that why you joined us, the
club?”

I glanced at Mayhem then back to
the road.
“Lots of reasons.”
Vague but I didn’t want
to think too deeply.

“Don’t be an ass.” He slouched in
his seat further. “You need friends in the club. I’m fucking branching out.
Answer the damn question.”

Was he ever not angry? “Yes,” I
blurted. I was quiet as we turned another corner and headed down a busy block.

“And?
Tell me,
motherfucker.”

“Hey, you could be a little less
like a prick.” Stupid to say but I was feeling a might bit annoyed.

Mayhem grunted.
“Pussy.”

I rolled my eyes and focused on
the road.

“Fine.”
He was staring
out the window as he spoke. “Why did you join the club, Torrin?”

It made me falter that he said my
name,
but I cleared my throat. There was
a whole backstory that we created for the man I was supposed to be. Instead of
reciting it, I found myself spewing the real thing. It came out before I could
even think. “My father had slaves. I thought he treated them well but the older
I got, the more I learned otherwise.”

“The shithead
still alive?”

“Yup.”
I couldn’t
argue with his statement. My father was that. “I left after I saw him beat a
kid because he broke a cup. It hadn’t been his fault. I was playing and bumped
into him. But because the kid was dark-skinned, my father beat him.” It was all
true,
but I didn’t finish the story.
Telling the entire tale was like a knife pressing into my chest over and over
again. I skipped the kid’s fate. “After that day, I couldn’t look at him the
same way. I found a way to be out of the house when he was home until I turned
eighteen then moved out.” Then I joined the peacekeepers thinking I could make
a difference but over the years I saw most of them thought the same way my
father did. Maybe that’s why I was fraught. I ran away from him and into the
arms of strangers just like him.

“Been lost ever since?”

I nodded. Mayhem was looking at
me now. I pulled the truck into the parking lot beside Harley’s and turned in
my seat. “Why do you do it?” I should have kept my mouth shut but, “Why do you
fight them? Why do you risk your life against such big odds? Why do you kill?”

Mayhem frowned. “We all have
a past
, a history that made us the way we are.
Everyone in the club figured out that what the government is doing...it’s
wrong. Someone needs to rise up and stop them. We took the bloody job.”

“Why? Why did
you
?” I shouldn’t have singled him out.

Mayhem looked at me closely,
quietly,
then
spoke. “I was a rebellious little fuck.”
He stared out the windshield at the city. “Always looking for trouble, for
fights, for anything to give me that rush or piss off my old man.” He looked
back at me. “I was sixteen when I started blowing things up.
Small
things, furniture, trees.
My father thought that some prison time would
do me good.”

“He sent you to holding?”

“My father didn’t half ass shit.
He sent me to prison on Earth.”

Well,
fuck.
That’s was harsh.

“I guess he thought it’d knock
some sense into me, get me out of this dangerous path.”

“Didn’t work?” I twisted so I
faced him.

Mayhem gave me a
slight
twinge of his lips in an attempt to
smile.
“Met Outlaw and Lover there.
When I came back,
I went with them. They let me blow things up and I didn’t feel guilty about it
afterward
. They showed me wrong from right.”

I glanced away, afraid the guilt
would show on my face. Was I doing the
right
thing? Were the peacekeepers the good guys or the bad guys? I glanced back at
him and he was watching me. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe this chat
wasn’t about us at all. I narrowed my eyes. “The
club made
you ask
me, didn’t they?”