Wed to the Bad Boy (21 page)

Pittsburghese used in Rage

Rage is set in Pittsburgh, Kaylee’s hometown, and the home of the Pittsburghese dialect. It’s a rich dialect created due to the large number of immigrants who found their home in Pittsburgh in the early 20
th
century.  The mix of accents and languages created some interesting words! Note: Dialogue and personal thoughts will not be in proper English, and will use Pittsburghese

Yinz – You guys, or Y’all

Red up- Clean up

Slippy- Slippery

Jag- Jerk

Nebby - Nosey

N’at – And that.

Kaylee is proud to be from Da ‘Burgh!

Wrath is now live!!!!

Story

. 

Chapter 1

Layla

I took a deep breath and looked at the hovel I’d once called a palace.  The giant of my childhood reduced to what it really was.  The fortress in my mind demolished.  It was just a big shack with a decent parking lot and a small garage attached to it.  Something ordinary.  Normal.

Home of the Fire and Steel Motorcycle Club.

Seeing it still made me angry.  This was the place where my family fell apart.  The place where I’d lost everything.  The place that had made me who I was.

I wanted to spit on it and walk away, but I had to go in there.  I had to do this for my brother.

I had to see his body.

He had died for the Fire & Steel.  And what was we left with? Some biker’s funeral attended by drunken men and ugly women?

Welcome to life—and death—in the MC.

No matter how upset I was, anger didn’t ease the ache in my soul, nor could it cast out the misery nesting in my heart.  It couldn’t quiet the mantra echoing through my thoughts, reminding me of the truth. 

He’s gone.

My brother, gone.  Murdered.  Killed in the streets of a broken-down neighborhood just outside of Pittsburgh, just like my father was.  That was life in Braddock.

Oh, Sean.

All because he’d gotten involved in some stupid war with a rival gang.  I didn’t know if they were bikers or just run-of-the-mill thugs, but I didn’t care.  I knew the drill.  At least he wasn’t shanked in a fucking jail cell like my mother for her allegiance to the club.  It was the price we all paid for our association.

Why couldn’t we just be mill and dockworkers like the rest of town? Why did we have to do… this?

I steeled my resolve and pushed forward.  Each step felt heavier than the last until I was across the parking lot and in front of the back door.

Knock.  Knock.

It opened with a big creak to reveal a friendly face.

“Oh, Lala.  You made it!” My Aunt Donna stood there, a sad smile reaching up to her eyes as she looked me over.

Damn, the childhood nickname stung as soon as it came out of her mouth.  I hadn’t heard it in ages.  ‘Lala’ is what Sean called me as soon as he’d learned to talk, when I was still a baby.  It stuck.

We were only twenty-five months apart.  Now we were separated by a lifetime.

I let out a great, big sigh as Donna pulled me in for a hug, her eyes already brimming with tears.  Sean had been like a son to her.  She’d never had any kids of her own.

“I—I’m so sorry, honey.  I know you two were close.  If he could have said goodbye, I know he would’ve.”

If by ‘close,’ she meant that I got two visits and six calls a year? Yeah, sure, we were close.

Okay, we had a good relationship, but it could’ve been better.  Just because we weren’t bosom buddies didn’t mean I didn’t love him, though.  He was my brother and he tried his best.  Whenever he came to visit me, he’d ask me to come home.  I loved him for that.

I just didn’t want to see him die like this.  I had worried for years that he would die.   That I would have to come back just like this.   And here I was.   Standing inside the Club again, I would give anything to have been wrong.   My brother had deserved better.

Donna’s familiar, raspy voice reminded me of the last time I’d been here.  I’d only been fourteen then.  A lot had changed since then.   Not Aunt Donna, though.  She was haggard now, but still the same woman who’d raised us , frizzled orange hair and all.  She dyed it to imitate my own auburn shade—and Sean’s—but she never could get it quite right.   While our mother was getting high, Donna had tucked us in at night and made sure we brushed our teeth. 

I had her to thank for my mouthful of healthy teeth.  I’d been a stubborn kid.

The years hadn’t been kind to her.  Worry lines were etched deeper into her face than they should have been at age sixty, and the toll smoking had taken on her was obvious.  But she was warm and she was friendly, and that was just what I needed now.

I let the stale smell of smoke wafting out from behind her envelop me as she hugged me tight, stroking my hair like she used to when I was a little girl.

“He was a good boy, Lala.  He was.”

I just nodded as she led me through the maze of back rooms.  It wasn’t true.  He wasn’t a
good
boy.  But they all said that after, didn’t they, that the men who died in violence were
good. 
It was a lie they said to try to convince themselves of their own innocence more than anyone else.  He’d probably killed - and was killed - in the name of something cruel, selfish, and illegal.

All this death for the MC.

“Aunt Donna, I don’t think I can do this,” I said as we turned down the hall toward a crowd of people.  “I don’t think I can go in there.  I can’t see him.”

She took my head in her hand and kissed my hair.   “You’ll be fine, honey.   You’re a brave girl.”

I didn’t feel brave, but I knew I had to be.  Taking a deep breath, I followed her. 

My throat constricted.  My legs were shaking with every step I took.  It took all my strength just to keep moving.  I didn’t want to look at my brother one last time.  I didn’t want to see his body lying there, devoid of everything that had made him,
him
.  The cold, lifeless body on display in that coffin would be a stranger. 

I already knew it all.  I had been here before, done this. 

The memories stopped me in my tracks.

To my relief, Donna didn’t say anything.  She just hovered near, smiling absently at the members who passed by.  She let me remember.   So I could go forward again with some dignity.

I didn’t want to see my brother’s corpse.

I wanted to remember Sean as a reckless, goofy boy.  The way he was when we were kids, when he was my strongest protector and my greatest antagonist.

A deep voice broke through my churning thoughts.   “Donna, who the hell is that?” A figure stormed toward us.  He was glaring at me, ready to toss me out on my ass.  “And how the hell did you get access to the back?”

Already lost in a swell of emotions, I nearly threw up when I saw the owner of that voice.  I knew him instantly, and yet I didn’t know him at all.

He was the boy I’d grown up next to, raised together in the club.  The one I’d instantly loved in the way a seven-year-old did once they’d decided they actually
did
like boys.  This boy had trumped them all for me back then, had dominated my thoughts in the same way I’d want him to dominate my body years and years later.  That kind of crush never really fades.

I’d never really gotten over Cullen McFadden.

And here he was charging at me like I was some kind of intruder.  His intense blue eyes were staring me down, challenging me.  He didn’t recognize me.

That made me angry.  “I’ve been running through this clubhouse ever since I was a little girl,” I snapped.  “I’d better know how to get in.” .  It was easier to face him than the body -  in the next room.  And anger was easier to stomach than grief.    “I don’t need to be chased down and threatened by the likes of you, Cullen McFadden.  Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, the last thing I need is you acting like you can come in and start telling me what to do.”

I don’t know where it came from, but suddenly I was my mother on one of her tirades when my brother and his friend were teenagers—in the moments when she wasn’t drunk or high.  My voice sounded just like hers I wish I could say I was proud of the likeness.

“Lala?” he managed, the surprise obvious.

I hate that stupid nickname.  I crossed my arms and glared.

“
Layla. 
I go by
Layla
now.”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to do, because a slow smile crept over his face.  The kind he used to give me when we were kids, when he would patronize me while I prattled on about something he couldn’t have given two shits about.  The kind that drove me crazy.

It was his first smile in days, probably. 

Suddenly, I remembered why I was here.

I swallowed.  Hard.

“I’m glad you came.  Sean would have wanted you here.” Cullen was larger than life, not the scrawny kid I’d known once upon a time.  I realized his true size as he came closer to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into the crowd.

I breathed in deep.  The leather of his cut a familiar smell brought back so many memories.  Like when he’d held me close for hours the day my dad died, all while wearing the cut, no patches, back when he was just a prospect for the club.  Before that, it was his leather jacket.  I looked at that cut, at a patch on it that read, “Vice President.”

How the hell did that happen?

His touch made me forget about the hesitation, about my body’s insistence not to move.  I let him lead me through the room.  As we went, I glanced over at the faces I didn’t know, or at least didn’t remember while Aunt Donna introduced me to extended family and club family.  It was hard not to get lost in this crowd, but it made it easier not to look over.  At Sean.

              He was in the casket on the dais.   Like when my father was taken.  I remembered his body lying there on the same pedestal, his body pale and lifeless, while my brother and I stood near. 

By then, my mother was already gone.  Uncle Mick had held us both close while Aunt Donna doted on me.  Like she was doing today.

I hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone that day.  I had just cried.

The next day, I left for my other aunt’s, the one on my mother’s side.  Sean stayed in Pittsburg, of course.  He had been seventeen and ready to start in on the “family business,” but not me.  I had been done.

Fifteen years old and completely jaded. 

Being here still made me bitter.

I looked over and saw the Club President standing next to my uncle.  His face was stoic as he looked over the body of another dead kid.  As President, Eric – Bones - was responsible for each and every one of us. 

He had his President’s patch stitched onto his cut, and he looked just how I remembered him.  Same smooth face.  Same bald head.

Old and rough, thin but in good shape, with just the hint of a beer belly.  He was shrewd and far more dangerous that he looked.  A true opponent.  One you didn’t want to cross on pain of death.

To see him consoling my uncle, it was almost too much.

My brother had been his VP.  I could only guess what was running through his mind right then.  Part of my hoped my brother’s death bothered him.  That it made him question this hateful place. 

Walking over to them, I doubted it.

“Lala…” It was all my uncle could say.  Just my name.  He had always been a tough old bird, but he soft and squishy when it came to us, his
kids
.

Standing next to him, I felt like a little girl again, the child who ran into his arms for a big hugs.  All these years, and he was still the closest thing I had to a father.  He had raised me better than my father could. 

And he’d done the one thing my father probably never would have.  Uncle Mike had let me go.  Let me out of the life. 

“Uncle Mickey,” I said, fighting back tears as I clung to him.  Eric, the Club President was watching me.  I didn’t want to cry in front of him.  I didn’t even have the energy to blame him for what had happened.  

So I looked away.  That was when I noticed the casket.  It was closed.

They only closed the casket when the deceased wasn’t presentable.  

What exactly had they done to him?

As if he read my thoughts, my Uncle hung his head.  “I’m so sorry, little girl.  I should have protected him better.”

“There was nothing you could do,” Bones insisted. 

My Uncle nodded numbly.   It was clear that he was beyond any relief right then.   Bones just nodded at me and then moved away.   I watched the old grunt move through the crowd.  When he pulled Cullen in close, I couldn’t help but watch.  

This was all so familiar.  It was just like when our father died.  Many of the same people.  The same gestures.  Same words.  Same smells…

Here I was again, standing dutifully next to Uncle Mick, trying not to cry.  And failing.

Uncle Mick put his arm around me, just like he had then.  And I let him.

I stood there next to him until it was time for the burial.

The same fear gripped me, holding me down as the pallbearers came into the room to get his casket. 

Uncle Mick and Cullen were at the front.  Before he took ahold of the handle, Cullen looked right at me.

“Lala, come back to the club, after.” After the funeral.  After I put my brother’s body into the earth.  “We need to talk.  The prez wants a word with you.”

I should have refused.  Said, “No.  Fuck you and all you assholes.  You did this.  You killed him.” I should have screamed it from the top of my lungs and punched him in the face.

But I just nodded and bit my lip.  I turned toward the crowd of people exiting the building, finding my aunt and letting her usher me out.