“Oh, lass.” My grandfather’s voice is forlorn. “I’m so sorry.”
He hangs up and steps out his front door, the screen slapping against the frame behind him as he makes his way down the little porch steps. His white hair is sticking up at the back, and he’s clothed in a simple pair of pyjama pants and singlet, as if the fire woke him from sleep, which it probably had. My grandfather has a strong jawline and straight nose. It’s a face that tells you he takes no shit, and as he opens my passenger door, I notice it’s covered in smears of dark powdery ash.
“I don’t understand.” My eyes return to the devastation in front of us, my body frozen in the seat of Echo’s car. “What’s my Mustang doing in your garage? She was supposed to be at my parents’ house.”
Racer leans his forearm on the open passenger door and bends to look at me. The sympathy in his expression has my eyes burning with grief. “We transferred the car here last weekend because your Dad needed the space. We didn’t want to bother you with it because you’ve been studying so hard, and we’re so proud of your … your … well, good intentions to earn an honest living. Obviously we weren’t expecting my garage to just spontaneously combust in the middle of the night.”
My voice is a rasp. “My baby’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, getting out of the car on wobbly legs. Tony torched the structure because he knew my Mustang was inside. I’ll never find another rebuild like this one. It’s the death of a dream. And now the shock is starting to work off, anger rising in its place. “I’m just glad it was your garage and not your house.”
Echo gets out of the car. “That sonofabitch,” I hear her hiss as she starts toward the burnt-out mess for a closer look.
“What sonofabitch?” Racer asks, his gaze skewering my friend down with a flash of intelligence. My grandfather plays the doddering old fool, but he’s sharper than a tack.
“The fire. That sonofabitch fire,” I say quickly. Racer can’t get wind of this or he’ll get himself involved. He’s supposed to be retired. And though he doesn’t like to hear it, he’s old. He simply can’t do what he used to.
“Well, that’s true. Fires can be a sonofabitch.” Racer puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me toward the house before I’m able to inspect the aftermath of Tony’s vengeance. “Let’s get you a whiskey. Then you can tell me why the Marchettis are playing with matches and what it has to do with you.”
“Shit,” I mutter.
9
Kelly
My phone dings and I pull it from the pocket of my jeans as I walk through the front door of the house I share with Fox in Maroubra. It’s no sweet cottage like the one Arcadia lives in. It’s more of a fixer-upper, but there’s potential and the location is great—a fifteen-minute walk to the beach where we indulge our love of surfing most mornings. Fox and I work here and there on renovating the place in return for reduced rent. Maybe I should just buy it outright. Now that I’ve made the decision to invest part of the insurance money into Rehab, I may as well use the rest for something else worthwhile.
Ace: What did you have in mind?
I don’t hesitate with my reply. It’s hardly suave or articulate, but at least it’s honest. I got the vibe last night that she’s not a game player, so maybe she’ll appreciate the candid approach. Maybe it will unnerve her a little. Keep her on edge the same way I am right now.
Me: In the spirit of being honest, you naked beneath me.
That would really rattle Mason’s bones, wouldn’t it? Her brother is probably right; I’m not in her best interests, but it’s too late now. That woman has given me a powerful itch, and I need it scratched. I add a follow-up message.
Me: But I’d settle just for seein’ you, babe
Dots appear across the screen. Then they disappear. I grunt with frustration and toss the phone and my keys on the shabby breakfast table along with a pack of muffins I picked up from the Grumpy Baker down the street. “Anyone home?”
“Bathroom!” Fox calls back, his voice muffled. “Come check this out!”
“I have zero interest in seeing what genital herpes looks like first-hand, so that’s a no, asshole.”
“Har, har!” The sound of crashing tiles reaches my ears. I pull a muffin from the pack and peel away the paper as I walk down the hallway. It’s all new unpainted drywall and wider than the original design. I reach the bathroom, taking a bite. Fox is sitting on his ass, chipping away at the last of the old seventies tiles, leaving the poky bathroom looking bigger already.
“How the fuck am I ’sposed to shower tonight, huh?”
He spares me a glance. “Who at the club gives a shit if you stink?”
I lean up against the doorframe. He’s referring to the Sentinels’ motorcycle clubhouse, where we usually head to on a Sunday to drink and talk shit. “I ain’t going to the club. I got plans.”
“What kind of plans?” he asks, chipping away at the tile.
“The Ace kind.”
Fox pauses again to look at me. “You didn’t tap that hot ass last night?”
“Are we really going to gossip about my night like a pair of old ladies?”
“Yes, we really fuckin’ are. I like Ace. If you don’t tap that—”
I jab my muffin at him, crumbs flying in every direction. “You better stop right there.”
His grin is smug, the smug sonofabitch. “So tell me all about last night,” he says, feigning a high-pitched, girly voice that will give me nightmares for weeks. “And don’t leave out a thing.”
I toss my muffin at his head. It bounces off, landing in his tool tray. He picks it up and dusts off some flecks of old grout before taking a bite. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Fuck off,” I mutter, walking away.
“Just shower at the beach!” he calls out.
“You haven’t really left me much choice, idiot!” I yell back. I grab my phone and take it to my room, along with another muffin. After taking a bite, I toss it on the bed and peel off the undershirt I wore last night.
It reveals the Sentinels tattoo that spans the width of my back. I was inked with the image at the age of eighteen. If you stare at it, the red eyes of a grim reaper stare back at you. He stands at the entrance to a rundown pair of gates, one skeletal hand held up, beckoning you toward him. It’s dark and ominous, and most believe it represents evil and violence.
But it doesn’t. It represents our past. We’re Sentinels; guardians to the gates of our own private hell. Only those who dare venture beyond them see the darkness within and feel the bitter chill inside our hearts. We may be sinners, but we’re also survivors who’ve lived hard and rough.
“You goin’ for a surf before your date?”
Fox is at my door, demolishing another muffin.
“It’s not a date.”
He smirks between bites.
“It’s not.”
Fox shrugs and smirks some more. “You should probably know that she’s only using you to get to me. You can’t miss the way she was lookin’ at me last night. She’s hot for my body.”
“You’re kiddin’ me, right?” I peel off my pants and pull on a pair of board shorts, sparing Fox a withering glance. “You were all over her like a bad case of crotch rot. She couldn’t get away from you fast enough.”
My phone lights up with a notification, and it’s then that I notice a text message resting on my screen. Ace replied over five minutes ago and I missed it. Just like that, my itch grows more insistent. Fox checks it too. Nosy bastard. “Oh would you look at that.” He grins. “It’s our girl.”
A whole goddamn bunch of possessiveness climbs my throat and chokes me. “My girl.”
“I knew it!” he crows and points at me. “You went and caught feelings.”
I scowl. “Jesus, Fox. I don’t get feelings when it comes to bitches.”
“She isn’t just some bitch.”
He’s right. Ace Jones is one classy piece of ass. I want inside tha
t beautiful girl. Tonight. Right now.
I flick open her text.
Arcadia: Yes please.
How goddamn polite of her. Would she talk that way in bed too? Please, Kelly, touch me. Please give me your cock. Please fuck me. Please. Hunger rages like wildfire in my blood. I’m forced to swallow a massive lump of need, yet it keeps rising. My dick stiffens in my pants, and I grit my teeth at the swift ache it gives me. I can’t believe a simple text message has me fighting to maintain composure.
“Get out,” I croak to Fox before I embarrass myself any further.
Fox leaves without question, though he mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like, “Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?”
I met Fox at eighteen when he, along with his older brother Leander, joined the Sentinels. Leander used to run with the King Street Boys in Melbourne, but he got out and they moved to Sydney. I don’t know how, because the only way you get out of a gang like that is to get dead. It’s Leander’s story, and he keeps it to himself. If he wanted to share, then I’d know, right? So I leave it alone. But the Fox brothers have been on their own a long time.
Luke Fox joined the Sentinels as a cocky shit. Most in the brotherhood considered me the same, and we naturally gravitated toward a friendship, continually one-upping each other with smart aleck remarks and stupid dares.
I’d never had freedom until the day my parents died. The wild and cocky attitude had come with the new territory. I went a little crazy, overdosing on the liberation like it was pasta carbonara and I hadn’t eaten in weeks. It was pure gluttony.
The first thing I did with my freedom was learn to ride. It was an old bike belonging to Bingo, our leader. He said if I could fix it, I could have it. The contraption was an old Harley, tucked away in the shed behind our clubhouse, sentenced to die a slow, rusty death. That was where my joy in tinkering with mechanical objects turned into a powerful obsession.
When I eventually got that bike purring, I took my first ride. I want to say it was everything I expected it to be—glorious, freeing, and badass. Except I accelerated with wild abandon and slammed into the clubhouse fence, knocking down timber posts and bruising my cocky pride. My Sentinel brothers watched on, cheering and laughing, as I got to my feet and dusted myself off.
Not ready to give up, I was about to climb back on when Hammer came at me, face red and yelling, “You little shit, you broke my new goddamn fence!”
Hammer was the handyman of our brotherhood and somewhere in his late thirties. He was big, like a mountain, and outraged—rightly so—because I had indeed toppled part of his hard work. Fear rose up my throat, bitter and vile. It seemed I’d exchanged one life of violence for another, and for the first time I was unsure about the new direction of my life. Then Hammer’s fist came at me before I could ponder it anymore, knocking me into the dirt. The sharp punch to my face was like being hit with a two-by-four. The sickening pain was familiar. As was the urge to run and hide.
Then I remembered the vow I made after shooting my father. No one would ever make me cower in fear again. So I rose up and took a swing at Hammer. He ducked with ease, side-stepping as I stumbled forward, overbalancing. More cheers rose up from the Sentinels surrounding the clubhouse. They were thoroughly entertained, some even holding fresh beers in their hands as they watched on.
Hammer pushed me from behind, chuckling. My knees and hands hit dirt.
“Think you can take me, little biker wannabe?”
Once again, I got to my feet, and I turned to face him. Hammer’s eyes were hard and a smirk lined his lips. That smirk reminded me of my father. It was how he looked whenever he stood over me, watching me cower beneath his fist.
Anger, hot and bright, rose swiftly in my chest. I put my head down, and with a loud roar, I charged. He mustn’t have been expecting me to pull such a stupid move, so when I used every ounce of my young, burgeoning strength to shove him off his feet, he went down, right on his ass in front of everyone.
The crowd of Sentinels went silent, and I later learned that no one had ever managed to fell the mighty Hammer before. I stood over him, his mouth gaping, and I held out a hand. There were murmurs from the bikers behind me as he took it and got to his feet. He was tall, but it was obvious I’d be catching him soon.
“You got some balls, Daniels,” he said in a low rumble.
It was on the tip of my tongue to agree in some stupid, arrogant tone, but Hammer was watching me with squinty eyes. Curious and careful. Waiting to see how I’d respond. It suddenly felt important to get it right. So I forced an honest reply. “I’ve been through too much to take shit from anyone.”
“Was I giving you shit?” He cocked his head. “You don’t think you deserved a walloping for what you did to my fence?”
My chin lifted. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“No, you didn’t do it on purpose, but you were unnecessarily reckless, kid. You need a lesson on how to rein that in.”
My pride smarted all over again at being called kid. “I’ll fix the damn thing,” I muttered, ducking my head, fists clenching by my sides.
Hammer glared. “What did you say?”
He heard me. He also heard the snarky petulance in my tone. And I realised that I was acting like the kid he was me calling me out to be. Suitably shamed, I met his gaze head on, speaking with more respect. “I’ll fix the fence.”
He nodded, his expression remaining fierce, but I saw an underlying hint of satisfaction from my response. Maybe even a bit of … pride? “See that you do.”
He started walking away, toward the clubhouse, then he stopped and turned. He stared at me for a moment, then in a gruff voice muttered, “You ever wanna learn how to throw a real punch, come see me.”
Something in my midsection leaped at that offer. Hammer was a respected figure of authority in the Sentinels and apparently willing to look out for me, show me some of the ropes, teach me how to take care of myself. Perhaps it wasn’t a big deal to him, but to me it was everything I’d never had with my own father. I was going to grab hold of it with both hands.
I fixed that damn fence, and I got back on that bike. The shine of excitement had worn off but determination had risen its place. I needed to belong. I needed a family. How would any of the Sentinels accept me in their midst if I couldn’t ride a Harley? I would show them.
Eventually, riding my Harley became my favourite thing to do. A means of escape. Not just from people and the world but from my head. My evenings were lonely. I slept in a damp room in quarters at the back of the clubhouse. My bed was thin and scrappy. And the slide into sleep brought images of my mother’s sightless eyes and the gore of my father’s gaping wound after I fired the gun. Nightmares woke me in rivers of sweat, panting, aching, the backs of my lids burning, and the urge to scream so strong in my throat I choked on the thickness of it. I wanted to gouge the memories from my mind, but they were imprinted like words carved in stone, where only the wear and tear of time would grind them down into nothing but a faint shadow.
Hammer had a room there too, though with seniority came bigger space and larger windows. He showed me how to throw that punch, and over time, he showed me more. How to grow into the man I was born to become. My frame began to gain weight and thick muscle. By eighteen I was a powerhouse, bigger than my father ever was, and still growing. But that cockiness was hard to shake. And then Luke Fox showed up with his older brother.
There was contention over their arrival because of their background with the King Street Boys and the trouble it could bring us. But Bingo laid down the law. We all have a past. Our brotherhood is about who we are, individually and collectively, not where we came from.
Though initially they weren’t popular, Luke Fox brought something with him that for me was new. Humour. I was sitting on the outdoor deck of the clubhouse bar, basking in the late afternoon sun with a beer, when he pulled out a seat beside me and plonked his ass down with a deep sigh and a grin.
“Christ,”
he said, looking me over. “You’re a unit. Whatever you’re drinkin’, I’ll have that.”
I scowled at his good nature and overt affability. I didn’t make friends easy. Casey was always in the back of my mind. How he left and never came back. Not allowing anyone too close was a painful lesson to learn.
Yet I missed my older brother regardless, which felt worse. His loss was a dull ache. It throbbed anew as I reclined back in my seat, eyeballing Fox, because he had that same easy charm that people gravitated toward. A confidence in his skin. In who he was. I’d always admired it in my brother. Coveted it, even. Most people gave me a wide berth. Hammer said it was because I looked ready to beat up the entire world.
“Is this some kind of sad-ass pickup line?” I replied, my demeanour pricklier than a cactus. “Because I don’t do dudes.”
“You’d be lucky to have me,” he said with a snort, unfazed by my hostility, “but unfortunately for you, chicks are more my thing.”
“Well thank fuck you cleared that up,” I retorted, my tone inferring otherwise. “Wouldn’t have wanted to embarrass myself.”
Fox laughed, his eyes sparkling with merriment. He leaned over and clapped me on the shoulder, a gesture of camaraderie. “You’re a funny guy. How old are you?”
My sigh was heavy at being forced into conversation when I was trying to have a quiet beer. “Old enough.”
“Oh yeah?” His brows arch high. “Old enough to what?”
“Drink and fuck,” I say, folding my arms.
He laughed again. “Okay, tough guy. Hammer says you’re eighteen?”
For reasons I didn’t quite understand, this put my back up. Maybe because Hammer was my only real friend and he’d been talking about me to someone I didn’t know. “You been talking to Hammer?”
“Yeah, why?” His brow furrowed. “He not cool?”
“Nah, Hammer’s cool.”
Fox appeared relieved. Biker gangs could be a bit like high school that way, though I’d get smacked up the head for the comparison. But if you make friends with the wrong people, they could change who you are. “Friends shape your soul,” Hammer said to me once when the topic came up. We were sweaty and sitting on the floor with beers in hand after a heavy training session. I’d been getting picked on for being a loner and taking my frustration out on the punching bag rather than their ugly faces. “You’re smart to be careful about who you let in, Daniels. Those people may be the difference between becoming the best version of yourself or the worst.”