Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
It was barely a whisper, like the person saying them was afraid to utter the syllables, but I’d heard it.
“Satan’s Fury.”
The name carried weight, even now. I stood a little straighter, scanning the crowd. Whoever said it knew something or wanted something. Either way, I wasn’t leaving until I found out. I stepped over to the side and leaned against the metal building, hoping to catch wind of whatever they were talking about.
I have to say, hearing the name Satan’s Fury hit me harder than I expected. Most folks only knew the legend, the warnings whispered in the shadows, but I lived it. Breathed it. The Kansas City chapter was my life. My blood. My everything.
I started prospecting a month after I returned from my deployment, and in a matter of months, the brothers became more of a family than my own. It only took a few years for me to be voted in as the club’s enforcer, and I became the man who stepped in when talking stopped working or someone crossed a line they had no business crossing.
I put my life on the line every damn day for my brothers, and I never questioned it. Not once. They had my back just like I had theirs, and there was a time when I thought I’d take my last breath with them. Patch on my chest. Brothers at my side. But life has a way of gutting you when you least expect it, and when my world blew apart, I couldn’t stay.
I tried. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t breathe inside those walls anymore. I saw them everywhere. It didn’t matter when or where. They were at every turn, every shadow, and I could hear them talking and laughing, even when no one was there.
I expected that at home, but not there.
Not at the clubhouse where I’d severed the good in me. I saved that for them. Only them. I thought their good would stay at our home. It was our sacred place. It was where we spent most of our days, but their ghosts didn’t care. They followed me.
Grief will do that to a man. It will make ghosts where there shouldn’t be any. I knew then I had to leave. It was the only way I could survive, so I decided to go nomad, getting out before those memories could take me under.
The brothers wanted me to stay, but they understood my reasons for leaving and didn’t force my hand. They didn’t take my patch, even when I insisted. They refused, telling me, "Once a brother, always a brother.” They said the road would eventually bring me home.
But deep down, I think we all knew the truth.
I wasn’t coming back. Not really. At least, not the way I was before. Not the way they remembered. That man died along with them, and I was what was left. Just a broken shell who had no choice but to leave behind the life he’d always known.
Even after all these years, they were still looking out for me.
Pres called every few weeks to see where I was and how I was doing. And even though I didn’t ask and certainly didn’t deserve it, they never let my bank account run dry, keeping gas in my tank and a roof over my head. I owed them, so I would stand here, in the middle of the insanity of fight night, and try to find out who had something against my brothers.
I had no patch. No cut. I was just in jeans, a flannel, and boots. Not exactly what you’d expect a member of Fury to wear, but tonight, it worked in my favor. None of these assholes would’ve ever thought I had ties to them.
The whisper came again. This time it was followed by a whole mouthful of drunken arrogance. I shifted just enough to catch sight of one of the guys who was running his mouth. He was a skinny dude, in his mid-twenties, and like the men next to him, he was wearing a leather cut.
From where I was standing, I couldn’t make out the embroidery, but he was a member of a club. They all were, and he was filling them in on what he’d heard.
“I’m tellin’ you, man, Skynyrd said these Fury assholes did a real number on them. Fucked up their bar and killed four brothers,” he yapped, chest puffing with each word. “Those Fury assholes think they’re hot shit, and they can do whatever the fuck they want. We gotta go there and show ‘em what happens when you mess with the Coyotes.”
The Coyotes.
They weren’t as big or fierce as Fury, but I’d heard of them. They were growing in number and in casualties. They had no code, no true loyalty, and that made them both a joke and extremely dangerous. And the mere fact that they were talking about club business out in the open showed just how stupid and dangerous they really were.