“If you so much as fucking—” I started, taking a step toward her. Gus held out his gun and Sadie held up a phone.

“Save it, Abel. Cuffs. Now. Or the girl dies.”

I picked the cuffs up off the floor and did as she asked, cuffing my hand to my old man’s whose gaze was still fixed on Sadie.

“Can I kill him now?” Gus asked, shifting from foot to foot. “Is it playtime yet?”

“No, sweetheart,” Sadie said, like he was a toddler that needed to be taught a lesson. She sauntered over to Gus and planted a kiss on his lips. He closed his eyes while she kept hers open, tugging the gun from his hands. “You’ve been a very, very good boy to me all these years. You took very good care of me while I was that pig’s captive, and I thank you for that.” She patted him on the top of his head and raised the gun. Gus opened his eyes just long enough for the shock to register. “But I’ll take it from here, baby.” She pulled the trigger, firing off multiple rounds, sending Gus’s brains splattering against Chop’s old trophy case in a mist of pink and red.

* * *

“WHAT THE FUCK?” I asked as Gus’s brains slid down the glass and fell on top of what was left of his forehead. Sadie pulled her own gun from a holster on her thigh and held one on each of us.

Sadie not only acted very different from the woman who visited me in County, she looked different too. She wore a high-waisted red skirt with a tight black blouse and shiny black pumps. Her long hair was now an auburn color, void of silver streaks. Instead of flowing down her back it had been cut short to her chin. She looked easily fifteen years younger than she did only months before.

“So what? You’re here to seek revenge?” Chop asked, and I wondered if she would really shoot if I took a run at her. I glanced down to Gus’s bloodied corpse and decided that it was highly likely she would.

“Something like that,” she purred, perching herself on the edge of the couch.

“You should be thanking me for not killing you,” Chop said flatly. He hadn’t once taken his eyes from her since she’d stepped into the room. Not even when she blew Gus’s head clean off. He barely even blinked.

She moved back a few inches, physically putting more distance between herself and Chops statement. “Thanking you? I should be thanking you?” she yelled, getting up from the couch and pointing the gun at Chop’s head. “You hunted me down and shot me!” Sadie screamed, pointing to the faded scar on the side of her forehead. “You left me on the side of the fucking road for hours before you came back for me, but only so you could keep me prisoner you sick, SICK FUCK!” Her hands visibly trembled. So did her lower lip. “The humane thing would have been to kill me! The only human interaction I’d had in decades was that piece of shit,” she said, pointing the toe of her heel at Gus, the pool of blood growing beneath his body. “And the wails of whoever else you decided to torture.”

The bigger picture was coming together, but not fast enough. “Why Gus? How?” I asked, and when I raised my hand, I raised Chop’s as well, reminding me that I was still cuffed to the cocksucker.

Chop spoke up. “Because he was the one who fed her,” he muttered. “I thought he was the only one I could trust with that type of thing. Given his…oddities and all.”

I looked at Sadie as it all fell into place. “Chop was right. It was you. You were the rat,” I said, pausing only to watch as Gus’s blood reached the toe of my boot. My eyes darted back to her. “Well, you and that fuck,” I said. “It was you all along.” Still not quite believing what I knew then to be true.

Sadie nodded and her hands stopped shaking as she switched her attentions from Chop to me. “Yes. I’ve spent every day of my long captivity, when I wasn’t being raped by your father, or beaten, or tortured,” she said, slowly emphasizing the word TORTURE. “I was trying my damnedest to bring this club down.” She smiled like she’d just remembered something funny, or at least, funny to her. “The cartel pulling out? That was me,” she said proudly. “The deal with the Miami mob falling through? That was me. The fucking ATF at your door? THAT. WAS. ME!” she screamed, jabbing her gun in the air at us. “And I regret none of it. I’ve been putting the two of you against one another since the first day I met Gus, and it looks like it worked.” She looked to me. “You thought Chop was the rat, and Chop…” she said, turning to my old man. “…thought it was you. It was brilliant, really.”

“If Gus was your little bitch boy then why didn’t you just have him kill Chop?” I asked. “Why go through all this trouble? Why try and kill me too?” I stared her down, daring her to answer my questions. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?” I wanted nothing more than to snap the neck of the tiny woman holding the big gun.

“Because,” Sadie said, her eyes glassy. “You were my little boy. My Abel. I couldn’t let you be just like him. I wouldn’t, and when Gus told me how much you really were like him, the things you did. I knew I had to end it.”

“So you would rather Isaac or Eli kill me?” I asked, feeling sick. “You wanted them to kill me so I wouldn’t end up like Chop? Do you even know what those sick fucks did to me?”

She didn’t answer. Stepping over Gus she briefly peered out the window to the soldiers below, oblivious that the person they really needed to kill was one floor above them and wearing a fucking skirt. “Yes. I failed you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late now. It’s all too late to change it now.”

A realization hit me. “You’re the reason Preppy’s dead. I should fucking end you right fucking now you fucking cunt!” I said, pushing the desk aside and almost knocking over Chop, who I was inadvertently dragging with me.

Sadie aimed her gun at my chest, and if I didn’t care about ever seeing Ti again, I would have ran right through a spray of bullets to rip my mothers head off. “See?” Sadie asked, pointing at me. “Just like him.” She sighed. “All I ever did was love you and try to give you a better life, and then he took it all from me!” Sadie paused, her eyes glassed over. “I loved you!” she cried, her hands again shaking. To my surprise she wasn’t looking at me when she said it this time. She was looking at Chop. “I love you and I gave you a son and you ruined it. You ruined everything! All I wanted was for you to leave the club, the life. I wanted us to be a family. To be together.”