Page 15

Of course, he was just Freddy back then. Most of the time he was known as Fucked-Up Freddy because of his heroin addiction. Like the legendary Hells Angels, the Raiders had a bylaw about no needles in the club. You might snort crank or smoke some crack, but shooting up rained a whole different type of shit down on you and your brothers.

Preacher Man tried to intervene to help Freddy, but he finally had to kick him out of the club and take his cut. It wasn’t too long before Freddy adopted a new road name, Sigel, after some sun bullshit in German mythology. It was a nod to his ties with the Aryan Brotherhood. He then formed his own club, the Nordic Knights, and did everything he could to fuck with us, including trying to move drugs in our territory. Regardless of some of our less-than-legal business dealings, we never dealt in drugs or women. Preacher Man worked tirelessly to push Sigel and his Knights out of Raiders territory.

Our true hatred of Sigel came from the fact he had our father’s blood on his hands. And not metaphorically from some hit he’d put out. He’d pumped Preacher Man full of holes at point-blank range when the two were meeting under a truce flag. My fists curled in rage as I remembered cradling my father’s dying body. As his sergeant, I had gone with him to the meeting.

Growing up on the streets had hardened me to where the death of a man could be swatted from your memory the same way as ridding an annoying fly from your face. The quicker you desensitized yourself, the better. I’d witnessed all manner of ugly deaths—torture scenes with bodies flayed open like cadavers on a med-school table, the charred, blackened flesh of burned bodies, the cross still wrapped around the neck of a decapitated head that had been blown off in a car bomb.

But no matter how hard you’ve worked to turn yourself off, nothing compares to the death of someone you love—someone who was your savior. Those emotions you’ve buried so fucking deep in the ground come bursting out of their grave like it’s the Second Coming. In a way it is—it’s the Armageddon of your soul. As the emotional torment claws at your skin, you wish for your own death. Anything would be better than the agony consuming you. If only you could find atonement by switching places—their life for your own. But instead, you find an emotional immortality that places you in a private hell on earth.

Almost three years had passed since the night we’d lost Preacher Man. I’d tried to put as much space and distance as I could between me and the memories that haunted me in the dead of night, the ones that woke me in a fit of screaming and clawing at the sheets. But just hearing the name Nordic Knights ricocheted me from the present back into that night. Like a movie reel on repeat, I watched Preacher Man’s body contort as the bullets entered his chest and gut. I’d made it to his side just in time to grab his collapsing body before it hit the grimy pavement.

I shook my head to try to rid myself of the memories. But no matter how hard I tried, the harsh, metallic smell of blood entered my nose. My hands tightened on the armrests of the chair—the muscles felt stretched and weighed down the same as that night. Like a flash of lightning cutting across the night sky, I was once again back in that alley with my father dying before my eyes.

I’d struggled to keep my hold on him as the blood, mixed with pieces of flesh and intestines, made him slippery. Each time I tried to get a better hold on him, he screamed from the pain. Finally, we had gone down on the pavement together. Flailing, I had scrambled to my knees, cradling Preach’s head in my lap. Trying to channel my fear, I’d focused my eyes on Preach’s. The acceptance in his gaze told me that death was close. All the words of gratitude and love that I wanted to express wouldn’t come from my mouth, no matter how hard I tried to speak.

As if he sensed my turmoil, Preacher Man brought a trembling, blood-soaked hand to my cheek. “I know, son,” he wheezed. And then he said something on his dying breath that I still longed to understand. “Angels … beautiful angels with dark hair are coming for you. They are your only salvation.”

With his eyes fixed above us on the sky, he exhaled a long, painful breath. And then he was gone. The realization lit every molecule in my body on fire like flipping the switch on the electric chair. I shot off the pavement with my arms and legs twitching with rage and resentment. As I lunged for the man who had taken my father’s life, a gun’s muzzle met me in the face.

“My beef was with your pops. Bad blood from years past. You get to live. For tonight, at least.”

“You might as well end me right now, motherfucker. ’Cause if you let me walk away, I’ll rain a fucking firestorm down on you!”

A smile had curled at his lips. “I’d love to see you try. When morning comes and word spreads how I took down Preacher Man without a fight, you and your Raiders won’t have a fucking ally anywhere. Me and the Knights will run you into the ground.”

When I had lunged at him, the barrel of the gun smashed across my cheek, breaking my nose. As tears blinded my eyes from the hit and blood poured down my face, I’d been forced to watch as Sigel had spat on Preacher Man’s body.

But what Sigel couldn’t have imagined, nor any of us Raiders, was that Preacher Man had been two steps ahead of him. All of our allies stayed firmly in place based on last-minute peace offerings Preacher Man had made. The greatest of his last-hour deals included cashing in a favor owed by one of the Atlanta PD—a somewhat-crooked cop who was willing to falsify a warrant that took the drug task force straight to Sigel’s door. With his arrest history, he would be behind bars for at least five to ten, and I would be forced to sit on any revenge plans. Sure, I could’ve put out a hit for Sigel’s throat to be slit or for him to be shanked. But I wanted full-on justice, an eye for an eye, with his blood on my own two hands.

By hiding his brokered deals, Preacher Man had gone against all the charter rules that forced a vote by the officers. Like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, he had selflessly worked to ensure the safety of the club, even if all along it was going to cost him his life. Deep down, I knew that he had instigated Sigel’s imprisonment to keep me from any revenge that would come from his probable death. He must’ve feared I would be killed or imprisoned and wanted to protect me. He never would have fathomed my next move.

“Deacon,” a voice implored, jerking me out of the past and into the present.

“What?” I croaked. Staring down at my hands, I thought of a movie Rev had made me watch. Some bullshit Shakespeare stuff that I had slept through back in high school. Like the deranged chick, I rubbed my hands furiously together, trying not to see the blood I imagined on them—the blood of Sigel’s only son.