“What’s the message?” Uncle John’s voice is now strained, not the collected calm one from before. The man pulls something from his pocket – it seems like a piece of paper – and hands it to Uncle John.
“Little biker, you will be punished for screwing my girl. She belongs to me and soon I’ll make you watch -” Uncle John clears his throat and hesitates, “I … eh … can’t read … fuck.” I go cold. My imagination draws in the blanks her uncle could not say. It’s not pretty.
Uncle John sweeps his fingers through his gray hair and looks back at the man. “I’ll make sure he gets the message.”
“Great.” The man tips his head to the old guy, gets back into his car, and drives away.
It feels as if I’m going to explode and blood seeps into my mouth from biting my cheek.
“What the fuck?” Enrique, like usual, is the first one to break the silence.
“D wants Mel. Badly. It’s not good,” Jackson answers and I take a deep breath. Over my dead fucking body, or rather over D’s dead body. This D dude hasn’t met the devil hiding inside me, but he’s going to feel its rage if he touches Mel.
I know now what I’m fighting for.
“Fuck them all!” Enrique shouts into my ear.
“Let’s go to Deimos’s house. We need to organize a plan,” Uncle John says into the radio while they get back into the SUV.
I replace the tactical earphone on the right with my own – needing to not have any voices in my ear – and start my bike, speeding off into the streets. The anger inside me causes me to pull my throttle open, increasing my speed to way over the legal limit.
I can hear the other bikes following behind as I swerve through traffic.
I’m an angel with a shotgun
Fighting til’ the wars won
I don’t care if heaven won’t take me back
I’ll throw away my faith, babe, just to keep you safe
Don’t you know you’re everything I have?
And I, wanna live, not just survive, tonight
The words echo in my ears and I try to push back, to take back control, but at this stage, I’m so high on adrenaline and anger and fear that nothing else matters.
Still going too slow for my taste I increase my speed even more, suddenly wishing I wasn’t on my scrambler but my speedbike.
Oh, oh whoa whoa oh whoa
I’m an angel with a shotgun
Fighting til’ the wars won
I don’t care if heaven won’t take me back
Axel swerves to avoid a car and he almost collides with me but we manage to circumvent an accident.
Then it’s as if something in my brain sparks to life. I need to stay alive to protect Mel, and I can’t do that if I’m hurt or dead. My hand relaxes and my bike slows down.
Jackson settles next to me, and even though I can’t see his face through his skeleton helmet, I know he’s looking at me.
On cue, the rest of the guys catch up and, without incident, we reach my parents’ house.
“That was incredibly stupid.” Dad grabs my arm as soon as he gets out of the car and I can see in his eyes that he’s not happy with me right now.
“I’m sorry.” I watch the others follow Uncle John and Garcia into the house, leaving me alone with my father.
“I was just so angry and powerless. Dad, I can’t lose her.”
“Then start putting her first. Think about her before you do something brainless again. Remember that she can’t lose you as well.” He’s still mad and I can’t blame him, but he puts his arm around my shoulder as we walk inside.
I acted like a child and I know he’s right, I must think about her, I must keep control – now more than ever. But it’s not so easy when my whole control support network – aka my rules – is no longer there to back me up.
“Anything happened?” Alejandro walks down the steps with my mom. Hell, I forgot about him.
“Harry didn’t show. Just sent a message,” Dad answers him with an expression on his face I can’t read. The trainer furrows his brows and stares at me.
“We don’t have much time to sort something out,” Ilkay starts the conversation as we walk into the kitchen.
“I’ll go get Jinx.” Alejandro turns to walk back upstairs, but my father grabs his arm.
“Why don’t you stay? We need as many people on our side as we can get.” Alejandro looks at me before he nods at my father.
“Great,” Mom says, “I’ll start making coffee.” We sit around the huge table in our kitchen.
“I know the guy that delivered the message,” Alberto Garcia says. I’ve met Alberto a few times when he came over to our house for dinner. I know the reason why my dad keeps in contact with him, but I’m not sure how much we can trust the gangster boss of San Francisco. He seems like a decent enough guy, but so does the doggy-school master. And I don’t trust him at all.
“He’s part of a gang on the upper North side. They’ve been rebelling for a long time and I know they are working with Harry.”
“We should get a spy in there. This D guy’s obsession with Mel is not healthy,” Jackson says.
“Grimm,” I look at Jackson staring through the window into the darkness, his face unreadable. Then he turns around and gapes intently at me, asking “Why is D so adamant that you’re screwing our sister?”
Logan hasn’t said a word since we got home and now he’s looking at me with a scorned face, “That’s what I also want to know.”
I know I’ll have to tell them about my feelings sooner rather than later, but now is not the right time. I hate lying to my best friends and decide that making a joke is the best way to go.