Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
“I acted out, looked for something that would work out that emotion in me,” he continued. “Everything I did was such shit, such trash, it dug me in all the deeper, because my brother would have been disappointed in me. For some reason, though, I just couldn’t stop.”
It lay between us right then.
It hung like a spirit holding the Wheel of Fortune.
One turn, and things change.
What hung there were the two words that turned the wheel to bring change.
Until Rosalie.
“All of us got a story,” he went on. “All of us were shadowboxing demons that life planted in us, way down deep. We were called Bounty, but we did not wake the fuck up and look around to see what bounty we actually had. Each of us was in a brotherhood, and we were all totally alone.”
He shook his head.
And kept going.
“Now, this is no excuse, none of it is, but we had two men in our crew who were snakes in the grass. They injected poison, but only in the way they filled the syringe and handed it to us, and we sunk the needle in our own flesh. So what was bad got worse, and we were all in for that ride.” His gaze bore into mine. “I can honest to God stand here, look you in the eye, and tell you that then, when it happened, when the decision was made, I was all for it. I jumped right in. She was mine, and I was the one to take the first swing, and I spat on her when it was over.”
The wet came and spilled right over the edges of my eyes.
“I gotta live with that,” he whispered.
“Beck,” I whispered back.
He cleared his throat.
“If he wants, he can get into it. He can tell you the full story of what we were and what we became if you give him a shot. But you’re sharp, you can put it together. There’s a reason we’re called Resurrection. We burned it to the ground. And so we could live with ourselves, we had to walk away from those ashes, go somewhere good and right, and do the work to build it back up.”
He tossed the binder on my coffee table. It landed with a plop that felt like an explosion.
“That’s our charter. Those are our rules and regs. No one but a brother has read those. But I’m giving them to you.”
Holy shit.
Slowly, I shifted my gaze to the binder.
On the cover it said:
Iustitia
Tribus
Honoris
Fidelitas
And that was all.
Not the name of their club. Not an author of the document. Not the name of their officers.
Just those words.
“When we got our shit tight, we did the work,” Beck said, regaining my attention. “We left our women and we hiked into the woods and we sat on rocks and built a fire and we didn’t hike back out until it was all out there. Until everyone knew everything. It took over two weeks. It was hard as fuck to do it myself. But it was harder, watching my brothers reach into their own souls, pull those fuckers out and expose their demons for the other men to see. But we didn’t know what brotherhood was about. We didn’t know the shadows our brothers were fighting. We didn’t know what brought us there. We didn’t understand family. And not knowing, it took us to a place we didn’t want to be, but in one way or other, we will never leave. Out in those woods, we became a family. And we took that home to our women.”
Another tear slid down my cheek.
“Every man who comes to us and wants a part of who we are, what we do,” he went on, “before we give them a patch, we take them to those woods. And I don’t give a shit, Hellen, if they share they still feel like an asshole because the girl they liked in high school said no to a date, and that fucked them up. It means something to them. It lives in them. It festers in them. And me and Eight, and Muzzle, and Core and all the rest are there for them to help work that poison out.”
After delivering that, he walked to the door.
I wanted to cry out because for some reason I didn’t want him to leave.
But he didn’t leave.
He turned back to me.
“We do not take payment for the services we render,” he said quietly. “They come to us, and we do what’s necessary, no matter what that means, to right the wrongs that were done to them. I can never wash my woman’s blood off my hands. I get some abusive husband’s blood. Or some rapist who got a slap on the wrist or got away altogether. Or some sociopathic geek who spends his time messing with girls online to the point they try to take their own lives. I got that blood on my hands, I got no problem with it.”