She left no stone unturned and no favor unreturned in getting me off with a slap on the wrist I’m about to get.
The interior of the courthouse smells old—time and history, dust, stone and wood polish predominating. Lots of people have lost their whole lives in this building, but that’s not what it smells like. It just smells like old men and their justice.
The lawyer’s high heels make loud tapping noises on the stone floor, click, clack, click, clack, along the long empty hallway with a ceiling so high I feel like I’m outside. Minus the wind in my hair and freedom. My mother is walking a step or so behind me like she’s afraid I’ll try to make a run for it.
The lawyer stops in front of a high wooden door, gives me a look filled with some kind of meaning that is too complicated for me to read and opens the door.
We walk into a conference room, not a courtroom, but the judge is sitting at the head of the long table, and three people in dark suits—two men and a woman—are lined up on one side of it. The lawyer leads us to the other side and motions for us to sit.
The judge waits for silence to fall before opening her mouth to speak. She’s a woman in her late fifties, with permed blonde hair that has seen better days and red lipstick that seems too bright against the pale, papery skin of her face.
“You are young and this is your first serious offense,” she says to me. “I am also convinced that you were unaware of the extent of the crime you took a part in. Hence, I have no issue with the plea deal that the prosecutor’s office has offered you.”
She pauses, glancing at the three suits across the table from me and bile rises in my throat. The woman slips a stack of paper enclosed in a leather folder towards me.
“Sign this,” she says. “It is the terms we agreed on.”
My vision blurs as I look down at the page, the letters all jumbled up and nonsensical. But I know what it says. It says I’m a spoiled little wannabe biker bad boy with all the protection in the world and then some.
My mother wraps her long fingers around my forearm and squeezes so hard I’m sure it’ll leave dark blue welts.
“Sign it,” she whispers in a hissing voice.
The lawyer is already holding out an uncapped fountain pen for me to take, a finger with long, sharp, dark blood red fingernail pointing at the line where I’m supposed to scribble my name.
I wish I wasn’t here. I wish there was still a way to backtrack on this. But there isn’t.
The run me and Jax messed up was allegedly part of a larger operation to abduct several young girls from a Girl Scout camp, or something along those lines. It was orchestrated by the Horned Riders MC, and they’d hired Jax to rob a convenience store at the edge of the campground and set it on fire once he was done. He’d be paid plus he’d get to keep whatever he got from the store. He cut me in on it. Told Hunter about it too, but that good boy wouldn’t hear of joining us. That pissed me off. It pissed Jax off even worse. I swear, if I didn’t know Hunter’s the son of the notorious and legendary Cross—Devil’s Nightmare MC president and the guy reputed to have killed enough men to fill an entire cemetery—I’d doubt it.
The idea behind the convenience store robbery was to create a diversion and distract the authorities long enough to make the abductions easier.
I knew nothing about that part of the plan. I’d never have gone along with it if I had. As far as I know, Jax didn’t either. But somehow, Hunter found out about it and came after us. He found us holding up the place and managed to stop me from going through with the worst of it, but not Jax. I left empty-handed, Jax left with the cash from the register and a couple of cartons of cigarettes. He didn’t set the fire.
We didn’t plan the robbery well to begin with. But at least we were smart enough not to bring guns. I doubt I’d be facing the choice of signing this piece of paper if we had. I doubt Jax would only get eighteen months of hard time.
I take the pen and sign my name.
It’s just a formality at this point. I’d already agreed, already signed other papers stating my agreement to these terms.
The judge clears her throat.
“Aware or not, your crime carried serious consequences to the innocent girls who barely escaped being trafficked,” she says. “I am thereby sentencing you to one thousand hours of community service at the Ariel’s Voice Foundation. It is a non-profit organization that helps find and save trafficked women.”
I nod since the judge seems to be waiting for a response from me. And with that, this whole thing is over.
A foundation for saving trafficked women? How is that gonna make me learn anything I don’t already know?
On the day of my first hearing, when this same judge asked if I was aware of the larger criminal plot my little failed robbery was a part of, I emphatically told her I would never, and have never participated in anything that would lead to the trafficking of anyone.
That wasn’t a lie.
I grew up at Sanctuary, the HQ of Devil’s Nightmare MC, together with all the foster children adopted by Rook and Ines, and Doc and Anne over the years. Jax was one of those kids, and most of those girls fostered at Sanctuary were the victims of some sort of sexual violence. I’ve seen how that destroys a person. I would never knowingly put anyone through a thing like that.
So I basically grew up in a place like the one the judge just sentenced me to. I’m not exactly going to learn anything new at this foundation.
* * *
The clubhouse was buzzing like an anthill when I returned after my court date, and my already foul mood wasn’t helped any by the jibes about the suit I was still wearing. The other jibes, the more pointed ones directed towards why I was out there getting smeared and caught by the law working with a guy who could’ve been our brother, but decided to ditch us, were even worse. They’re not wrong. Jax grew up at Sanctuary too, fostered by Doc and Anne, but when it came time to join the MC he left instead. He had his reasons, I’m sure, but he never shared them with anyone.