“Yeah, until they stopped living altogether,” Munch chimed in, lighting a cigarette.

“What the fuck are you guys getting at?”

Stone looked at me straight faced but there was more pain in his eyes, more emotion, then I’d ever seen from him and I’d known him for over ten years. “What I’m getting at is Em.”

“Em?” I asked, not recalling a BBB by that name.

“Yeah. She had jet-black hair and weird purple grey eyes. She came to the club shortly after you left. She had nowhere else to go, her mom died in some sort of accident. Anyway, after the parties when everyone was all passed out we talked. She wasn’t like the others. She listened. She actually liked me. We grew kinda close.” He breathed out a sigh. “Too fucking close. She was my girl. Despite what she fucking did with the other brothers before she came to my room at night she was still my fucking girl.”

“So what the fuck happened?” It wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever heard. Over the years I’d seen a few BBBs become old ladies. It was no secret that Sadie was one of them.

“Chop caught wind of it, although it’s not like we were keeping it a secret. He found out that I planned to take her out of the club and the life, and set her up in a place. He shouldn’t have cared. Tons of brothers have done it before. He didn’t even know her fucking name. But just like with all the other codes or club law Chop had been adding or taking away to suit his own damn moods, suddenly a club whore as an old lady was forbidden.”

“Keep going,” I said, although I was pretty sure I knew exactly how the story was going to end. Because with Chop all the stories ended the same way and most of the people in the stories were no longer breathing.

Wolf lit a cigarette and passed it to Stone, who continued. “Chop called me into his office. He asked me to close the door. I did and took a seat and that’s when I noticed the stilettos poking out from under his desk. I knew it was Em. I’d bought her those fucking shoes.” He paused and ran his hand over his mouth. “I asked him what he needed, although I felt like I was gonna either puke or fucking kill him or both. The fucker smiled the entire time. He made me wait. He knew was he was torturing me and he was enjoying it.”

“Cock sucker,” Munch said, banging his fist on the table.

“I racked my brain to think of what I could have done to ask for this type of punishment but I came up blank,” Stone said. He sat down on the bench again, dropping his head to the tabletop and spoke to the floor. “I was a good soldier. I was the best soldier. I never asked questions. I did what I was told.”

“Tell him the rest. It’s almost over,” Wolf said.

Stone took a drag of his cigarette and a tear fell from the corner of his eye. The guy whistled while killing and he was crying over a club whore? It made no sense. “Then he told me that he didn’t need anything from me but that he had something for me. I asked him what he had. He told me it was a lesson.”

Stone bit his lip and his face grew redder and redder as his sadness turned to anger. My own heart started pounding. “I panicked because I left my side arm in my room, but I never figured I’d ever need it against my own life with Prez ’cause I was a good soldier,” he repeated. “Real fucking good.”

“I know you were, brother,” I said.

“He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her mouth off of his dick. ‘Don’t be rude, Em. Say hello to our guest.’ She turned to look at me and her lips were still all wet from him. Her eye was swollen and her bottom lip was split open with blood dripping down her chin. I thought I was going to be sick right fucking there until I saw the fear in her eyes. It wasn’t just fear though. It was like she was blank. Like she’d already given up. Whatever happened before I got in there had to have been bad enough to make her think there was no fucking way out. I think that might have been the most brutal thing of all. Because she was right.” Stone was now sobbing.

Munch put his arm around his shoulder. “We’ll get that motherfucker, I promise.”

Stone continued through the tears. “He told me that what he wanted was for his soldiers to be soldiers and not fall in love with the ‘cum-dumpsters’ every single brother in this place had sprayed his shit on a hundred times. I asked him why he was doing this. I didn’t understand. He was my Prez. A fucking king to me. The Bastards took me in off the street and gave me something to believe in. I wouldn’t have ever crossed him, no matter what. Even when you left and I thought he was wrong, I stayed by his side. Not because I thought he was right, but because you taught me not to question my Prez, so I didn’t.”

“Skip to the end,” I said. I hated that I had to wait for what I already knew was coming.

“‘Because whores aren’t your family,’ Chop said. ‘Your brothers are your only family. Whores are fucking disposable.’ I didn’t even realize he had a gun in his lap until he held it to her head ‘See? I just came down her fucking throat’ he said, ‘and this whore thanks me by bleeding on me.’ Then he pulled the fucking trigger.”

“Fuck!” I said. Now I stood up and started pacing.

“That’s not all,” Wolf said. Leaving Stone and Munch on the bench as he walked over to me and lowered his voice like he didn’t want to upset Stone any further.

“How is that not all of it? That cocksucker killed Stone’s old lady right in front of him to teach him some sort of sick lesson about his views on family?”

“Not even close to all of it.”

“Just fucking tell me already,” I said, thinking about how Chop roughed up Ti made my own stomach start to churn. It could have been her. He could have killed her.

“He didn’t just kill Em,” Wolf said, looking back at Stone who was face down between his elbows.

“He killed another one?” I asked, wondering why the fuck Chop would kill two BBBs.

Wolf shook his head. “No, brother…he killed them all.”

“Holy Fuck,” I said, taking a seat on the bench. Wolf sat next to me.

“We took off our cuts and burnt the fuck out of our skin because a Prez, a real Prez, wouldn’t do that kind of shit. He wouldn’t kill people you love,” Wolf said, looking me square in the eye so I could see he was telling the truth. “And I get it now. Why you left. ’Cause he asked you to chose between the club and people you think of as family and that shit ain’t right.” He shook his head. “It ain’t fucking right.”

“Executed,” Munch piped in. “In the court yard, one by fucking one. We tried to stop him. He shot a prospect in the leg and told us to mind our own fucking business while he took care of his.”

“Why the fuck would he kill BBBs?” I asked, thinking of the innocent fucking girls whose only crime was wanting to be part of a world they shouldn’t have wanted to be a part of.

“We got no clue. All we know is that he called them all out into the courtyard and put a gun to their heads. He kept yelling at them, asking them where she was, and when they would ask who he was talking about or tell them that they didn’t know, he’d lay them out and kick their bleeding bodies into the pool.”

I held my face in my hands. “He didn’t stop until they were all gone,” Wolf said, lighting another cigarette with the one in his hand.