— Chapter 76 —

=||=||=

It was the perfect day for a funeral.

The perfect day to wake up to a harmony of chirping birds, blaring sunlight and a cloudless sky. It'd drizzled the night prior—dewdrops of rain were clinging to the lush grass outside the Catholic church.

You'd never see a church surrounded by so many motorcycles.

I'd been the first to arrive, early in the morning, when the only soul in sight was the wandering priest. Rays of early light flowed over the polished pews through mosaic windows, the stained glass splotching rainbows of color over chequered floors. The Chief's body sat enclosed in an oak casket on the catafalque upon the stage. It'd been decorated in crème-colored white. White cloths, white flowers, white ribbons and unlit candles and yet, it looked so bare.

I dared to sit alone close to the back of the pews. Silent. Fingers clasped between fingers, and a knee bouncing as if it had a life of its own. Maybe if I sat here for long enough, I'd become part of the furniture.

An inconsolable anguish had lumped its heap on my shoulders. My limbs were heavy; my heart was dead. The Lexapro was busy working overtime.

I didn't want to be here.

I wanted to die. But I didn't want to kill the physical self—I wanted to kill the soul. I wanted to cut it out like a tumor, stomp it beneath my feet and walk away from it feeling nothing. Because feeling nothing was better than feeling this.

What a monumentally selfish fuck I've become.

Heavy footfalls echoed into the church hall. A familiar sound of chiming keys. I didn't react to it, didn't even flinch as the stillness of the room was shattered to pieces.

Shooter was here.

The footfalls grew louder as he approached, until he was standing so close that I could feel his body heat invade my personal space. That and the smell of his hard liquor—subtle, but there.

My stare didn't deviate once from the casket across the hall. If Shooter had gathered the nerve to show up, I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of looking at him. Mostly because I feared I'd lose control and strangle him to death under the watchful eye of my mother's beloved God.

I chose to scratch my burned arm instead—except I couldn't tell the scars there from the fresh scabs.

Shooter sat down in the pew directly behind me and let out a muffled grunt. The liquor bottle he must've been holding was heavy as he set it down beside him.

"What are you drinking?" The question was a murmur through my lips.

"Don Julio."

"Strong stuff."

The biker grumbled, "It's not a day I want to remember."

He passed the bottle over my shoulder. I couldn't explain why I took it, but I did. With a single sip, I let the liquor burn the back of my throat and the front of my mind. He took it from me when I held it over my shoulder again. Better for him to take it before I set my mind towards drinking the pain away.

I tilted my chin up and spoke through tight teeth. "I heard people aren't responding well to the new management. Not so easy being Chief, is it?"

A slow breath escaped him. He deflected the question. "How's Chains?"

"You put a bullet in his leg. You tell me."

"I didn't mean for that to happen."

I scoffed. "Say that all you want—but don't say it with Chief's body sitting in that fucking casket."

"Midas lied to me."

"Really? The shady mob-boss-for-hire lied to you?"

"He told me I could make a difference," said Shooter. "That I could help people. People from the wrong side of the tracks, the outcasts, people like you and me—all of us, together. He said that I could restore the Stray Dogs to what they once were: people with influence. The kind of people that could take what they wanted and answer to nobody. He said it was time for someone with ambition to take over, but Midas... Midas never said he'd kill your uncle to get me there. I didn't know, Edge. You have to believe me. I didn't know."

Liar.

Liar, liar, liar.

I wanted to throw my fist through a fucking wall. Heat, like acid, burned at my eyes and cheeks. It was pure anger, a visceral emotion I was trying so desperately to build concrete walls around. But that anger had begun to seep through the cracks, and my refusal to act upon it only pushed me closer to tearing myself apart—and destroying everything around me in the process.

In that moment I realized why Chief's casket looked so bare, even amongst a bombardment of flowers and fabric. Something was missing. The same thing Midas dared to rip off my uncle's bloody corpse. For Shooter.

"Are you wearing the vest?" I uttered, every syllable its own razor.

"What?"

"His vest," I said. "Are you wearing it?"

I hated the sound of my own voice. How little it sounded compared to the power I wanted it to have. I hated that I was letting misery extinguish my anger. I wanted out. I wanted to rip Shooter apart.

I swear to God, I will rip him apart.

My question was met with silence. Hesitation. A falter, perhaps, that lasted long enough for me to think that maybe he was. That maybe he'd been fearless enough—stupid enough, disrespectful enough—to show up to the Chief's funeral wearing something of so much significance. Something that Shooter had no right to wear.

There was a sound of rustling fabric. Shooter got up from his seat and from the corner of my eye, I saw him fold the Chief's badly-repaired vest over the back of my pew. I released the breath I'd been holding. My lungs deflated; my shoulders dropped.

"No," he murmured. "I never wanted it. Not in the way that I got it."

Footfalls again. This time, he was walking out, leaving me to slump over where I sat. I buried my face in the leather of my uncle's favorite vest and exhaled a trembling breath. Alone. As if I'd been left to die. I sat in that sensation and refused to let the tears flood until the doors closed behind me.

I felt like I was dying.

And Shooter was a dead man walking.

If I ever see his face again, I thought, there'll be a bullet between his fucking eyes.

In twenty-four years of being alive, I'd only ever experienced two funerals.

Well, technically only one.

It was guilt and shame that stopped me from showing my face at the funeral when my mother died. From what I found out through my father in the days that followed, only six people attended—which, compared to the dozens of black-clothed mourners standing in the church hall for Chief's funeral today, felt like an especially lamentable number.

My first funeral probably didn't even count as a funeral, either. I was hardly more than seven years old, and after seeing me so distressed over losing our beloved family cat, Smokey, my mom felt that giving me an outlet for that sadness would help me feel better. She pleaded with my father to dig a hole in the ground, outside in the garden—it was no more than three feet deep and three feet wide. That night, we buried Smokey in the pouring rain.

I remember because my father didn't let me cry.

The Chief's funeral felt like stepping into a new world. In this case, a church hall, where pews and pews were beginning to fill with grieving people. The ceremony was due to begin at any minute, and it was so busy that the lack of free seats had people standing by the walls. Bikers, friends, family. Some people were crying, many others were standing in groups of three or four and murmuring amongst each other.

An avid wallflower, I stood by the main doors, trying to stay out of the way. I'd never been very close to Noah's uncle—I didn't think I'd be very comforting to the people who were.

Noah himself stood alone at the foot of the Chief's closed casket. I couldn't help but watch him from afar, a soft sadness blossoming in my stomach. His head hung low as he paid his silent respects. The Chief's leather vest was folded neatly in his hands. I hadn't gotten the chance to ask him where he'd gotten it; I hadn't gotten the chance to tell him anything at all.

A voice spoke up beside me just as Noah left the vest in its rightful place over the crown of his uncle's casket.

"Well, he looks completely unstable." A young woman's voice, familiar in that it quickly instilled me with dread. "Like a bomb in a glass vase."

I couldn't believe who I was seeing.

"Sage?"

She stood tall beside me, clad in black boots, black leather pants, and an oversized hoodie that was snug over the tip of her head. A neon green jacket rested unzipped halfway down her arms. It was shiny, like newly-polished plastic. Not something any sane person would wear to a funeral.

And I must've been staring at her like she'd grown a third head, because she drawled, "You know, you can stop looking at me like you're about to shit yourself. I only bite when bitten, Street Cat."

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?" she said, trying to hide a smile. "It finally happened. The Chief of the Stray Dogs—somebody just put him down, my friend. I'm here to make sure the old geezer's really dead."

"Does Noah know you're here?"

"Look around. Everyone is here."

My brows furrowed toward my busy surroundings. "I don't understand."

"Boston's been on the edge of its seat for days," she explained, stretching her arms. "Everybody in this city knew Chief—even if they didn't know him. The king of the biggest motorcycle club this side of the equator is sitting in that casket. You don't kill someone like that, and you especially don't leave his nephew to tell the tale. Everyone and their mother want to hear what the prince has to say."

She was right. The more I looked around, the more I realized that most of these people were completely unfamiliar. Sure, there were Stray Dogs here, but some of these bikers I'd never even seen before. I swore I saw a police officer in the corner of the hall, too, and—the woman walking past us just now, was that a journalist?

"Noah's grieving," I pointed out, expression creasing into a frown. "He doesn't need this today of all days. This funeral was supposed to be invite-only."

Sage scoffed. "Edge has the rest of his life to throw himself a pity party. Right now, living in this city is like walking on a minefield. That man just lost his uncle, his bikers, and his vest in a matter of days. Hell, a good half of the people in this room think he had something to do with the murder." Her arms crossed over her chest. "This isn't a funeral. It's a fucking press conference."

Her points were so frustrating—frustrating, because I couldn't help but understand them. We can't even mourn in peace.

"The last time I checked," I told her, "almost everything has had something to do with you. What do you have to gain from being around someone like Midas?"

"I'm just a businesswoman, Taylor. I go where the money is."

"Midas is using you to hurt people."

"Then I'll atone for my sins in Hell," she decided. "Besides, what makes you think I'm not using him?"

"What does that m—"

But she cut me off, gesturing to someone in the distance. "Oh, look! Chains just showed up."

I followed her eyes, spotting Chain's head of stark-white hair in the middle of the crowd. With a single crutch under his arm, he was outfitted in all black, moving very little but nevertheless standing on his own two feet. He wasn't alone, either. With him were two elderly people that I didn't recognize.

"Who's he talking to?" I blurted out, letting curiosity get the better of me.

"His grandparents." Sage's eyes narrowed. "Hardcore conservatives, that lot. If you ask me, I think he's just waiting for them both to drop dead."

Harsh. "That bad?"

"Well, as a kid he chose homelessness over living in their house, so you tell me."

I know how that feels.

But last I checked, Sage and Chains hated each other. How could she know so much about him, when he seemed to despise her very presence?

"What's the story between you two?"

She sighed. "I'm the history he doesn't like to talk about."

"What happened?" I dared to ask.

There was a noticeable shift in her tone. "The same thing that usually happens when one person has an unparalleled ambition for power. Sacrifices. Long before he was a Stray Dog, Chains was one of mine. I was running bud for quick cash, and he was a rebel without a cause. An outsider, trapped in his own cage. I guess I was the freedom he always wanted. I was his first love."

Love? The word didn't seem real. Between Sage and Chains?

Nothing surprised me anymore.

"He would've done anything for me," she continued. "He did everything for me. But I pushed him too far—forced him to do things he never wanted to do. He knew nothing he did would ever be enough, and just like that, his love for me turned to hatred for what I was becoming. That same freedom, the ambition he fell in love with—it overwhelmed him. And when my demons finally came knocking, Edge saved Chains when I couldn't do it myself. Protected him. Made him one of his own."

"That's why you owed Noah the favor."

Sage nodded.

"See, Taylor," she said, "ambition is a gateway drug. Good in small doses, but too much of it can corrupt even the best of hearts. Our greatest flaw as human beings is that we're never satisfied. Once we get a taste of what we crave, we always want more. Even if it costs us everything to achieve it."

I opened my mouth to reply, but didn't get the chance.

Sage ducked down to my eye level and pulled her hood further over her forehead. "Shit, he's coming this way. Look, if anyone asks: you didn't see me, alright?"

"Your jacket is neon green."

Her laugh crackled like pure electricity.

"If there's one thing you should know about me, lucky number Four, it's that I'd never be caught dead in all black." Sage grinned so wide I could see the gold fillings in her back teeth. She turned away. "Enjoy the funeral. After all—it only happens once in a lifetime."

I watched her duck into the ground, still stuck with more questions than answers. She was so confusing, cryptic, secretive, scheming, sly—and yet, almost nice when niceness was beneficial in some way. I just couldn't figure out the lies from the truth when it came to Sage. Nothing about her was trustworthy. Or predictable.

Wait, I realized, what did she just call me?

Chains stopped in front of me before I could consider the thought.

"Who was that?" he inquired, pushing locks of hair out of his forehead.

My answer came in the form of a meek shrug. If he hadn't seen Sage, perhaps it was better to spare him the irritation of knowing she was here.

Instead, I asked him, "How are you feeling?"

A tic struck his jaw. "Like I'll set fire to the building if I hear another combination of 'sorry for your loss'. Fucking hell. It's a goddamn circus in here, and half the people in this church never even knew him enough to have a full conversation. Fucking clowns. They're just putting on appearances."

Swearing in a church. Great. If I had a bingo card on me, I would've been crossing out the profanities as I heard them.

I wanted to say something to Chains—something that would make him feel better—but nothing came out when I opened my mouth. As usual, I didn't have faith in myself to say something of value. Something that could make the pain just slightly more bearable.

I didn't even get the chance to try.

"Thank you all for coming," the priest officiated from the black lectern on stage, calling everyone's attention. "If everyone could please take their seats, that would be greatly appreciated."

I did my best to carve a path for Chains through the aisle between the pews. He hadn't completely adjusted to using a crutch yet, so it took some time for us to find our seats in the pew closest to the stage. Angela was already sitting there waiting for us, offering a kind-hearted hello as we joined her.

Noah came along not long after.

He had a notebook in his ringed hands, and offered me a soft glance—his way of telling me, I'm here. It's okay. Taking the seat closest to the aisle, coincidentally right beside me, I didn't stop myself from resting a hand on his shoulder. If only to return his words.

The ceremony progressed.

Noah's uncle was Catholic, so the liturgy involved the priest reading from the Old Testament to the mourners, followed by a psalm and gospel. I tried to follow along as best as I could, even if I felt mostly out of place. I hoped that, at the very least, my presence at his side would be enough to offer Noah some solace.

I didn't realize that Noah would be reading the eulogy until the priest called him to the stage.

My attention to him never drifted.

Stopping at the lectern, Noah cleared his throat and opened his notebook to read from. Dark locks of hair fell over his eyebrows, shadowing his eyes out of my sight. I knew they would've been red—if not from sleeplessness, then from pure grief.

"I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was going to say," he uttered into the microphone, gripping tightly onto either side of the stand. He looked so out of breath—as if he couldn't get the words out of his mouth. "My uncle didn't have many living relatives. He lost his parents, his brother. He never got married. Never had kids of his own. So, in a way... the Stray Dogs were the closest thing he had to family."

He dared to look up at the crowd of people sitting silent before him. For a moment, nothing. Just quivering eyes, and a thumb tapping away at his notebook.

He's never had to face so many people at once.

With a slow breath, Noah continued. "He was good with motorcycles—spent nearly every morning with his head over the engine of his Harley. Give him a spanner and a wrench and he could fix anything."

Chains huffed lightly in the seat beside me, probably caught in a bittersweet memory.

"He was a lot like that with people, too. You could go to him with your problems and he'd always have a solution on hand. And sure, he was rough around the edges, but... no matter who you were or what you were running from, you could always count on him to show you kindness."

The words were spreading further apart. Noah's legs looked like they were about to buckle beneath him, his lower lip catching between his teeth.

I could feel the pressure from here—it was burying him alive. Too many people were here. Listening, waiting, staring. Nobody had dared to move a muscle so far, and yet, too much was happening in his line of sight. He was falling apart in front of a hundred people.

He can't do this.

"Nothing... nothing ever got to him. I thought he would outlive us all. I never... never considered that I might... that there'd be a day in my life without him in it." His voice trembled with every syllable. "I just..."

Footfalls echoed down the aisle.

I thought it was my imagination, and chose to ignore it whilst Noah continued speaking. But the nearer the footfalls got, the louder they became, and I couldn't stop myself from turning my head back.

And apparently, I wasn't the only one.

Chains breathed beside me, "Holy shit."