CHAPTER 2

Reaper

There was no change in the week I was back in the UK. Dad was still in a coma.

While there was no change in dad, I couldn't say the same about our little village. I had broken up three fights this week in the pub that we owned and ran by my sister Avy. I had run off a couple of punks selling drugs openly in the car park. I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

I felt around my left eye with my fingers. I knew without looking in a mirror that it was swollen. I could already feel a bruise developing. This shiner was from a fight last night in the car park just before closing when a couple of punks decided they would take me on when I threw their drug shit down the toilet. After that, I kicked everyone out and told my sister to close the pub early.

I laid my head back tiredly against the uncomfortable hospital chair in my dad's room. Stretching my legs and crossing my arms, I tried to get comfortable. They could have done with these chairs as torture devices in the war. That's how uncomfortable they were.

I felt a nudge on my shoulder and cracked my lid to see a hand with a travel mug in front of me.

"Here, I thought you might need this after spending the night here," my sister said.

Grabbing the coffee from her, I took a sip and groaned at the taste.

"Thanks, sis, just what the doctor ordered."

She snorted and settled in the chair next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder.

I took the time to look at my younger sister, noting the dark circles under her eyes, showing that she wasn't getting much sleep. We shared the same dark brown hair and blue eyes as our mother, but whereas I got my height and size from our father, who was six foot one in his socks, my sister was petite, like our mother, at only five foot two. Although she could pack a mean punch, considering her size when she had to. Before we had all left home, we made sure the girls knew how to protect themselves and worked with them whenever we were home on leave.

"I'm glad you're home, Kane. It's been scary around here lately," Avy said softly.

"I wish you'd said something earlier. We would have come home a long time ago."

She sighed, lifting her head from my shoulders and looking at our dad. "He wouldn't let us. Said you all had to retire in your own time. They are struggling to keep everything afloat, though."

I nodded. We sat in silence for a while, drinking our coffee and watching the machines that surrounded my dad bleep away. It was hard to see him this way. He had always been a robust man. Seeing him like this, I realised how much he had aged since I last saw him two years ago.

My sister spoke softly from next to me, not taking her head from my shoulder.

"They want you to resurrect the MC. They were discussing it when this all happened. Uncle Gunny was going to contact you all against Dad's wishes. We all knew we needed you boys to come back home. Mum and Dad have been arguing about it constantly. Dad wasn't supposed to be with me that night, but our regular bartender had left a message to say he was resigning, as he didn't feel safe working for us anymore, so Dad stepped in."

I didn't know how I felt about my dad not wanting to call us back home. I wished he had. We would have been home months ago before all this escalated. I straightened up in my chair and turned to my sister.

"What do you think of us restarting the MC?" I asked.

A look of surprise crossed her face at my question, and she frowned at me. "What do you mean? The MC has nothing to do with the women in our family."

I snorted at that. "Avy, we all know the women of this family are the face of our businesses. You, Noni, Aunt Maggie and even Bella see and hear more about what is going on in this village than anyone else. Mum works for the local estate agent, so I'm sure she knows just as much as you all do. If we do this, you all must be part of the MC. I don't care what anyone else has to say about it, so I need your input so we can put it together and present it to the others. I know that Draco, Onyx, Rogue, and Dragon won't have an issue with it, but if we do this, we will need to bring in more men, and they may not get it. It's not usual for MCs to have women as part of them except in the capacity of Old Ladies, hangers-on, girlfriends or whores."

Avy wrinkled her nose at the mention of the last one. "I wish they weren't called whores. All they cause is problems, anyway. Remember back in the day, the one that tried it on with dad and got a fist in the face from mum for her troubles?"

I chuckled, remembering it clearly. I don't think the whore knew what hit her when my mum still in her work clothes of a pencil skirt, jacket and pearls in three-inch heels looking like the well-presented lady, let loose and hit the whore who came with a visiting club right in the nose. There was blood everywhere. The whore had grabbed my dad's junk.

My dad had taken my mum's hand, checked it over and laid a gentle kiss on it before carrying on his conversation. Both had ignored the whore as if she wasn't there. From that day on, visiting clubs were told to leave their club women at home unless she was an Old Lady or long-term girlfriend when they came to visit. Surprisingly, this didn't deter the men from visiting, as my family knew how to put on a good party.

"That's why I want your input on this," I tell her.

"Okay, I think we should be involved in the meetings only regarding what is happening with the business, finances and anything we hear around the village. When it comes to cleaning up and getting rid of the trash, we will leave that to you boys. You are all trained, and we would get in the way. Also, if, God forbid, you guys are picked up by the police and locked up while you are cleaning up the village, it leaves us free to run the businesses. Plausible deniability and all that."

I nod in agreement at all her points. Avy was right. The women knew all the businesses inside out, the people in this village, and what to look out for.

"What about when we ride out? You girls all have your licences. Would you want to join us?"

I watched as she thought about that and finally shrugged.

"I'm not so fussed about riding, and I don't think Noni is too bothered, either. So why don't we play it by ear, and if we feel like it, we join you? Otherwise, I'm happy to keep driving my car, or if we want and you guys don't have any cheap shags riding with you, we can always jump on with one of you."

She smirked up at me and jostled me with her shoulder.

I grinned back at her and pushed her face with my hand. "God, Avy, I've missed you and your snarkiness. I don't foresee any cheap shags or quality ones in my future, so I will happily give you a ride if you like."

There was a hoot of laughter from the doorway at my comment. Then, looking over at it, I saw Noni standing in the doorway with a bakery box in her hands. Bellona, known as Noni, was Avy's best friend and sister to Rogue.

She was tall at five foot eight, with curves for days, long auburn hair and green eyes. They had both inherited their colouring and height from their dad. Their mother had been one of those whores we had been discussing earlier. She had decided that when Noni was three, mothering was not for her and had taken off with a travelling musician that had played at the pub one night. We never heard from her again. Mum had taken over raising Noni and moved her into our house's wing.

"You've jinxed yourself now, dude. What's the bet that you fall in the next two months and fall hard?"

I shook my head as I got up to take the box from her and pulled another chair over for her to sit on.

"Not happening, brat. There's too much to do with cleaning up our village."

"Okay, Kane, but don't say I didn't warn you."

I just shook my head at her before nodding at the box. "What did you bring with you?"

"Just your favourites, cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants and yum yums."

I moaned as I picked up a yum yum, shovelling it into my mouth. My eyes closed in bliss as the taste hit my tongue. I loved these deep-fried, plaited croissants coated in glazed icing. They were out of this world bad for you, and I could already see an additional two miles added to my run this evening.

Opening my eyes, I see Avy and Noni looking at me with amusement.

"Should we leave you two alone?" Noni queried, snorting with laughter.

"Shut up," I said, throwing my balled-up serviette at her. "I have had nothing this good since the last time I was home. They don't feed you the good stuff out in the desert."

They finally stopped giving me shit, and we took up our conversation where we had left off. I wanted Noni's take on it and what issues she had been having at the bakery.

She grabbed a notebook out of her bag, and we got serious about what was needed from the club and how it would look.

"First, we need total rebranding. Any MC owned business needs to have a logo. Then, cuts will need to be made, and positions decided on," Noni said, tapping her pen against her lip.

Avy and I nodded in agreement with all that she had mentioned.

"I want all you girls in cuts showing you are part of the MC. They don't have to say property of if you don't want them to, but they have to have the MC logo and your name on the front, and I want Original under the bottom rocker. I'd prefer you to wear them all the time until this is cleared up. These fuckers need to learn you are not to be touched. What is the timeline for getting the cuts ready?"

Avy responds with a grin, "Ten days for the first batch and the second batch will be ready in three weeks. Noni and I ordered the first batch the day you arrived home. We have also taken the liberty of re-doing the club logo. We have changed little, just the colour of the writing, and added New Forest to the bottom rocker. Show him, Noni."

Noni opened up her laptop, opened up a tab and swung it around for me to see.

I was impressed. They hadn't changed it much. There were two, one under the label of the business logo. It had a grey background, with the image of a crow sitting on top of a pile of skeletons, with Crow MC, the name of our village and New Forest Chapter, running through it. The second one was what would go on our cuts. It had the same picture of the crow sitting on top of skeletons with Crow MC as a top rocker and Feannag Chapter, New Forest as the bottom rocker, under that was Original.

"These are fantastic, Noni. Go ahead and have one done for each Original, including Bella. I'll speak to Mum and Aunty Maggie and tell them they need to wear their property cuts. I'm going to check in with the boys this afternoon and see when they will arrive. Hopefully, it won't be too long. I need to speak to Gunny. We need to get the bikes out of storage and serviced."

"Already done," Avy replied.

"Noni and I organised all that the first two days you were sitting with dad. We knew you would want them. Mum, Aunt Maggie, Bella, and Noni also cleaned the cottages and got them ready in case you boys brought any others home with you."

I shook my head at them. "And you wonder why I want you in on meetings. You have cut the list of all that must be done in half."

The two of them just shrugged like it wasn't a big deal and picked up their trash. It was nearing five o'clock. Visiting hours were nearly over. Mum would arrive soon to spend the night with dad.

"We're leaving it up to you to get the meeting room sorted, as it's been used as a storage room for a while now. And we didn't know what to do with some of the stuff in there," Avy said as she finished buttoning her coat.

"Okay, we aren't opening the pub tonight, so we can have a look when we get home. I think I want to move the meeting room out of the house, anyway. How is the barn looking at the end of the property behind the cottage?"

Avy grimaced, "I don't know. I haven't been in there for years. I'm too scared there will be bats in there or something. You know it creeps me out."

Noni and I chuckled at her.

Going over to dad, I kissed his head, "See you tomorrow, Pops."

I waited for the girls to say their goodbyes, and we walked out of the hospital. We met my mother as she walked in, dragging her overnight bag. I didn't think I'd ever seen my mother not put together, so seeing her in a tracksuit and her hair up in a ponytail was a bit of a jolt. I could see all this was taking its toll on her. Her blonde hair was now streaked with grey, and her blue eyes had dark circles under them. I'd offered to spend the night to give her a break, but she wouldn't hear of it. She had replied that in the thirty-five years they had been together, they had never slept apart.

Hugging and kissing her goodnight, we continued out into the drizzling rain. Avy had got a taxi to the hospital, so we all piled into Noni's bakery van. It was a squeeze, with all three of us in the front. Luckily, home wasn't far from the hospital.