Act Two: Family: Celia

At the sight of Sharper Banks lounging on the plastic chair outside her double wide, Celia Caldwell tossed her cigarette and dismounted her bike. He was the last person she wanted to see. Not only because he looked so fucking out of place in his custom-made designer suit and his expensive leather Derby shoes. She hated that fucking asshole.

Scowling, she dug in her pocket for an elastic band before swiping her hair into a ponytail.

“You plan on making me wait forever, Celia?”

Before she answered, her screen door opened, and Osti walked out of her trailer. “Fuckhead,” she growled. “I’ve told you before, you don’t own my fucking place. Don’t break in as if you do.”

Osti laughed, his teeth flashing against his dark skin. “Not what you used to say.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t ride your cock anymore, so your privileges are removed, asshole.” She finally stomped over her small patch of grass, skirting the black Escalade parked in her yard, and bounded up the steps, sidling a glare at Sharper, and shoving Osti just for the hell of it.

He chuckled. “Bad girl.”

She smirked. “Good pussy.”

“Indeed.”

“Though it pains me to breakup this lover’s reunion, I’m pressed for time.”

“Hard to believe since you live on the other side of the fucking country, Sharper. You obviously have too much fucking time. After all, you took a detour and darkened my door.” The third time in the last year. Each of Sharper’s visits coincided with her father and brothers’ out-of-state runs.

Celia knew that wasn’t a fucking coincidence, but this was the first time he’d brought Osti with him, who Dad sent as a bodyguard at Sharper’s request. Osti patched out of the Scorpions, also at Sharper’s request, thus taking one of her favorite dicks away. She had Cleaner and Saw, but she’d loved Osti.

He’d stepped up in the world as a long-lost nephew of Sharper because nothing was aboveboard with these assholes.

Heaving in a breath, she walked into her house, inhaling the lemon lavender scent. At twenty-eight, she had six kids. Her oldest belonged to Osti and the fourth to Cleaner. She couldn’t be sure who’d plugged her pussy for the second and third. Losing Osti sent her on a fuck spree. Her fifth and sixth children were blond and blue-eyed like Saw.

But she’d had to go on a job for her father and Bash. She didn’t like gore, so she stayed away from the killing. She threw a mean fucking punch, however.

A hand landed on her shoulder. Osti. He still wore the same cologne. Not that it mattered. She’d know his touch anywhere.

“My kids will be home soon.”

“I haven’t seen my daughter since she was two.”

She was now twelve. Celia spun. “Who’s fucking fault is that?”

His nostrils flared. He’d queued his dreads, though his gold hoop earrings seemed incongruous to his black designer suit.

“I wanted to take you, especially since you were pregnant, but your father wouldn’t allow it. Don’t blame me. Blame him—”

“I already know, asshole. You aren’t bringing your ass in my fucking house, trying to sew seeds of derision and division. Fuck you.”

Osti reached for her, but she knocked his hand away. Anger flared in his dark eyes. “I will fuck you up if you lay a hand on me.”

She’d probably die, but she’d go out fighting.

“Enough, Osti.” Sharper’s voice drew their attention to where he stood just inside the door. He held a thick folder. “I brought you as a treat to Celia, not for you to fuck her or fuck her up, to have Cee Cee or Bash gunning for us.”

Sharper walked forward, and the two men dwarfed her space. She worked hard to provide a decent place for her kids. It disappointed Daddy when she’d turned up pregnant at sixteen. However, when word reached him she was a nympho and she liked sex, he’d almost beaten her to death.

In his eyes, women who enjoyed getting their pussies off were disposable sluts. His treatment nearly broke her. By the time she discovered her third pregnancy, she, her daughter, and her son were on the streets. She’d had to suck dick regularly just to feed her kids.

One evening, she’d run into Bash and Cleaner, out searching for drugs and bitches. She’d been drunk, high, smelly, and hungry with sores on her pussy and dirt underneath her fingernails. She’d been so out of it, she hadn’t realized her kids were straggling behind her, ragamuffins like her.

Bash took her back to the club, where Celia saw her father for the first time in almost a year. Before he’d spoken a word to her, she’d collapsed.

When she awakened in a bed, with some of the club girls tending to her, her father came and talked to her.

“Be nice, Daddy,” Bash implored. “For me. That’s my little sister. The only split-tail I know that’s related to me. We got to keep her.”

Daddy grunted. “Your Aunt Kimber would have my fucking ass,” he said, sniffing and folding his arms. “Fuck, if I believed in ghosts, she’d probably haunt the fuck out of me.”

Bash snickered.

“Listen up, Celia. Didn’t fucking care if Kimber enjoyed fucking or not. I loved that bitch with everything in me. She was my heart and soul. The only one who ever trusted me to protect her and who tried to protect me. The only one who saw good in me. I just wanted her safe and happy. You made her happy. She fucking adored you.”

Celia nodded, too dispirited to do anything more.

“I don’t…never mind. If you like cock, I won’t hold it against you for Kimber and Bash’s sake. I’ll support you, but you have to do something like her. She wanted to be a writer. She had a diploma and an associate degree.”

“Daddy, maybe you can get her a place of her own,” Bash suggested. “You know? Knowing she like to fuck and seeing her on the prowl for cock are two different things.”

“Quite right, boy. We need to get you medical treatment. Your pussy’s in deplorable shape and that baby in you might not be alive.”

She had been alive, though she’d been born prematurely, and with massive health issues. Dad footed the bill for Alicia’s care and treatments for her seizures. He paid for her hearing aids. Meanwhile, Celia received treatment for her syphilis. After her last pregnancy, she’d gotten her tubes tied. Hopefully, Saw was it for her. A man wanted a fertile woman, who could bear his children. She’d heard it so often at the clubhouse, that it became her own personal mantra.

Overwhelmed by the thoughts crowding her head, Celia turned and walked to her simple kitchen. She kept her place fresh smelling.

Daddy had been so fed up with her last pregnancy, he cut his aid to her by half. Luckily, he’d eased up on her and now paid her to find out information from rivals, the whereabouts of club deserters, or to fight—or fuck—those who owed them money, which he tasked her with receiving by any means possible.

“You like to fuck? Use your pussy for the good of the club.”

Snatching a glass from the dish mat, she filled it with tap water and swallowed deeply. The snick of a door drew her attention, and she sidled a glance to her left.

“Why’d you bring him, Sharper?”

Osti was her first and only love.

“We reminisced about old times during my last visit.”

She sipped more water, then leaned against the sink, blindly staring out the window.

Sharper’s footsteps pounded over her linoleum. He laid a folder on top of dishes she should’ve saved this morning. She’d awakened late and had been rushing.

Silent, she stared at the folder. Sharper dug into his pocket and came up with a wad of rolled hundreds. He laid the cash on top of the folder.

“You promised me you’d tell Daddy or Bash. They don’t know shit about these fucking documents.”

“It’s dangerous for them to know,” Sharper swore. He hung his head. “Do you honestly believe I’d risk my cousins?”

“You’d risk your mother, asshole.”

“Unlikely. May she rest in peace.”

“The fucking safe you bought me is nearly overflowing.” She thrust her chin toward the folder. “I’m not sure that’ll fit.”

“That isn’t the problem, Celia. You’ve read them after I told you not to.”

She fucking wished she’d listened. “With you, it could’ve been anything. I didn’t want the fucking Feds knocking down my door, searching for your shit.”

“Cee Cee already knows about the events in some of these documents. Logan’s death certificate and all.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I just…” Straightening, she faced Sharper and shook her head. “I talked to him two days ago. He was looking for Dad. He left me a phone number and said he was in Columbia.”

Sharper’s lips tightened. “He is,” he pushed out, frowning as if he had a bitter taste.

“Then how the fuck can you have his death certificate?”

“It’s a fake,” he said simply. “As was his funeral.”

Celia squinted.

“It wasn’t his body in the casket. Someone who resembled him enough to pass.” He shrugged. “A mortuary’s make-up and the last moments of life can alter your appearance.”

“Why is this necessary again?” These assholes had more schemes and bullshit than fucking Shakespeare.

Sharper lifted a brow. “He ran afoul of Big Joe’s temper. Logan let slip that he gambled his granddaughter’s virtue against his grandson’s murder and lost. The girl, Zoann, was severely brutalized.”

“Fuck,” Celia muttered, closing her eyes. “Bash or Dad?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Did my father or brother accept Logan’s challenge?”

“It so happened it was Cee Cee. Zoann’s a beauty, whom he wanted to fuck the moment he saw her.”

Life was brutal. Unfortunately, she’d long ago stopped caring what happened to the women who crossed her father and brothers’ paths. Dad trusted Bash a lot, so they called the shots, but the rest of her brothers were club members.

“Logan has two grandsons. Johnnie and Christopher. Both are your brothers.”

Were they number fucking forty-nine and fifty? Thousands of years from now, a huge percentage of the population would trace their lineage back to Cee Cee. The DNA of the Great Khan, from ancient times, was found in two percent of modern society. Future generations would have Crazy Caldwell genes.

“Dad was going to kill his own fucking son?” Celia shook her head. “It figures.”

“He wouldn’t have killed Christopher. Rack and I discussed the situation at length and realized how foolish Logan was. Cee Cee would’ve shot the fuck out of Logan first, but Cee Cee didn’t intend to lose.”

“Because of Zoann?”

Sharper nodded.

Celia pointed to the folder. “That’s too thick to only have a couple of sheets of paper.”

“There are some deeds, a will or two, the report from the doctor Joe had exam Zoann while she was unconscious. Logan’s agreement to never show his fucking face again. Fuck, I’ve been trying to get rid of that motherfucker for years.”

“Why not just shoot him? Or decapitate him? Whatever the fuck your crazy ass does.”

The moment she asked, she realized she’d wasted her breath. Sharper was a psychopath always on the hunt for entertainment. His boredom bred blood, death, and chaos.

“I already have a stack of legal documents, pertaining to some Meggie chick,” Celia said.

“She’s nine.”

“How the fuck can a nine-year-old girl own a fucking club—?”

At Sharper’s amusement, she snapped her mouth shut.

“Jesus.” She might not have had any remorse over grown women, but children? Yeah, that was a hard no. “I can’t. Absolutely not. I can’t stand by while you kill a child.”

“I’m not killing a child.”

Yet. He hadn’t said it, but she heard it.

“I’m waiting until her thirteenth birthday.”

Celia lifted a brow. “Any reason why?”

“I want to fuck her and make money off her pussy. Why do you think?”

Her oldest daughter was a year away from thirteen and, “No! Fuck no!”

“Now, Celia, darling. If you’re worried about your daughter, I’d never hurt my own little cousin.”

“Big Joe is supposedly like a brother to you, and you’re fucking hurting him. Now, you’re waiting until his girl turns…no! Just no.”

“Of course, Joe must die. He’s in our way of the money.”

“Him and Dad make the money, fuckhead.”

“I’m the one with the ministry. The world-famous mega church. Do you think I need either of them to fill my coffers?”

“You must. You continue to put your fucking reputation on the line by fraternizing with Dad and Big Joe.”

“A holy man doesn’t turn away his sheep. Even dirty, tarnished ones.”

“Especially when you’re the dirtiest one of all.”

“Celia—”

“No! Take your fucking papers and get the fuck out of my house. Tell Osti to get the same. I am not taking part in the selling of a child.”

“Rack had been keeping the documents in his room, but some turned up missing a few years ago, Celia. We think K-P stole them. Yet, we can’t prove it. Big Joe refuses to allow a camera in the hallway. He is getting more and more impossible to handle, but I have a solution for that.”

“I’m sure.”

“If anyone ever finds these documents in their current iteration, all hell will break loose. The Death Dwellers will fall apart.”

“I’m loyal to the American Scorpions. If you weren’t so afraid of my father’s wrath, you’d kill Big Joe and take the child’s name off the fucking documents.”

“We have tried to talk him out of having Christopher as an heir, Celia. He is so fucking hard-headed.”

Her brother. The same Christopher Logan wanted dead. “Christopher can be Dad’s heir. Cee Cee did sign the original charter.”

“Bash is Cee Cee’s heir. Wally Jr. is Rack’s. Joe intends to split his three ways between his son, Christopher, and Meggie. According to him, Meggie can sell her shares back to the club for a profit. Another idea I disagree with, and he stubbornly refuses to budge on. We have been going back and forth over this for years.”

“How doesn’t he know about any of this?”

“Rack’s the treasurer right now. Big Joe trusts him.”

Sharper would give her an answer to a question she hadn’t asked. She was well aware of who the treasurer was. “If I remember, one of K-P’s heirs is a girl named Bailey.”

“As well as my sons,” Sharper grumbled. “My legitimate sons,” he added at the lift of Celia’s brow. “Bailey is untouchable. I have too much respect for her mother to bring such pain and grief to her doorstep.”

“But not Meggie’s mother?”

“I haven’t seen that sniveling cunt in years.”

Well, that answered why Meggie was expendable and Bailey wasn’t.

“I’m still not doing it. I can’t sanction a little child’s suffering and I can’t continue to keep this from my father. My allegiances are to him, Sharper.”

“Very well, Celia. I have someone else. Her sister lives in Camas, but she’s fallen in with a rival club’s president. I don’t know if I can trust her completely. She once had a thing for Christopher but she fell for Johnnie.”

Five minutes later, Osti carried the safe out of her bedroom and brought it to the Escalade. Once he slid into the driver’s seat and Sharper buckled himself in on the passenger’s side, the two men drove away.

It was the last time she ever saw them.