Chapter 3

(Sinn)

Liability

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill each and every last one of you!”

Sinn was pissed, seething, seconds away from losing his shit completely and the worse part was, the dumb fucks his family had sent to snatch him up off the street didn’t give a damn. They laughed, cracked open beers, and passed him one like this was a god damned party and he was the guest of honor.

Okay, so the chair they’d unceremoniously dropped him in was overstuffed and comfortable, but that wasn’t the fuckin’ point. It had been three days since they’d grabbed him from the alley behind the piercing shop, and he knew Saint was losing his shit. All hell would break loose if Sinn couldn’t find a way to contact him soon. Shit like this had meant war between clubs in the past. That was the last thing he wanted to have happen between his lover’s family and his own.

Hell, that bunch of stubborn, bullheaded bastards were likely to clash like a crash of rhinos before any words were exchanged. The Jokers would have no way of knowing it wasn’t an actual kidnapping. According to Zero, the leader of this merry little band of misfits, his family had intended it as a message, one that could be interpreted several different ways.

Zero chuckled, sounding entirely too smug. “Relax. Your people already told us you ain’t no killer.”

“Maybe not, but the guy who’s gonna be wrecking shit to get me back won’t hesitate to end you,” Sinn snarled.

“He’ll have to find us first, and that’s not gonna be easy considering how far outside of their territory we’ve moved. If they’d trailed us from the jump, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, I’d have kicked your ass out the side door the moment I saw bikes in the rearview and told your folks they had nothing to worry about.”

“Joy. So, where the fuck are we?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been gone so long you’ve forgotten Texas?”

That big, booming voice had Sinn rolling his eyes. “Hi Gramps.”

“You don’t sound happy to see me, boy.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

“Little else I could do when you failed to listen to reason.”

“Normal people don’t go from a phone call disagreement to arranging to have someone kidnapped.”

“I prefer to look at it as retrieved.”

“I’m not a duck or some wayward puppy.”

“Then you shouldn’t act like one,” his Gramps shot back, his shadow-shape growing soundlessly larger. Either he’d taken off his boots, or he was walking on carpet.

With his own feet still encased in his shoes, Sinn had no way of knowing which unless he reached down and brushed his fingers over the floor, and he’d be damned if he gave them the satisfaction of seeing him the least bit concerned about his surroundings.

His captors had done everything in their power to keep him off guard. He couldn’t tell if it was day or night because the windows had something covering them so completely no light shone through. They were so far off the beaten path there were no traffic sounds, so even if he got out the door, which wouldn’t be easy with the twisting maze of shadowy furniture every damned where, he’d have no idea which way to head. Big pieces, small pieces, the ones low to the ground would be a particular bitch to avoid if he was in a hurry. With all the giant ass bodies Gramps had assigned as guards, the chances of him getting more than a few feet without someone snatching him up were nil.

“I was perfectly safe with the Jokers, Gramps, there was no reason for this.”

“Then how’d you end up here?”

“You, that’s how!”

“And you best be damn lucky it was me and not one of our enemies, or theirs! Did you really think we wouldn’t find out about the Prez’s kid nearly getting killed just a few blocks from their god damned clubhouse? If he’s not safe, how the fuck can you expect to be?”

“What happened to Cody came from inside the club, not outside of it.”

“Excuse me?”

“I know you heard me Gramps, your hearing is perfect, and you know it, so don’t play games,” Sinn hissed. “Cody wasn’t attacked by enemies of the club; he was attacked by club members when the truth came to light over something they’d done to him when he was still a kid. For the record, it was handled with a swiftness and viciousness that would have made you proud. Whatever you heard from whoever you heard it from, it was probably filled with as many half-truths and fairy tales as actual facts.”

“You should have been the one to tell us, not a raggedy bunch of nomads.”

“I might have told you if every conversation we had didn’t involve you ordering me home.”

“Someone had to, since common sense has eluded you lately.”

“Now pops, you know that boys been thinkin’ with either his heart, his junk, or both, depending on who he’s gotten tangled up with.”

Letting his head fall back against the leather headrest, Sinn groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. Of course his mom was here, which meant his old man wasn’t far behind. Wavering between pissed and humiliated, Sinn waited for the inevitable lecturing to begin.

“I was thinking I was a grown ass man…” Sinn protested.

“Who should know better than to speak to his mama like that!” she snapped, waving her arms around. From the shape of her when she stopped, she had them resting on her hips. Once upon a time he’d have been able to see her face clearly, but over the years, all the details had faded to a soft gray. At five foot nothing and barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, she’d looked like the stereotypical Dallas cheerleader, if cheerleaders had full sleeves, facial tats, and scars from a broken beer bottle. Like Kat, she was a total badass and fiercely protective of her cubs.

Of which she considered Sinn the weakest and most helpless one.

Hurray for the pity party, he should have known that would hit once the bumping, rocking, and swirling of non-stop, speed limit breaking movement stopped.

“Sinclair Cade Gibson are you listening to me!”

“Not like I have much choice, mom, considering ya’ll came along and kidnapped me.”

“Listen to you. Ya’ll. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten how to speak Texan being around those Carolina boys for so long,” she replied.

“It’s not kidnapping when it’s family,” his gramps added.

“Family or not, you removed me from where I was and you’re holding me captive. That’s the very definition of kidnapping.”

His mom let out an annoyed grunt and waved her hand in the air between them as if to clear away his words. “If it was this easy for us to snatch you, what do you think our enemies would do if they had the chance?”

“It was only easy because I didn’t see the need to be armed just to get a tat at a place run by the club,” Sinn snapped. “The Jokers aren’t at war with anyone. They’re not even outlaws anymore. They’re just a family tryin’ to run their businesses and raise a little hell when we go on runs, only their brand of hellraising isn’t criminal, not anymore. Not like the Serpents…or us.”

“You’ve never had cause to lump yourself in with what the rest of us do,” Gramps said. At least it looked like his ‘guards’ had found another part of the house to occupy. Their voices hadn’t been ones he’d recognized, but then, he got the feeling that was why they’d been chosen. If he’d heard, or even smelled someone familiar, he’d have evaded and done everything in his power to disable them, but there had been no warning, not even the slide of metal on metal to indicate the van door opening. They’d already had it open before he’d stepped out the back door of that shop to smoke a blunt.

Sinn slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. “Only because you protect me like I’m some porcelain prince. If it were up to you, I’d spend the rest of my life on a shelf at home, immobile and ignored unless you pulled me down to dust me off.”

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep you safe,” his mother insisted.

Huffing, Sinn crossed his arms and wished like hell he could see her eyes clearly when he glared at her. “When Christian was nineteen you let him ride with Gramps and Pops to burn down the Hell’s Enforcers clubhouse. He got his patch less than two months after. Logan was barely seventeen when you taught him how to smuggle moonshine and guns over state lines. By the time he was twenty he was making coast to coast runs, with a patch and top rocker. Angel is younger than me by eight years, and yet she’s a full patched member of the club. Even Maddox has a fuckin’ patch!”

She huffed at his half-brother’s name, the disappointment she could never quite hide spilling out in the way she crossed her arms and grumbled a few choice curse words. “Your father’s doing, not mine. If I’d had my way….”

“I know. I know. You’d have shipped him off to college, with a bodyguard whose sole purpose was to keep him in his dorm studying so he could make something of himself.”

“Exactly.”

“And yet, he’s still patched in,” Sinn remarked. “And never set foot in a single university classroom. All of my siblings, hell all of my fuckin’ cousins, except Bruce because he wanted nothing to do with it, took up the family business and did what they needed to do to earn their patches. None of you tried to stop them.”

“None of them were….” His mother began, stopping as she always did when his disability came up. It was like she was afraid to say the word blind, like she was offended by it or something. He’d always wondered if she was offended by his presence in the family.

Burdon.

Liability.

He’d grown up hearing himself talked about that way. It was one of many reasons he’d left in the first damned place.

“Blind? Broken? Come on mom, just say it.”

“Challenged,” she sputtered. She was pacing. Her shadow’s rapid movement around the room was beginning to annoy the shit out of him. At least his grandfather was sitting down. Sinn was left to wonder how much longer it would be before his Pops arrived, because then the real shit-show would begin.