Or he was going to visit a side-piece, not hang out with other bikers.
“Know where he’d go?”
She shook her head. “Not usually, though he’d mention this bar sometimes.”
Interesting… A man who owned a hog and occasionally hung out at Crazy Pete’s. “He live with you and your mom?”
“Yes. I never saw him wear a cut like yours or even mention the club except for those warnings.”
He was probably just an enthusiast. A weekend warrior. While some of the Originals had families on the side that they shielded from the club, it was still difficult to keep being a patched member a total secret from those families. Every Original he knew had lived and breathed the Fury.
Until they stopped breathing because of the Fury.
Some of the Originals, and even some members of the Thirty-Eight Calibers, lived two separate lives. They had two families. The legal wife, along with their kids, and a job or career they hid their club life from, and then their brotherhood. Sometimes they even had an ol’ lady on the side. It wasn’t uncommon among outlaw clubs.
Ozzy doubted Trip would tolerate that kind of shit now. The Fury brotherhood was family. A true family. One that included a brother’s legal wife or ol’ lady, but not both. Having both could stir up some really fucked-up drama. Trip was trying to avoid that possible cluster-fuck. It was a quick way to destroy everything he worked so hard to build.
Ozzy remembered when a wife, who’d been kept separate from the club, found out her husband had claimed an ol’ lady. The pissed-off woman showed up one night at the warehouse and confronted them.
Unfortunately, the wife, because she’d been sheltered from the club, didn’t know what she was walking into. The married brother’s ol’ lady got into a brawl with the wife, breaking her jaw, an arm, crushing her rib cage and slicing her face with a blade. Before the wife even completely recovered, she divorced her husband and he never saw his fucking kids again.
So, yeah, living two lives wasn’t always twice as fun. Sometimes it could create a fucking nightmare.
He didn’t want one ol’ lady or wife, forget two.
Shay’s next words brought him back to the woman standing before him. “So, you were part of that club before everyone vanished. But you didn’t. You remained.”
He shook his head. “No, I hit the road, too. Nothin’ of the club was left so there was no reason to stay. Only a coupla members stayed in the area because they ran established businesses. One of them was Crazy Pete because he ran this bar. But at the time, when trouble went down, his wife split and took his daughter, trying to keep Stella safe.”
“Ah, the Stella you mentioned earlier.”
“Yeah.”
“The way you said that makes me think the club came to a violent end. Did it?” Since she was a good eight inches shorter than him, she had to glance up to meet his gaze. She held it while waiting for his answer.
An answer he didn’t want to give her.
He did his best to keep his expression blank. “A lot of disagreements and in-fighting. Shit just didn’t work out.” While he didn’t want to sugarcoat it, that was exactly what he was doing.
Sugarcoating the fuck out of that history.
No one but the Fury members and their ol’ ladies needed to know how bad it was back then, and the current ones only needed to know so they wouldn’t repeat history.
“Maybe you knew my father? From riding or maybe from this bar…”
The hope in her eyes made his chest tighten. He’d only been in Manning Grove for about a year before it imploded. And the majority of that time was him being a prospect and practically a slave to those assholes. He wasn’t running around town making friends with who he considered civilians. “You said he disappeared.”
“Yes, he just disappeared one day and never came back. No one knew what happened to him.” A frown marred her expression. “But maybe he disappeared before you joined the club.”
“Maybe,” he murmured. “Your mom look for him?”
“Yes, and the police did a missing person’s report but nothing ever came from it. It was like he just disappeared into thin air.”
The tightening in his chest turned into a knot. The man rode a Harley and just happened to disappear around the same time as the Fury imploded. “Got a name?” He wasn’t liking the turn of this conversation.
“Marshall Graham.”
A legal name didn’t mean shit to him. He didn’t know any of the Original’s legal names. Hell, even now he didn’t even know Dutch’s real first name.
“Don’t sound familiar. You know if he had a road name? Even if he wasn’t ridin’ with an MC, or even an RC, he mighta had one.” A lot of wannabes did. They wanted to act like they lived the lifestyle without actually living it. Look badass without being an actual badass. Her father could’ve been one of those. A lot of weekend warriors who rode with riding clubs, as opposed to motorcycle clubs, were nothing more than suits playing biker on the weekend.