Unholy: The Unholys MC by Ellen Harper

of me.
     
    I thought about Johnny and the knife that weighed down my purse and I wondered just what I thought I was going to do when it was all said and done.
     

 
    Chapter Ten
     
    Johnny
     
     
     
    Violence.
     
    There were probably some people in the world who would go the rest of their lives without seeing what true violence was. People who lived in little suburban neighborhoods in cookie cutter houses, oblivious to what the real world was like other than the nightly news talking about things that made those people just shake their heads and mutter about how they just couldn’t believe how there were some people who could do things like that.
     
    I wasn’t one of those people and probably never would be. Violence was a dirty word, but it was in my vocabulary and used often. Did I like it? No, at least, I didn’t think so, but it was there, always lurking just around the next corner. It was part of the life I’d chosen to live and it was part of the life I’d lived before that.
     
    You didn’t avoid violence in foster care anymore than you avoided jumping from home to home.
     
    But just because I was used to it and I expected it, didn’t mean that I enjoyed it. I didn’t have to take pleasure from necessary things, I just had to do them.
     
    That was what had happened last night. I should have known things couldn’t go smoothly with Stitches and the Berserkers. They were into some bad shit and I’d started hearing that it wasn’t just hard drugs and arms deals that they were getting involved with either. It was worse than that, the kinds of things I had always promised myself that I would never get behind. I wasn’t a pimp and I didn’t like the idea of human trafficking—young girls sent out on the streets to do the dirty with strange men, paying customers, and that was only the tip of the iceberg—but I had to do something. I told myself that whatever the Berserkers were into, the Unholys didn’t have to follow. We could coexist, split the territory and the profits, then go on our merry way.
     
    I told myself that over and over again, but it was almost impossible to believe. How could I claim that I wasn’t a party to those sorts of activities when I was taking some cut in the profits they were making?
     
    It didn’t sit well with me. None of it did. But funds were low. Members were low. And if we didn’t make peace with the Berserkers, we’d have to make war, and I wasn’t dumb enough to think we could win that. Not now.
     
    But even with all that knowledge—the Berserkers, Stitches, the drugs, and the prostitution—I never would have been prepared for last night. How could I have been?
     
    “What the hell is this?”
     
    “A present. I hope you like it.”
     
    I shuddered at the memory of our conversation that night. How eager and pleased Stitches had been with himself. I still didn’t know if it was because he enjoyed torturing others—which wasn’t a bad guess—or if it was because he knew that the guy had been lying all the while. The problem was, I couldn’t rule out the second possibility no matter how much I figured the first was true.
     
    “A good faith present. A favor, if you will.”
     
    “And why would this present of yours matter to us?”
     
    “Because this is the man who made the Reverend kill himself.”
     
    Those words would echo and rattle around in my mind like ghosts for the rest of my life. I would never be able to be completely rid of them, no matter how hard I might try. They’d been perfect, regardless of the truth. Just enough to get our blood and anger pumping, but not concrete enough to really give us anything.
     
    It was widely known that the Reverend, the last leader of the Unholys before I reluctantly slipped into the spot, had killed himself. There’d been a gun, a pool of blood, a hole in his head, and most importantly of all, a note. It hadn’t been detailed. It hadn’t given much by way of reasoning, but it had been there. And it