Holy crap. He probably wasn't lying. For about the hundredth time in five minutes, I nodded, pushing back that sickening sensation in my chest again. “Okay.” Zipping the bag halfway, I yanked it off the bed and looked at him. "I think I have everything, I'm going to go hunt this moron down."
I didn't bother waiting for a response before I took off down the hallway to the opened door of Sonny's bedroom. The fan light was on, illuminating the room and the figure sitting on the edge of the bed with a duffel bag next to him. Even from behind, his features looked loose. Tired. Worn-out.
But it wasn't until I rounded the bed and saw the side of his face that made me gasp. "What the hell, Son?"
His cheek was swollen to twice the size it should have been. The skin was broken and purple, only slightly worse than the awful split on the corner of his mouth. Yet, he managed to give me a little grin out of somewhere.
"Ris," he greeted me in a lower voice than usual. He patted the bed. "I'm fine, kid. Come sit down."
"My ass you're fine," I told him, taking a step to stand in front of him.
Sonny tilted his head back to give me a better view of the ass-beating those sons of biscuit-eating whores gave him. The entire right side of his face looked deformed from the swelling. I was kind of worried that maybe he'd lost some teeth but I couldn't be sure.
"I've had worse, believe me," he argued softly. "Come here and quit worrying."
I gave him a look that said it'd be a cold day in hell before I stopped worrying about him.
"C'mon, I don't have a lot of time before Trip gets here," he said, patting the bed again.
I wanted to argue with him but logic told me not to. My poor, poor brother looked like complete crap. It made my stomach tense horribly, like I was having contractions or something. My hand was out and clinging to Sonny's instinctively.
"You remember I told you the sperm donor came down and asked me for money?"
Like I'd forget. "He asked Luther for money too, right?"
Sonny nodded slowly. "Yup, and he didn't give it to him either," he explained. "He didn't want to tell anybody what the money was for, except he just needed it real bad."
"How much was it?"
It looked like he tried to make a face but immediately stopped the effort once he remembered he looked like the Elephant Man's cousin. "Ten grand."
An ugly guffawing noise sprang out of my throat. "What?"
Sonny nodded again. "Exactly. No one in their right fucking mind is gonna let him borrow that much money for no damn reason. So nobody in the Club did." And I suddenly had a really bad feeling about the word choices my brother had chosen. No one in their right fucking mind...
"So what does that have to do with you exactly?" I asked him hesitantly.
"It turns out this wasn't the first time dear old daddy asked for money. A few months ago, he'd come down and borrowed a healthy chunk from the Reapers."
Oh crap. Oh boy-crap.
I'd never heard of the Reapers before but the puzzle pieces were making too much sense. "Those men?"
He sighed. "Yeah, Ris. Daddy didn't stick to the payment plan, and from what Trip figured out today, they aren't exactly happy that he came into town, and then bailed. They want their money."
This had to be a bad dream. An awful dream.
"But you don't even—" What was I going to say? That he didn't matter to our father? It was the harsh truth.
He must have known what I was trying to explain because he lifted a shoulder in lame agreement. "I know, Ris. I know. But I'm not paying for his shit, and I'm not lettin' them come after you next now that they know you live here. I'm sure they know you're his too."
I gagged, earning a slap to the back from my brother.
"Quit it, kid. It's fine. I'm gonna go find this motherfucker and make sure he pays his shit now. I’m not sitting around, waiting for God knows what to happen. The last thing he deserves is to get rescued by one of us. I’m not paying for his mistakes any longer and neither are you,” he stated evenly.
Every minute just seemed to make this entire scenario seem so much more like a dream. A very hard dream that I couldn't swallow. "So we're going to go find him?"
Sonny didn't agree. The hand he'd left on my back after slapping it, slid up to rest on the shoulder furthest away from him. "No, Ris. I'm gonna go find him. Trip's coming with me. We don't know what other kind of pile he's dug himself into and you're better off staying here with Dex until all this shit gets sorted out."
The sound that came out of my mouth sounded like a squawk. "What?"
"You're staying with Dex. The house isn't safe and I don't trust you to stay with anybody else in the Club," he explained, squeezing my shoulder. "Hopefully I can find him in a few days."
But what would he do once he found him? The old man had obviously taken off because he didn't have the money to pay back the Reaper assholes. I almost, almost asked Sonny but by the look on the half of his face that didn't look like it'd gotten friendly with a baseball bat, Sonny had no limits on what he was capable of.
So making Curt Taylor find ten grand was going to happen one way or another. Of that I suddenly didn't have a doubt.
"Shit, Sonny," I whispered. How the hell had this mess fallen on us? On him? The one Taylor offspring who had less to do with his father than the other two. Christ.
The hand on my shoulder tightened. "Ris," he whispered, pulling me closer to him. The side of his forehead rested against the top of my head. "I'm coming back, all right? I swear to God I'm not leaving you here. I'm just gonna go find this asshole so we can get back to Tofu Tuesdays and shit," he assured me. "I'm coming back."
The intent behind his words weighed my sternum down. He was leaving. Leaving me in a new city all alone with his friend. I wasn't going to have a panic attack. I had a panic attack once when Will had first left, and then I'd dealt with it. But Sonny was coming back.
"It's only for a little while," he promised.
Leaning into his side, I nodded against him. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had hugged me like this. With so much reassurance and promises that I didn't doubt even a fraction that he wouldn't come back. It wasn't at all like when Will left. My own full-blooded little brother who gave me the quickest hug in history and pinched my arm before leaving.
"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked him, pushing away the fact I hadn't heard from Will in months.
Sonny laughed just a little, low and pained. "I've been better. I'll be all right once this all gets straightened out."
I slid my arm around his back. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this mess."
"Me too, kid, but I'd rather it be me than you who gets caught up in the shit-hole he's dug himself into." Sonny sighed and it pained my heart. "I need to get going though. Stay with Dex until I get back, okay?"
I wanted to argue with him but what was the point? We all had to do things we didn't want to at some point, and if the Reapers would beat the shit out Sonny for the mistakes of our estranged father, what else were they capable of?
"Maybe I should go to Lanie's," I suggested. "If they did that to you, won't they try and—"
"No, Ris. I'm a sign for the sperm donor, and Dex knows better than to be a dumbass. You'll be fine."
Oh man. This was a mess. A huge, surreal mess all caused by a man that had no connections to our lives anymore.
"You won't get in trouble at your job?"
Sonny laughed before loosening his hold on me and climbing to his feet slowly. "Don't worry about it. It's all good."
I blew out a breath and nodded, getting off the bed. His face looked bad, so bad, but Sonny was his own man. I couldn't and wouldn't beg him to stay.