Chapter 8 - The Weight Of The Past
"Everyone out. Check your gear and patch Brick up," Mac ordered, stepping out of the Jeep and slamming the door shut. He walked a few paces away from the vehicle, leaning against the cold rock wall of the canyon and pulling out a crushed pack of cigarettes. His hands were shaking slightly as he struck a match.
Maya stepped out of the shadows behind him, holding a field medical kit she had grabbed from the back of the Jeep. Without a word, she walked past the injured Brick, who was resting against a wooden crate, and stopped right in front of Mac.
"You didn't have to save me back there," she said quietly, her voice devoid of its earlier venom, though the defensive edge remained.
"Your old man saved my life in Mogadishu back in '93," Mac muttered, exhaling a thin cloud of gray smoke into the cold night air. "I promised him on a strip of desert sand that if anything ever happened to him, I’d look after his family. I failed that promise for ten years, Maya. I don't plan on failing it tonight."
"You helped put him in the ground, Mac," she reminded him sharply, her eyes flashing with renewed pain.
"I thought we were doing it to save the club," Mac replied, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp. "I thought the syndicate would let us walk away if we gave them what they wanted. But men like that... they don't let you walk away. They just keep moving the chains until there's nothing left of you."
Maya reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a small, worn leather journal—a duplicate of the ledger Mac had tucked under his arm. She flipped it open to the first page, revealing a faded photograph taped inside the cover.
It was a picture of three men standing in front of a customized Harley chopper in the late nineties, laughing with beers in their hands. Daniel Hayes, Mac, and Vance, arms slung over each other's shoulders, looking like they owned the world.
"He never hated you, you know," Maya whispered, her voice softening as she looked down at the photograph. "Even after you turned the gun on him in the desert. On the drive out there, before the orders came down... he told the others that if anyone in the charter had to survive, he hoped it was you."
May you like
Mac closed his eyes, a heavy, long-buried ache twisting deep inside his chest. For a man who hadn't shed a tear in thirty years, the burn behind his eyelids felt terrifyingly real.
"We’re going to finish this tonight, Maya," Mac said, opening his eyes and tossing his cigarette onto the dirt, grinding it out beneath his heavy boot. "All of it."
