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General trigger warnings for this story: Language, smut, mentions of rape, abuse, drug use/overdose, violence/death.

CHAPTER 92: THE FIRST BULLET

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Tig and Juice emerged from the house not long after Sydney and Clay had wrapped up their conversation, silently making their way down the stone steps with their hands clasped in front of them while Oswald trailed behind.

"Case number." The bald man announced, brandishing the piece of paper with a proud smile as if being in charge of keeping the intel meant that he'd had anything to do with obtaining it.

Clay nodded, pushing off of the fence where he accepted his prize - examining the block letters scrawled across the 'Oswald Lumber' note card with a nod.

"What are you gonna do with that?" Oswald breathed out nervously.

"What'd you tell your judge buddy?" Clay shrugged.

"That a councilman wanted the information because he didn't want safehouses in his district…" He sighed, regretful of how easily the excuse had come to him.

The shock of being impressed came to the faces of the known deceptors easily - but it still wasn't enough to crack Tig's stoic squint.

"Damn…" Sydney drawled as she walked up to the trembling man. "Maybe we aint the only criminals around here after all, are we boys?" She tugged on his lapel teasingly, nodding over her shoulder as she led the convoy out with her newfound confidence in the situation after having completed both of her missions successfully.

"W-What about that knife?" Oswald called after them.

"Oh, it's still our secret." Clay winked. "Don't worry, we'll keep it safe for you!" He called over his shoulder.

"Called Happy on the prepay." Juice began his report as soon as they were out of earshot. "He had an alarming amount of knowledge on safehouses and witnesses." He shuddered.

"Of course he did." Clay chortled - not missing the opportunity to toss Sydney a thankful glance.

"He said there's usually a sheriff or two outside, ATF agent inside - mostly rookies-"

Who get stuck babysitting. His statement was completed in Sydney's head by a voice that was all too familiar as she replayed the lesson that Happy had taught her years ago - shaking away the gravelly, raspy memory and refocusing herself.

"He wasn't too far - was on his way from San. Bern., but he thinks it'll take three guys."

Sydney felt another unpleasant jolt of even more unpleasant memories rush through her when she heard the name of the place that she called home not three months ago.

"Alright." Tig nodded. "Me, Chibs, Happy." He proclaimed confidently, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he took the hardened stance of a soldier.

Clay stopped his stride, glancing at Sydney and Juice before turning to face his Sergeant. "You, uh- You okay to do this?" He narrowed his eyes and raised his brows pointedly.

"Oh yeah." He nodded without a drop of hesitation. "I need to."

Clay looked him up and down gently as he assessed the situation. Throwing himself into the club. "Alright." He decided with a curt nod before turning back to Juice. "Give Trammel the case number and tell him to call us with the location. Now I want a truly flawless plan. Alright? Take out the witness - nobody else gets hurt." He looked between all three of them. They had already been in the red when Tig had made the mistake with Donna - one more blow and they would go bankrupt.

"Okay." Tig nodded, replaying the conversation that they'd just had over in his head to try and silence the demons of doubt that were already beginning to slip through the cracks in his own facade. "No mistakes."

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Gemma sat at her desk, staring at the blank screen of her computer as she tried to process what she had just read - the dying wishes of her first love… The founder of her club… The father of her sons… The man who had taken her to countless places that she never thought she'd ever visit - both good and bad. But they were not dying wishes that put a hole in her heart, they were dying wishes that stabbed her in the back - that sought to destroy everything that her entire life was about maintaining.

She didn't do as little as flinch when the door to the office was thrown open, bringing her heavy eyes up to her son who stood before her exuding a rage that she knew all too well - rage that she had fully expected, but still sent a chill through her.

"Where is he?" Jax grumbled as he ground his teeth.

"Well, he- he's not back yet. Why?" She asked nervously as every action that he displayed proved exactly why she should be terrified of what she'd found. "What's the matter, Jackson?"

Jax felt his jaw pop under the immense pressure when she used his first name. She knew too. "I got some information on Donna." He watched the delay in her reaction, the darting of her eyes - her tell.

"What information?" She blinked.

Jax decided that he'd said enough - feeling the cracks in his heart deepening as he looked at the conniving woman that he had no choice but to love, turning away to face the man that he had no choice but to hate.

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"We open today?" Sydney scowled as she, Clay, Juice, and Tig all returned to a very full compound; not full of croweaters and hangarounds looking to burn off the Saturday night hangover like a usual Sunday - but full of members, employees, and family doing whatever they could to help the club through the tough time.

"Tryin to stay busy, I guess." Clay shrugged.

"Okay. Tell Gemma I'll be right in." She nodded her understanding, taking off towards Tig's dorm so that she could change. She made her way through the clubhouse that was swarming with women eager to step up after the tragedy, doling out a few fake smiles until she was finally in the comforting silence of the hallway - but it didn't stay comforting or silent for long as she felt herself being yanked into a dorm by her elbow.

"What the fuck-"

"I am going to ask you this one time." She was met by the angry stare and seething voice of Jax as he backed her into the corner of what had become the floater dorm that he and Happy had used over the past few months. "Did you and Tig kill Donna?" His harsh accusation came out in a trembled whisper as he said it out loud for the first time. He knew the kind of trouble that confronting Sydney like this had caused him in the past, but he needed something more than his skewed intuition and the words of a cop if he was going to bring this to the table.

Any bit of hope that Sydney had managed to gather at the Oswald house about the status of their horribly botched coup was instantly drained from her body as his commanding question hit her ears.

"And don't you even think about lying to me." He sneered the second that he saw the gears beginning to turn behind her glossy green eyes. "Because Hale already told me that you were there."

Sydney ignored the sting that came as she bit her tongue, desperately searching for the right answer - the right way out of this. But yet again, all because of her good friends on the police force, there wasn't one.

"Yeah." Jax scoffed. "That's what I thought." He wiped his hand down his face. "I fucking knew it. Knew it that day in church, knew it at the scene. I should've trusted my fucking gut about you - knew you would find some way to twist this shit around if it meant that it would get you any closer to a patch, no matter who it hurts in the process."

"I went to stop him!" She blurted out, unable to hold back any longer when her integrity came under scrutiny - her heart rate quickening when she realized what she'd done. "Stahl had him hung out as a rat - we found the wires, saw that the feds paid off his debt-" She began trying to explain through her trembling lips.

"Doesn't change what happened." His voice became eerily calm as he finally got the confirmation that he needed for the truth that he had known all along - no matter how far in the back of his mind it had been. "That animal that you call your old man - that I called a brother." He scoffed. "Never again." He spit onto the floor in disgust.

"You don't know him." Her voice shook just as violently as her hands did as tears of pure, panicked desperation pricked at her eyes.

"I've known him a hell of a lot longer than you have." He scoffed again.

"Obviously not if you think that offing a brother was an easy call for him!" She allowed a sob to escape through her pleas; a last resort that she hoped would have some effect on the VP who had been tainted into believing that this had happened for any reason other than protecting the club - than protecting him. "They thought that it was the only choice - kill one member or let the whole club die."

"It was the wrong choice." He shook his head - his angry hiss not faltering.

"What have the rules always been? You rat - you die. You said it yourself." She reminded him.

"Opie didn't rat." He snarled.

"The cards were on the table. It was open and shut."

"You had your mind made up before you knew shit." He grimaced, letting his angry strides carry him towards her. "And now? The only thing open and shut is her casket, because of your blood-thirsty, piece of shit old ma-" But his harsh statements were cut off by a loud clap and a sharp stinging across his cheek.

"This was for what we thought was the good of the club. Okay? Nothing else." She growled as she yanked him towards her by the collar of his shirt after delivering the blow - abandoning the damsel in distress act that had gotten her nowhere and allowing the rage to take over. "Had nothing to do with nobody having love for your little butt buddy, and everything to do with them having love for their freedom. So you better watch that pussy little biased mouth. Because next time? I won't hit like a bitch." She threw him out of her grip before stomping out of the room.

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Clay sighed as he looked up from his bike to see the look that Gemma was giving him from the doorway of the office - a look that he had become all too familiar with over the last fifteen years - dragging himself across the compound to where she slammed the door the second that he crossed the threshold.

"What the?" He looked around in confusion.

"He knows." She stated with a stomp of her strappy-sandalled foot.

"What?" He repeated himself, still trying to understand what it was that she was referring to.

"Jax knows about Donna."

Clay scoffed through the worry that he had just managed to shake. "He doesn't know shit." He turned away from her penetrating gaze that he couldn't do any proper thinking - or excuse making - under.

"Listen to me." Gemma grabbed his bicep, turning him back to her as he once again tried to brush off the worry that she had been right in having all along. "He knows everything." She reached for the pile of burned parchment in her desk drawer. "This was in one of his boxes… It's what he found in storage when Abel was born. This is why he's been so twisted up…" She shoved them into his chest.

Clay scowled as he tried to comprehend what he was looking at as she rambled, hoping for once that she was just off on another tangent - because if what he was holding was what he thought he was holding, then he was in much bigger trouble than he'd previously thought.

"He wrote it all down… All his pathetic hopes and dreams." She spoke bitterly as he looked over the pages. "This is a book of failures and fixes… John is speaking to him from the goddamn grave!"

Clay blinked as he tried to process the wealth of new information on top of the shit that he was already dealing with, feeling his chest beginning to heave and his mind begin to race. "You're being hysterical!" He thrusted the papers back into her hands, refusing to believe that this much could have gone wrong in such a short amount of time.

"Told you to nail Jax down! Bring him closer!" She ignored his denial, shoving her finger into his face.

"This is a bunch of words - it's a bunch of shit!" He ripped them back out of her hand and threw them down onto the desk.

"It means everything to my Jax!" She exclaimed, watching his hand creep up to his brow as his gaze fell to the floor. "I know my son… He is restless - just like his old man. Always looking for something more - the reasons why. This shit is gonna send him on a destiny run… Reading those secrets? Finding out about the Donna mistake?" Her lips began to quiver as her blinking got faster. "W-what happened to John… I cannot do that again - not with him."

Clay snapped, gripping her shoulders and shoving her up against the door. "Now you listen to me. What he read were the ramblings of a bitter, grieving, coward. I mean, look at it? It's halfway burned! It probably pissed him off!" He tried to believe his own words as they flowed out of his mouth. "So don't tell me he's poisoned! And the shit with Donna? There's nothin to know." He told her with finality heavy in his tone as he harshly pointed his own finger into her face. "So you better calm down." He began to pull away, but stopped. "This is about your fear - your history. You stop bleeding all over him!" He drilled into her one last time before pulling the office door open. "And finish burning that." He wasn't going to let her non-stop worrying and paranoia be the death of his leadership - no matter how much truth there was to it.

Gemma stood with her arms crossed over her chest, processing what had come of the confrontation - and it wasn't good. "You are losing control…" She sneered as she watched him stomp across the compound, almost being run down by Sydney as she peeled out on her bike. "Just like he did." She scoffed, yanking the blinds down. She never thought that she would have to deal with this twice.

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Hale sat at his desk with his head down, trying to focus as best he could on the reports in front of him while his mind raced with all of the ways that he needed to fix his mistake - but it was a mistake that he couldn't fix on company time. Before he even had time to register the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching, he felt himself being yanked out of his desk by the collar of his uniform and thrown into the empty conference room.

"When I said 'do what you need to do', I didn't mean give him a fucking death sentence!" Sydney screamed as soon as the heavy metal door slammed behind her - relying on nothing but hope that the room was soundproof as his station full of colleagues eagerly watched the heated encounter through the glass.

Hale blinked a few times as he regained his bearings - apparently he would be fixing this mistake on company time after all. But as she stood before him with a bruised face, bloodshot eyes, and a heaving chest - he realized that maybe Tig and Clay going down for this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world…

"That was not my intention." He explained calmly.

"Then what was?" She threw her hands up incredulously.

"The witness saw him. I can't do anything about that." He lied through his clenched teeth.

"The witness saw me too. You seemed to have a whole lot that you could do about that." Her eyes widened in frustration.

"No." He gnashed his teeth harder into one another as he made his final decision. "He didn't see you."

Sydney scoffed, feeling her rage subside as she realized what was really going on here - looking him up and down in disgust instead.

"It's not my fault that you got mixed up with these guys." He told her by way of an apology.

"Mixed up with these guys?" She exclaimed in utter disbelief. Even after everything that they'd been through, he still didn't get it. "David, I am these guys!"

"Well then maybe this will give you the push that you need to consider a different life."

"A different life?" She felt her anger regenerating as he stood before her - so smug, so pretentious. "Like what? Huh?" She felt herself walking up on him with only a vague regard for her previous assault charges. "A different life with you?" She sneered.

Hale's eyes fell into a slow blink as he stayed silent, knowing better than to answer that question. It wasn't that she was completely right - although the more that he thought about it, he realized that she was damn close - but rather that it was a bitter reminder of the ever-growing soft spot that he had dangerously developed for the charming blonde.

Sydney scoffed, shaking her head as she once again looked over the poor excuse of a man in front of her. "This has nothing to do with me getting mixed up with these guys… This has to do with you getting mixed up with me." She spit the words at him, pushing him in the chest violently before storming out of the station without a care in the world for who had seen, because it didn't matter anymore - he was just like the rest of them.

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My Hapney girls… I know you been waiting :')

Song for this chapter

Hell Replied - Grey