Here you are, as promised!
PS… Peep the new season 2 cover and synopsis if you haven't already 😍
After months of self-induced turmoil, Tig has finally regained the strength that he needs to win back Sydney's affection, but between a takedown of Cara Cara, and an attempted takedown of The Matriarch, she doesn't know how to let him.
General trigger warnings for this story: Language, smut, mentions of rape, abuse, drug use/overdose, violence/death, racism/gang activity.
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CHAPTER 11: THE UNRAVELLING
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"Hey." Tara flinched when she heard the familiar voice, looking up from her clipboard to see Jax rushing through the communal waiting room.
"Hey-" She could barely utter out her greeting before she found herself at the end of a hard kiss - a kiss that should've sparked her nerves, but instead turned her stomach.
"How is she?" He panted. He'd hardly taken a breath since he'd heard the news, racing out of the clubhouse and speeding to the hospital before he'd even had time to shower off the night.
Tara opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out, instead taking a deep breath as she gathered her paperwork and turned to face him in hopes that the pressure of his innocent stare would coax some kind of response.
"She's fine." She almost fucking choked as she spat out the lie, nodding rapidly.
"Yeah?" Jax nodded gratefully.
"J-just… A few bruises." She added as he looked at her like that; so hopeful, so trusting…
"Okay, good." He blew out a sigh of relief as he finally began to catch his breath, but he caught something else in the process; a hint of apprehension in her glossy brown eyes before she looked away. "I'm sorry about last night… Just wanted to stay and keep an eye on Ope."
"It's fine." Tara shook her head. That was the least of her concerns right now.
Jax narrowed his eyes at her until she finally met them. "Are you ?" He asked sincerely.
Tara forced a smile as she raised her eyebrows in response instead, worried that she may actually vomit if she tried to utter another vile mistruth.
Jax sighed, his expression softening. "Look, I'm glad that you asked for the truth… It means a lot to me that you want to figure out how to make this work for both of us."
Tara felt her phony smile beginning to crack. The truth - that thing that she had been so desperate to get just hours earlier, but now found herself unable to give. "Yeah." She chortled, glancing back down at her clipboard, peeking up at him through her lashes where he gave her a knowing smile that the butterflies in her stomach thankfully allowed her to return. "I have to let Clay know." She blinked once she realized what it was that she was supposed to be doing - before somebody else could wander down the hallway and find out the truth.
"Yeah." Jax nodded with a sigh, following her down the hall as she led him to his next problem of the still very early day...
Clay perked up the second that he saw them, immediately abandoning his crew where they were taking up a majority of the hallway outside of the smaller waiting area as Tara tossed an apologetic smile to her clearly weary coworkers.
"What's going on? Is she okay?" Clay asked her, ignoring Jax altogether - he had more important things to tend to right now.
"Yeah." Tara nodded much easier in the presence of somebody who scared the hell out of her. "She just had a little too much to drink… I have to run a few more tests, but she's gonna be fine." She assured him - and she hoped that she was right…
"But, uh… It's nothin' serious, right?" He narrowed his eyes with a genuine concern that she had never seen from the large man, which made her next answer that much harder to give...
"N-no." She stuttered, shaking her head rapidly.
"Can I see her?"
Tara lowered her voice, taking a step closer to the President. "When she hit the barrier, she took a pretty good shot to the face." She winced convincingly. "There's some… Swelling ." She nodded in a way that she hoped Clay would be able to understand. "It's gonna be a little while."
"Okay." Clay nodded. He understood, but he wasn't happy about it. "Well, uh. I appreciate you taking care of her, Doc." He smiled politely.
"Oh." Tara shrugged it off with an awkward smile. "Of course." She chortled, catching Sydney's eyes across the room from where she had retaken her seat, nodding to the men before taking her leave.
Jax was glad that his little stunt in Oakland hadn't seemed to have blown up yet as he began following Clay back to the group, but his relief was short-lived as the larger man turned right back around and blocked his path.
He scoffed, quickly harnessing the cockyness that he'd gotten used to displaying, even when he was in the wrong - just like step-daddy taught him . "Somethin' wrong?" He smirked.
Clay's face fell instantly into a harsh scowl. "They found that Mayan that we visited… He was throwing up nine fingers - now brown's a little pissed at black." He sneered with a sarcastic smile.
"I made a decision for the good of the club." Jax shrugged. "Spur of the moment… Seemed like the right thing. I'm sure you can understand."
Sydney looked away from the showdown between Clay and Jax that she knew Jax would win - just like he had every other time in the past three months - when her phone finally turned back on, lighting up with the dozens of missed calls from Tig.
Tig glanced down at the repeatedly buzzing phone in her hand, his eyes wandering past the green display of notifications where he noticed that her background had been changed. He frowned as his heart began to sink from where he had barely been able to suspend it with ropes of ignorance, but he couldn't let his demons win again - he had to keep trying.
Sydney's entire body tensed into a cringe as she kept the grimace from her face when she not only saw the background that she had completely forgotten she'd changed during her drunken tantrum, but when she realized that Tig had seen it, as well.
"It's a good thing nothin' happened to me." She heard beside her before she felt another nudge against her shoulder, turning to see him looking down at his name repeatedly blinking on her phone with a wink.
"Well." A sarcastic smile came to her face as his continuous nonchalance sent a rush of anger through her. I'm just glad to see that you even noticed I was gone." She shoved the phone into the bottom of her purse.
Tig stiffened in the already hard chair, rubbing his nose as he looked away from her penetrating gaze. "Looks like you were safe with Hap." He shrugged. There was no way that he was going to tell her that he hadn't realized that she'd left the clubhouse until he'd woken up this morning.
Sydney's brow creased. How would he have known that? Unless he had possibly been behind it all along… But her brief concern over the meddling of her old man quickly turned to the possibilities of what could've happened if she hadn't been safe with Hap, the same way that Gemma hadn't been…
"I saw him at the house…" Tig nodded as he observed her confusion, even though she hadn't cared enough to ask.
"Oh." Sydney nodded, having already moved past the issue as her mind raced with every single horrible scenario that she feared wasn't far from the truth.
"Yeah." Tig nodded attentively, trying to force the friendly conversation that she clearly wasn't trying to have. "You guys finally talk?" He asked hopefully.
"No." Sydney deadpanned, dramatically pursing her lips as she shook her head.
It was Tig's turn to furrow his brows now as he became confused. She seemed just as indifferent towards the bald man as she had months ago, but he couldn't tell if it was because she actually was, or because he was the one who was asking…
"Did you guys get to talk?" She raised a brow as he continued to silently stare at her with an innocence that was grating on her last nerve. "You know, since that was something that you were so adamant about doing for me."
"I-" Tig's expression turned to a scowl as his face contorted in deep confusion. "I thought that you d-didn't want that?" He stammered. Even though he had gone against her wishes and talked to Happy, it had clearly been unsuccessful.
"Oh so now you care about what I want." She scoffed, sitting back in her chair as she crossed her arms and willed herself to calm down before she could cross the line that her ever-building frustration seemed to be so dead-set on finding. "He brought me home… I guess." She explained with a blasé shake of her head, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.
"You don't remember?" Tig scowled again.
"Nope." She popped the single-syllable word as he continued to distract her with his stupid questions.
"Thought you didn't do that…" He nodded slowly.
"Well, things change." She gave a salty smile, making to get up and away from him once again before she was halted by Unser angrily waving his phone in the air.
"The feds raided Luann's studio." He announced. "Asset seizure… Wiped her out."
"What?" Sydney scowled incredulously. She knew that Luann had taken a massive hit since the feds had raided her for drugs - thanks to Stahl - but she'd been under the impression that since her recent employment, things had been looking up.
"Well… That must be what Otto wanted." Clay nodded as his control continued to slip from his decaying hands.
Tig felt his heart leap as the first piece of good news hit his ears in months . He knew that he should've been concerned for his incarcerated brother and his old lady - and had he been single, that concern would've come much easier. But since his old lady had decided to make the porn studio that was filled to the brim with drugs and opportunities, her new hangout spot away from him, he was relieved.
Jax sucked in a deep breath, looking at the extremely tired group of men behind him. "Okay… Me and Ope will go deal with Otto."
"Ope goes with Tig to assemble the guns for Laroy." Clay shot him down the only way that he knew how; the way that would cut deep.
Tig stiffened in his seat as a cold chill ran through his veins, and by the look on Jax's face as he glared the Sergeant down, he felt the same way.
"Take Bobby." Clay ordered. "He could use the fresh air."
Jax looked back at the passed out man with a humourless chuckle, tossing Tig one more warning glance before he turned back to Clay. "I'll handle it alone." He practically spit at him before he waltzed out the doors on his own - because that was exactly how he had to do this.
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AJ Weston rounded the corner of hospital where he hoped to capture the reaction of the President when he found out what they had done to his old lady, but the sight that he came face to face with was nothing like the devastation that he had expected to see as the white-haired man took his infant grandson from Neeta with a big, toothy smile.
Sydney sighed as she splashed her face with a handful of cold water, leaning her weight against her arms as she held onto the edge of the sparkling white bathroom sink, shaking her head at her lifeless reflection before ripping off a paper towel to dry her hands and making her way back out to the waiting room where she hoped Tig had left.
Her eyes were glued to her phone the entire time that she dragged her feet along the polished hospital floors, taking as long as possible as she carefully analyzed each explanatory text that came from Lyla and Ima as they filled her in on what exactly had gone down at Cara Cara. But she was snapped out of the porn politics when she walked right into a khaki-covered body, looking up to see none other than their mystery guest, himself.
"Sorry, ma'am." Weston smiled politely as his hand grazed her waist, slipping away just as quickly as he'd appeared.
Sydney was now steady on her feet, but she felt anything but stable as her head began to spin. She stumbled over to the nearest trash can where she gripped the edges, breathing heavily as her stomach convulsed under his touch. She'd known exactly what had happened to Gemma, and now she knew exactly who had done it.
"Hey, are you okay?" She felt a new set of hands on her - a set that didn't send her body into fight or flight mode, despite the fact that they too belonged to a stranger.
"N-no." Sydney shook her head as she straightened up in the arms of the light-haired nurse. "No, I'm okay. Just hungover." She forced a chuckle as she tried to blink the spots out of her vision, making her way back to the waiting room much quicker now. She couldn't believe that she had let it go over her head in her haze - even momentarily. Of course this had been them. Now she just needed to figure out why .
She made it back to her seat where she was relieved to see that everyone had dispersed, being left alone in the room with Juice and Half-Sack who were preoccupied by their Gameboys. She returned to her phone where the text messages were continuing to pour in as the girls learned new information, looking up a few minutes later when she felt a presence above her.
"I got you some stuff…" Tig held out the handful of half-decent snacks that he'd managed to snag from the vending machine. "Thought you'd be hungry." He nodded thoughtfully. He'd learned in the past months as sex slid off of the table, that the next best way to cure any of her moods, was with food - especially hangovers.
"Thanks." Sydney's eyes met his briefly before she swiped the packaged goods and dropped them into her purse, returning to her phone.
Tig bit the inside of his cheek, his breathing getting heavier beneath the weight of his kutte - and all that it stood for. "That's all I get?" He raised a brow as playfully as he could.
Sydney didn't bother acknowledging him as her fingers rapidly moved across her keypad, her long nails clacking against the glass screen of her phone.
"Okay." Tig nodded, defeated as he sunk back into the seat next to her while she ignored him. "Can I at least get a kiss?" He tried again, nudging her forehead with his own.
Sydney rolled her eyes, dramatically pulling back from him as she waved her phone in the air. "I'm a little bit fucking busy right now." She huffed.
Tig frowned, his eyes falling closed as the weight of constant failure came crashing down on his shoulders. "I'm trying to fix things here…" He whispered.
"You can brush me off for two months, but I can't have one day?" She shook her head incredulously.
Tig nodded slowly as he got to his feet, and left her alone - which was apparently what she wanted now. He grinded his teeth as he made his way out to the parking lot where Opie was waiting for him. He thought he'd known what he needed to do to fix things, but now it seemed like that option had been taken from him as well. He had always known deep down that he was destined to suffer, but now all he could do was hope that some way, somehow, he was destined to suffer with her by his side.
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Jax stood in the doorway of the visitation room at Stockton State Penitentiary as the guards held him back from the fight that had broken out between two men. He watched with a raised brow until they were dragged away where they would surely be thrown into solitary confinement for inciting violence in the common area, allowing himself to be led across the tense room to the long haired man wearing his signature black beanie.
"I arranged a little entertainment." Otto chuckled as he shut the book that he had been reading.
"Appreciate that." Jax smirked, looking back at the final sight of the last man before he was dragged away. "White on white? What's that about?" He knew how prison hierarchy worked, something had to be up.
"Our Aryan friends are gettin' a little choosy about who they burn crosses with…" The older man slid his thick glasses off of his face. "Somethin's tricklin' down from the top of Mount Whitey… Not sure what."
Jax zoned out as he stared at the man who had made countless sacrifices for his club, his mind wandering back to their own Aryan friends…
"Not why I asked to see you." Otto's voice snapped him out of it.
"I know." Jax nodded regretfully. "I heard about Luann… How can we help?"
"This punk producer's been making a play for her talent. With the feds shutting her down every three months? This asshole will highjack all of 'em."
"We'll talk to him." Jax nodded his assurance.
Otto sighed, running his tattooed hand over his scarred face. "She needs time… And money." He shook his head. "These girls won't stay without a paycheque, and she won't stay afloat if she has to pay out retainers."
"We can try and get her the time." Jax grimaced.
"And the money?" His brow raised underneath the brim of his hat.
"We're only half healed, Otto." He sighed. "We don't have money to spare."
"Yeah…" Otto nodded slowly. "That's what I thought." He sighed. Another favor gone unanswered. "This seizure by the feds… It's Stahl pissing in my mouth for what I did to her. And I did that for SAMCRO."
"I know that." Jax nodded sincerely. And he did. But he also knew that Clay would never vote to give away his precious money - especially if he was the one asking.
"I don't want her back in front of the camera, Jax. I promised her that she would never have to do that again." And it was a promise that he would've been able to keep, had he not put his ass on the line for his club.
"I won't let that happen. That's a promise."
It was a promise. But it was a promise that he had no idea how to keep, and the only way that he could find out was with the help of the one person that he'd never wanted to be indebted to, again.
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Weston stalked up the heavily populated sidewalk of Main Street, pushing through the hoards of people that were crowding the shops as their post-Halloween clearance sales began, his determined strides finally carrying him to the entrance of what would soon be the cigar shop.
"Dump those in the back." Zobelle nodded to the burly men as they carried boxes into the bare room.
Weston waited until the pack mules were out of earshot, the words spilling from his trembling lips the second that they were alone. "She didn't tell him." He seethed.
"What?" Zobelle asked, disinterested.
"Morrow's old lady." Weston stomped his foot impatiently. "They don't know what happened."
"How do you know?" Zobelle demanded.
"Heard the guys talking with the nigger nanny about Gemma being hurt in a car accident, Clay's laughing and playing with some little kid." He shook his head incredulously. "You said this was gonna rip them up!"
"It will." Zobelle nodded, gripping his henchman's shoulder as he walked him towards the glass windows that overlooked the small town that would soon be free of scum . "It will. Unravelling The Matriarch will destabilize them. They're all little boys who need a strong mommy."
"But if this bitch doesn't say anything, what the hell does that mean?" Weston scowled.
Zobelle took a deep breath as he carefully considered his answer. "It means that we underestimated Mrs. Morrow…"
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Song for this chapter
Coming Undone - Korn
