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Chapter 107 Death Bed Payback

"

If Gemma had told him that she cared about him and if Jax hadn't gone to the hospital, Wayne Unser would have taken his secret to the grave. Now, he could confess the truth about JT's death and his part in it to Jax. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul. There was even a whole religion built around it. Maybe he would find the peace of mind he needed to face dying.

He could also dish out a little payback to the woman he'd loved for so many years only to discover she was a cold-hearted bitch. He hadn't expected her to profess her love for him, but she could have said she was fond of him. She could have expressed some sadness that he was dying. She had done neither.

Suddenly, he saw Gemma with painful clarity. She knew he had feelings for her and used them to get him to do things for the MC. It was that simple. He had been nothing more to her than a tool. The only surprise was her coming to the hospital.

As much as he had once loved her, he now hated her. He wasn't going to keep her JT secret anymore. It was time to confess the truth to Jax. He should know what his mother had done. The truth might even save his life someday.

"Clay didn't want to get MC . . . out of guns," Unser said. "Could you ask nurse for . . . ice chips?"

"Sure," Jax said quickly leaving the room and asking the nurse. If ice chips helped Unser talk then he would make sure he had ice chips.

The nurse left and quickly returned.

"You might need to help him with the ice chips," she told Jax.

"I will. We need to talk for a few minutes while he still can uninterrupted."

"I understand," the nurse replied. There wasn't any point in Unser conserving his strength. Jax Teller might be the last visitor in Wayne Unser's life. "Talk as long as you like."

"Thanks, darlin'", Jax said before returning to Unser's room.

"Ice chips. Want me to give you some?" Jax asked.

Unser nodded weakly and opened his mouth. Jax spooned some into his mouth and Unser seemed more comfortable.

"Clay told me that getting out of guns would make the MC weak," Unser said, his voice a little stronger. "Would leave Charming open to Mayan attack. JT didn't believe it. Accused Clay of just being in guns for the money and prestige. Thursday before the vote, a big rig ran your father down. It was stolen from Unser trucking."

He'd hoped that Unser was wrong about Gemma being part of killing Clay. He hoped he was listening to the ramblings of a confused dying old man. There wasn't a damned thing wrong with Unser's mind. His accusations against his mother might actually be true. The thought knocked the breath out of him for several moments.

"I never knew that."

"Clay told me he needed a truck. Needed to make it look like it was stolen. Didn't tell me why. He broke into the office, took the keys for the big rig and stole the truck. Covered up the name on the truck with poster board and took the plates off the truck according to witness descriptions. He ran your father down. A couple of days later, the truck was found inside Charming. He cleaned the blood off the truck, took the poster board down, put the plates on and smashed the front end of the truck into some parked cars to cover up the damage. Clay left his cigar in the ashtray. Dumb fuck."

Jax's fists clenched with rage. If that fucking son of a bitch Clay was here, he would tear him apart with his bare hands. Even finding out Clay was behind the attempts on his life hadn't filled him with this level of soul soaking fury.

"Clay told me that JT had to die to save Charming. JT really had to die to keep money coming in. What could I do? Turn Clay in? I was thinking about doing my job and investigating the accident, arresting Clay. No matter how well he cleaned the truck, I'm sure some clever CSI would have found your father's blood somewhere underneath the truck. I had the cigar. It was put into evidence, but there weren't prints. Clay wore gloves and this was before DNA."

"Without you saying anything linking the stolen truck with JT's accident, you buried the truth," Jax said.

"I know you think it was me being corrupt, but Gemma came to me begged me to keep the secret. I loved her so I covered it up. That wasn't my only reason. I thought about what it would do to you. At that age, finding out your mother helped his best friend kill your father would have ripped your life up. Where would you have gone to live? Back then, Gemma was playing mother to Opie. Piney was going through his not much of a father phase," Unser said his voice growing gruffer with each word.

Jax spooned more ice into Unser's mouth.

"Was Gemma involved before it happened?"

"That's the hardest part to get over. She lured JT to that stretch of road. Remember The Overlook?"

Jax nodded. The Overlook was a fancy restaurant set on a hill overlooking the I580. It had a beautiful view but it was more than five miles outside the city's limits. It was a fancy special occasion restaurant serving food not found in Charming like lobster and crab. It was also very expensive. JT and Gemma went there a couple of times, but quit because it was too expensive.

The Outlook closed a few months after JT's death. There had been a few restaurants that opened and swiftly closed until a club opened up. It managed to stay afloat for almost six months until San Joa's deputies shut it down for drug dealing.

"I remember it."

"Gemma got JT to that stretch of road at that time by telling him that she won a dinner for two at The Overlook. He was on his way to meet her there."

Jax sank to the chair by Unser's bed. Every single piece fit. It made sense. He never bought the story of a mystery truck driver accidentally hitting and dragging his father and then taking off. There was something that always seemed wrong about the story. He'd dismissed this feeling as nothing more than being unable to fully accept his father's death. Now, it turned out he was right; there was more to his father's death. Even in his worst nightmares, he couldn't have imagined Clay and Gemma working together to kill his father with help from the police chief.

"How did you cover it up?"

"I never made the link between my stolen truck and JT's accident. San Joa put it down as a hit and run. They made some minor attempts to find the truck, put body shops on alert. I made sure the theft of my truck was kept as a simple theft resulting in a crash. I reported it to my insurance company and Clay paid me my insurance deductible in cash."

"A perfect crime," Jax said thinking it through. With Unser's help Gemma and Clay got away with murder.

"Thanks to me," Unser said his voice bitter.

"I assume Clay and Gemma were having an affair before they killed my father."

"For six months that I know about. Don't know beyond that. Jax, I'm sorry for my part in it, but if Clay and your mother had gone to prison, would your life have been better? Would you have wanted to know the truth when you were a kid?

"I think about what I did a lot, but I still believe what I did was best for you and the MC. Who would have taken over for JT with Clay in prison? No one was prepared to be president."

Jax thought everything through that Unser said. If he could take his rage and pain out of the equation, he realized that Unser had a valid point.

He'd been so grief-stricken when he lost his father, he thought he would die of heartache. He'd idolized his father. He thought Gemma was so strong because she'd gotten through JT's death without shedding a single tear. Now that too made sense. She wasn't grieving the death of her husband because she wanted him dead.

A life with Gemma and Clay had been difficult at times, but he'd had a stable home life. His mother showered him with love. He couldn't imagine how he would have reacted if he'd lost his father and learned his mother was responsible. He could easily have spiraled into heavy drug use that could have killed him.

He might have blamed the MC for JT's death because it was an MC beef that caused Clay and Gemma to kill JT. He could have turned away from SAMCRO. And he loved the MC. He was looking forward to guiding it into a better future.

"You made the best call covering up for Gemma," Jax admitted. "I don't think anything good would have come of me knowing the truth back when I was a kid."

It was traumatic enough to find out about Gemma's role in his father's death as an adult; it would have destroyed him as a child who had just lost his father.

"Time for you to know the truth about your . . . poisonous . . . mother. She will destroy . . . you."

"She killed my father," Jax whispered almost to himself. "How could she murder the father of her son? The whole time she watched me grieve his death knowing she had caused that," Jax shook his head, his eyes tearing up.

"Not . . . who . . . you think she is." Unser was gasping for breath and had grown noticeably weaker. "I have written statement of everything that I did. Key to my apartment is in fake plant by front door. All . . . proof in . . . trunk by my bed. Big envelope. Yours now. Sorry, Jax. Sorry," Unser whispered so softly Jax had to lean close to hear him. Tears rolled down Unser's face.

"Thanks for the truth, Wayne," Jax said getting to his feet. He patted Unser's shoulder as tears continued to spill down his cheeks. He spooned some ice chips into Unser's mouth before leaving.

The muscles in Jax's jaw tightened. He regretted coming to the hospital and learning the harsh truth about Gemma, but he was not a weak man. It was good to know the truth about his vicious murderous . . . He stopped himself. He wasn't ever going to think of her as his mother again. She would always be known as Gemma or that whore that killed his father.

He would get vengeance for his father.

"

In the TV show, Clay and Gemma were supposed to have killed JT with some help from Unser who only lost some paperwork. I tried to come up with a tighter explanation. Killing someone by sabotaging a bike or car isn't foolproof. If your brake lines get cut, you will know it immediately and not when you are driving along a twisting dangerous mountain road. You can't control when the person will notice the bike or car isn't working right and what they do about that. The person might do something sensible like pull over and call for help. You also can't control what happens with the other cars. In JT's case, a big rig hit and dragged him. How that could have happened never made sense to me. Why couldn't the big rig have avoided hitting JT?

Clay kills JT by simply running him down in one of Unser's trucks and Gemma convinces Unser to keep the secret. I like this explanation so well, I've used a variation on it in Jax Is Really Alive written under MVeneer. I'm mentioning it because I don't want anyone to think I stole the idea from someone else. It's kind of become my own set of SOA facts.