Living with the Club

Straw

***
I feel like my life has taken a turn.
I'm heading down a road I've never been on before.
Nothing is familiar.
The signs don't make sense.
Do I get off the road or do I keep riding?
Do I go alone or take others with me?
Who do I trust for the journey?
I now understand why being a leader requires isolation.
I have to remove myself from those whose lives are affected by my decisions.
Those I love as well as those I hate.
It's getting more and more difficult to be a brother when my decisions are the ones a father has to make.
By the time you're old enough to make sense of this life you'll know everything about me.
The things I'm proud of and the things I regret.
And then you'll be faced with your own decisions.
And as much as I want to help you and tell you what to do, those choices will be yours alone.
The only advice I can give you, sons, is to examine who you are as men, figure out what's important to you.
Know yourselves.
Know what's in your heart.
Don't be swayed by the fear or history or the opinions of outsiders.
Find your own truth.
It will lead you to the things you love.

Veronica read over the journal that Jax had written for his kids, something she knew that she shouldn't be looking at. She couldn't help herself though. He had left it out, which was a clumsy thing to do when being in a dorm house. She tucked it under his pillow and quickly exited his room, making her way back to Juice's dorm. She found him reading something on his phone. "Hey, baby," she greeted him.

"Tara was arrested last night," he said, looking up at her. He saw her face drop into a frown. "Sheriff took her in for giving Otto that cross for her to kill the nurse."

"Did she know what she was getting herself into?" Veronica asked him, trying to cover the fact that she was unnerved by the news of Tara.

"I'm not sure. I have to head out," he says, getting out of bed and slipping into fresh clothes.

"Okay, let me know if you here anything else about Tara," she tells him and gives her a nod.

***

Veronica got a text from Ima at 3. It said something had happened to Lyla and I should head to Nero's asap. So that's exactly what she did. When she got there,  she found everyone huddled around her by the couch and she was telling Jax what happened, "it was torture porn. They never told me." Lyla's eyes shifted to Veronica's and she continued, "the more I asked them to stop, the more they hurt me."

"Jesus Christ," Veronica muttered, silently enraged for her friend.

"Who were they?" Jax asked, wanting pay back. Veronica wanted in on it too.

"Persians," Lyla told him, "Ghanezi brothers."

"I met one of them through the Saffron producers," Ima chimed in and Jax looked at her with daggers, "they had references."

"You're a stupid whore," he says, slowly as if to intimidate her.

"I'm the one that got her out of there," Ima says, throwing up her hand as if she did some great deed.