Living with the Club

Rat

"I fucked up, brother!"
"Ricky, what's going on?" Veronica asks, hearing the timer go off on the oven.
She pulls out the pizza, but her focus is still on the comversation. Wondering what in the world he had gotten himself into.
Rick didn't speak right away but when he did his voice was shaky, "I've been lying...to you...to the club...to everyone."
"Rick, what are you talking about?" Juice asks, not sure he wanted to hear the rest, but knew he had to.
"Just don't talk. Let me get it all out," Rick said, almost impatient but also shattered.
"Okay."
"Awhile ago, the Sheriff brought me in after being at the smoke shop with Veronica. I thought it was weird that they only took me and not her too, but I went without question. I got there and...they brought up the club's rules and my dad being black. He asked me what the club would do if they found out. Strip my patch, take away my tats, and I just might come out alive. I felt cornered and rocked. He pushed my buttons. Told me to steal the coke, Juice. I did it, but I wasn't going to take a whole brick just a little. Which means, fuck, which means I killed Miles in cold blood. I hate myself for it. But I went to give the Sheriff the evidence and he brought me in for possession, telling me what was going down. There is a DA who is going at it. He wants the real IRA and he doesn't care who he steps on to get there. I asked about my club and he told me that he wouldn't take us down federally, but either way I'm fucked. If the club finds out that I'm...that I'm a rat. I'm dead. Fucking dead."
Juice had taken a seat on the couch, processing the information but he was clearly shocked.
Veronica was clutching onto the counter. Her heart was beating faster and faster in her chest. Her soon to be brother-in-law had dug himself a deep hole. One that he probably couldn't get his way out of.
"Juice, what do we do?" Veronica breaks the silence.
"Fuck, Rick. What have you done?" Juice finally speaks, "you should have came to me after the first conversation with the Sheriff. I could have told you that nobody fucking cares if you're black. It's an outdated law. Oh, little brother," Juice mumbles, terrified for his brother and himself now, too.
"Juice, that's not helping," Veronica says, bringing out the pizza to the living room in hopes that some food would get them thinking on how to fix this. Which was silly, she knew, but for her it was worth a try.
"Fuck," Juice says again, "You'll have to keep me updated on what the asshole DA is doing. You have to be careful what you tell him, too."
"The club is going to hate me if they find out," Rick says, not replying to his brother's remark.
The club would kill him if they found out.
"We'll figure it out," Juice said, reassuringly, "we'll figure it out."
He hoped they would and hoped his brother wouldn't end up dead, but there wasn't many ways this thing could go.
Hell, Juice thought there was only one way this could go and that way would be Ricky would end up dead. Maybe even himself because they were actually relayed by blood. They club might assume that he knew what his brother was mixed up in. Getting out of town started to sound better and better to him.