Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Six

 

Chapter Six is a flashback to fourteen-years-ago, the drive-by incident that prompted Mercy being named bodyguard for the Teague ladies. Mercy fled New Orleans because the police started sniffing around the club, asking after the missing persons they were slowly starting to link to Mercy, but of all the chapters, he wound up in Tennessee thanks to a request from Ghost. Things were heating up with the Carpathians, and Ghost wanted to recruit strong, violent, unflinching brothers willing and able to take on the fight. Then the drive-by happened at Stella's, and, without argument from James, Ghost tapped Mercy as personal security for his girls. Maggie and Ava seemed to like him, and Ghost thought Mercy's seeming interest in Ava, the way he didn't ignore her or brush her off, was a good match. 

(Oh, how he'd come to regret that - but only in the short-term.)

This whole chapter is a flashback I included for the purposes of showing rather than telling. Life as the child of an MC officer is just different. Most eight-year-olds are worried about picture day, and their favorite outfits, and what their mom packed for lunch. Ava's worries are much more sinister, and though neither Ghost nor Maggie say so explicitly here, they made a decision early on to keep Ava safe, but not to sugarcoat the reality of their lifestyle from her. Ghost is all-in with the club; he's VP, and knows he'll someday be president, and he's not conflicted at all about being an outlaw. Likewise, Maggie is fully accepting of the club, and the life. Theirs is not a Jax-and-Tara conflict in which she's going to encourage him to walk away from all he's known and try to shield the children from it. As a couple, they're in, and so they've decided that a naive child is a child in danger. I never wanted to have a moral discussion about the ethics of teaching a child how to be an outlaw from birth; rather, this is the reality of their situation, and they're doing what they think is best to help Ava grow up within their world. 

Whether it's Sons of Anarchy itself, or biker books in general, the theme of clashing worlds seems to dominate the internal tension landscape. Hard-nosed criminals falling for civilian women. Maggie started out a civilian, sure, but I had no interest in telling a story that involved Ghost and Maggie clashing over how to raise a child. The way I laid it out in Fearless allows for a totally immersive reading experience, like stepping off a plane in a country in which you don't speak the language and learning on the fly. As we go deeper into Fearless, we'll see more of Maggie dealing with other Knoxville moms, often to hilarious effect. 

Mercy met Ava when he found her hiding in the chapel, but Chapter Six shows them getting to know one another. As a homeschooled kid who became a social outcast prior to joining the club, Mercy's not "too cool" to talk to an eight-year-old, and he finds her straightforwardness charming. When he says, "I never liked being lied to," the poor man has no idea how much his own beloved father lied to him. Ugh. I'm sorry, Mercy. It gets rough. 

But unlike Remy the elder, Mercy is VERY honest, and Ava latches onto that trait immediately. Her parents are blunt with her, but a lot of the other Dogs give her the brush-off in a well-meaning way. He's the first adult Dog to truly engage with her, and give her words any weight, so she gets attached fast and firmly. 

With regard to Stella's re: a Facebook question, Stella's is not based on a real cafe. I have an aesthetic fondness for restaurants that really put in the decorating effort, and I love perusing bakery cases, even if I can't eat anything in them.