Benny threw out his hand. “Thanks for getting us out, Prez.”
I clapped him on the shoulder and gave him the eye to get the fuck out and he did.
Castor and I retreated to my office to share a whisky celebrating relieving the club of a disloyal asshole.
My mood lifted with one less worry weighing down my soul. I threw my boots up on my desk and reclined in my chair. “For the housewarming party this weekend, make sure I hear no mention of that cunt. I don’t want it sullying our new home.”
Castor smirked, poured me a crystal tumbler of whisky, clinked his glass with mine, and we swallowed our first finger.
I delighted in my drink, indulging in five in a row before Zethan and Alaric returned.
“For once, I enjoyed that.” Zethan smirked, accepting the finger Castor presented him.
Castor had a shot of Coke ready for Alaric too, and together we raised our glasses and toasted.
“Goodbye to a traitorous, useless cunt!” I said.
“An asshole that had me demoted,” Zethan threw in.
“An asshole that drove our mate away from the club,” Alaric added, injecting fire into my veins that I didn’t get my old lady down to the club for Brix to beg forgiveness from.
“An asshole that treated his wife like shit.” Castor finalized our toast, and we drank to that.
Riding on my good mood, I asked Zethan, “Feel like a ride down to Sydney on Monday? Scope out Faline?”
A ghost of a smile took hold of my enforcer. A rare ray of sunlight amid his constant shadow. “Why not? Death is a knocking today…”
CHAPTER27
Aaliyah
Moving day.Bikers everywhere, wrapping furniture and appliances in blankets, shifting them into the club’s truck, driving it to our new place, and unloading. Club wives and girlfriends in the new kitchen, chatting and preparing lunch. Gossip and biker’s curses flew around me.
Emptiness filled me, a reflection of the barren walls, shelving, built-in cabinets, and bare oak flooring soon to be brimming with paintings, furniture, and more clutter with the unpacking ahead of me.
The new house felt like it was torn apart, the remnants sucked up by a cyclone and relocated like Dorothy’s fucking house in TheWizard of Oz.Too many bodies moving about, boxes, appliances, and furniture everywhere.
All but one item of the recently purchased furniture was delivered this past week. We still waited on the custom dining chairs as the fabric we chose. Teal with gold waterfall patterns to contrast with the Sea Glass wall color was a special order and shipped from Italy. I never had anything this fancy or special before. Practical Nurse A tried to make sensible choices, but no, my men were going all out for our new house. Nothing but the best for their queen and baby girl.
Nausea peaked and my stomach lurched. I gripped the waterfall edge of the marble kitchen island, unsure how to get through the morning, let alone lunch, then the housewarming party, with my worsening morning sickness.
Thankfully, Mia and the club kids were at school, out of the way of all the movement in, out, and throughout the house. Alaric was busy guiding the club brothers where to deliver furniture and boxes and would have had a tough job tracking all the kids. I would have been even more stressed to keep kid’s feet from being run over by transport trolleys or stepped on by burly bikers grunting their way through the house maneuvering goods.
Although I had one less thing to worry about, my mind kept imagining dark, twisted scenarios of Colton attacking our new place, ruining our new home, and the expanded family growing inside me.
Thanks to what happened with Danny, I couldn’t stop thinking about Colton kidnapping Mia, and what he might do to her. An easy target when Mia lacked magick to defend herself. Depriving her of twice-daily diabetic medication might send her into a coma or kill her.
Fear and doubt constantly haunted me, driving up my cortisol levels, lowering my immunity, and smashing me with constant nausea on top of the morning bout. I bit at my nails and kept swiping my hair, looking like a mess.
Rusty’s wife, Sue, diced sliced cucumber like a pro chef for the salads I insisted they make for lunch to go with the hamburgers, sausages, chicken kebabs, and other meat Slade barbequed out back.
She kept glancing at me, stirring my nerves about dealing with an incident with a sliced finger. “Everything all right, Aaliyah?”
“Just tired.” I plastered on a smile, avoiding questions and any of my mates overhearing with their excellent shifter senses.
She patted me on the shoulder as she came around the counter to grab the tomatoes. “It’ll be over soon, and you can relax in your new home.”
Relax.Hah! If only she knew. Rusty and the rest of the men didn’t know about the extent of danger lurking over them like a deadly storm cloud threatening an apocalypse of lightning, since Slade kept the Colton Raine business between the avatars.
