Rooster’s daughter.
Married.
The fuck?
“Where’re they stayin’?” Zeus demanded, takin’ over ’cause suddenly I was mute and struck dumb. “I’d’a heard if they were stayin’ close by.”
“They’re still moving. Rooster’s in town with some’a the others stayin’ above Morton BBQ.”
“Fuck,” Curtains said from somewhere over my shoulder.
He loved their smoked beef ribs.
“Rooster should be dead,” Axe-Man declared, movin’ forward with a glower to step slowly down on one’a Otto’s prone hands.
He let out a squeal of pain. “Fuck.Well, he isn’t! Man kept a low profile in Alberta, people just called him Whitey. But h-he’s alive and he wants his fuckin’ kid back.”
“You’re sober enough to drive. You’re on your bike,” Zeus called out. “Bat, Dane, you round up these motherfuckers and remind ’em what it’s like to operate in Fallen territory without our go-ahead. When you’re done with ’em, hand the lot over to Lion, and let ’im get the cops involved.” He looked down at me, then at Otto. “Rooster go to war to get his kid back?”
He asked ’cause that was what Zeus would do.
He’d battle the whole goddamn world if someone took one’a his kids from ’im.
Hell, he’d battle the whole goddamn world if someone took one’a his brothers in the club from him, too.
“Fuck yeah,” Otto agreed with a wince. “He’s been searching for her since she ran away years ago.”
Z cut his gaze to me, but I could only grind my teeth.
I was too stuck on the fact the girl I was already fallin’ for was fuckin’ married.
Cyclops appeared beside us, movin’ to take control’a Otto, so I got up and let Z steer me toward the clubhouse. Axe-Man followed us, mouth twisted with hatred. Rooster’d been the one to betray him years ago when he was prez’a The Fallen’s Calgary chapter. Been the one to turn him over to the triad when he’d fucked up and caused beef with them. Been the one to get Axe-Man sent down to prison for three years, leavin’ his daughter, Cleo, without a parent.
He was basically the definition of my brother’s arch nemesis and it couldn’t feel anythin’ but wrong to know he’d survived the ambush all those years ago.
Probably felt somethin’ like the feelin’ turnin’ rancid in my gut as I thought about turnin’ Blue over to someone as evil as Rooster.
“She’s a good kid,” Axe-Man told me, watchin’ me warily. “Didn’t recognize her across the room with the blue hair and the tatts and the curves. She was fuckin’ emaciated back then, skinny and bruised and livin’ in hell. She ran the night shit went down at Turner Farm and I asked Cedar to help her out. Always wondered what happened to her.”
“She’s been workin’ at Evergreen Gas Station for a minute,” I divulged. “She was fucked over by this fuckin’ moron.”
“And before that she was basically given to Rooster’s VP as a fucked-up gift for his loyalty,” Axe-Man told me, clampin’ a hand on my shoulder briefly when I unleashed a growl of rage at the thought. “You gotta get this. Rooster won’t stop ’til he getsher back. He’s not the type’a man who suffers loss well and he always felt he owned her. Blood and bone. That she was his to do whatever he fuckin’ wanted with.”
“Well she’s not his anymore,” I grunted, and almost finished with’cause she’s damn well mine.
“You’ve got five minutes to talk to her, then we’re ridin’ out,” Zeus muttered, movin’ his grip from my shoulder to my neck. The weight’a his huge hand should’a felt like a threat. Instead, it settled somethin’ in me like a stroke to the side’a a startled horse. “You want her, she wants you, we’ll fight to keep her, yeah?”
Just that simple.
Just that easy.
This was the reason every single man in the club would fight and die for Zeus Garro. ’Cause he’d do and had done the same for every one’a us without blinkin’ a motherfuckin’ eye. We were his, and he was ours.
“Yeah,” I grunted ’cause otherwise I might’a done somethin’ a helluva lot less manly. “Five minutes.”
A smile flickered in his beard ’fore he turned around, already barkin’ out orders to our crew. We were ridin’ out to deal with the Raiders before they could get a foothold in our territory.
But ’fore I could do that, I had to decide if Blue was my territory to defend too.
