Faster than I could track, Priest had his Karambit knife outta the holster, flipped through his fingers, and then sunk with a dullthudinto the table.
Right in the sliver’a space between Wrath’s index and middle fingers.
Our second enforcer only blinked at the still vibratin’ knife and then slowly lifted his hand, deliberately slicin’ into the webbin’ between his fingers as he did so. He glared at Priest as he brought his bleedin’ hand to his mouth and smeared the blood over his teeth so that when he smiled, he did it bloody.
“If Priest hadn’t knocked up Bea, I’d be readin’ some serious sexual tension between you two,” I drawled to break the frission’a tension runnin’ along the table.
Nova was the first to laugh, tippin’ his chin at me in camaraderie.
“I’m just sayin’, I get a shot at that asshole, I’m takin’ it, too,” I tossed out mildly even though the thought’a anyone else puttin’ Blue’s abusive fuckin’ father in the ground made my blood curdle.
“We gotta find ’im ’fore anyone can damn well kill ’im,” Z grunted. “Boner, King, Curtains, go with Kodiak and scout the farm. Take the prospects with ya. I wanna know how many brothers they got and what kinda heat they’re packin’. You can, you torch it then. We need to regroup, we do it tomorrow in church at eleven in the a.m.”
There was a chorus of “yeah, boss,” ’fore the twenty or so men in attendance started for the door. The prospects were on the other side standin’ guard, Carson handin’ back everyone’s phone as they piled out.
I waited for a beat ’til everyone was gone but my Prez.
“We’re still lookin’, brother,” Zeus said the minute we were alone, standin’ up to clap a hand around my shoulder. “We won’t stop, yeah?”
“Curtains thinks I’m bein’ an idiot. I can tell some’a the other guys think so, too.” I didn’t give a fuck what the other brothers thought about it.
I cared what Z thought, though.
Never had a mother or father, and Z was the closest I’d ever come to havin’ a parent.
Someone coulda said I was unlucky to never know my parents, but only if they didn’t know Zeus Garro.
No one was better than him, and he proved it every fuckin’ day.
And he did it again then by sayin’, “Men like us don’t fall in love the way they do in storybooks. We see a woman, and somethin’ hits us like a bullet through the chest. We get this sense in our blood and bones, through the center’a our bein’ that this person is meant for us. It might take a while to get there.” His grin was a small, secret thing in his beard, the one carved there by the hand’a his wife, Loulou. “Sometimes we gotta get our heads outta our asses to realize that no obstacle between us is worthy’a keepin’ us apart. But you already got that clarity. You’ve always been clear-sighted like that even when you came to me, just a kid and hurtin’. You’ve always known what you want and who you are right down to your bones. And now, they’re tellin’ you to find this woman and make sure she’s safe. Maybe even make her yours.”
Zeus’s rough palm moved to my neck, coverin’ the entire width and shakin’ me lightly the way I’d seen him do to King sometimes. Like I was his kid.
That ache in my chest I’d lived with since I lost Elsa eased at that touch and that look in his eye that said I was his brother, his son, his family.
“You picked a fiery one, though,” he joked. “Tellin’ you from experience, they don’t mellow over time.”
I laughed ’cause Loulou was a spitfire through and through.
It was what we all loved about her.
“So, yeah, I’m more than fuckin’ fine with that.”
Z shoved me away then reeled me to rub a hand into my perfectly done hair ’cause he knew I fuckin’ hated it. I swallowed my smile and glared at him.
He chuckled, takin’ his seat at the head’a the carved wooden table again and pullin’ out his phone in clear dismissal. The lit screen showed an image’a Loulou and his daughter, Harleigh Rose, holdin’ his two twin kids, Angel and Monster.
And for the first time in my life, I was greedy enough to want somethin’ like that for myself.
Not just the club but a family I could call my own with a woman who’d carve her name into my bones and make me hers forever.
Since I’d been stabbedin the spring, Zeus had me in charge’a the prospects. It was both a demotion and a promotion. The first was only in my head ’cause I wanted to be on the front lines of the action with my Prez, Bat, Priest, Wrath, Axe-Man, King, and Nova. But I also got that takin’ care of the prospects, teachin’ them our ways like an anthropologist introducin’ a new culture, was almost as sacrosanct as bikers got. This way’a life wasn’t for the faint’a heart. It took an inexplicable kinda courage to be a man who could look society in the eye and tell it to fuck right off. A certain kinda guy to stitch into the patchwork quilt’a The Fallen and make it more whole than it was before.
And there I was, the man to induct them and judge them and hopefully, find them worthy of wearin’ that flamin’ skull and wing patch’a The Fallen MC.
So I decided to be honoured. There was no point in bitchin’ about it the way Skell had done when he was in charge’a Curtains and me as prospects. I refused to take my bitterness about the way life could punch a guy in the throat out on the young men who’d already suffered at life’s hands and found us for our unusual brand’a solace. We were a band’a outcasts and rebels, and there was no such thing as too much bad or weird in our crew.
Some clubs were ripe with racist, homophobic, misogynistic pigs, but not The Fallen.
