Axe-Man stepped forward with a bag filled with the same incendiaries we’d brought here ’fore—Molotov cocktails, Firestarters, and flare guns.
“I think Blue should be one’a the ones to do the honours,” I suggested, pushin’ her forward a little bit. “Blue, Axe-Man, Bat, and Z. You all got beef with this club, and you should be the ones to see it burn.”
Blue turned her face to me, eyes shinin’, the prettiest thing I’d ever seen even covered in blood, even broken boned and ashen with exhaustion.
“Set the monsters on fire,” I said to her, steppin’ up against her back to wrap a hand around her belly.
“My monsters are still out there,” she confessed.
“Yeah, but today you won a battle. Tomorrow we’ll worry about the war. They’re not gonna lay a hand on you again, Blue, you hear me? That’s a promise I’ll die protectin’. You believe me?”
“I believe you,” she said instantly, leanin’ her weight back against me as Wrath, Wiseguy, and Shadow emerged from the house and took their vigil in our half-moon formation.
Without a word, Axe-Man handed her a flare gun and me a Firestarter stick.
“You’ll all die like fuckin’ animals for this,” one’a the Raiders promised darkly from his place on the ground, kneelin’ in surrender. “You got no idea what’s planned for you.”
Kodiak whipped the but’a his gun against the man’s temple and folded to the ground like a dropped scarf. Clearly, we were keepin’ three’a the Raiders for questionin’. Arguably a worse fate than dyin’ on the property given Priest’d be the one to interrogate them.
“Ready?” I asked Blue, holdin’ her to me, wonderin’ how I’d ever let her outta my sight again.
“My aunt Rita,” she said on gasp. “She was inside, I think.”
“Here, ducky,” she muttered from somewhere down the line of Fallen brothers.
A moment later, King helped her forward by the hand so she could smile tremulously at Blue.
“Thank you,” my woman whispered to me and King and all’a the brothers. “You’ll come with us, right, Auntie?”
Rita sighed, looking back at the house for a moment, a strange kinda longing in her eyes probably ’cause that life was all she’d known.
When she finally turned back to Blue, her mouth was set in a firm, pugnacious line. “Set it ablaze, Faith.”
“Ready?” I asked again, squeezin’ her hip and givin’ her a small, encouragin’ smile.
“Ready,” she breathed, gaze fixed on the house that symbolized the cage she’d been forced back into by Rooster and Hazard and this fucked-up club.
“Fuck the monsters,” she breathed as she raised the flare gun and shot it through the window Bat’d busted open with his gun.
The front room sparkled with light, almost beautiful in the quiet, dark night.
A moment later, I chucked the Firestarter into the porch, Zeus followin’ suit. Axe-Man lit his Molotov cocktail and hurled it through the open front door while Bat shot his flare into a second-story window.
And we stood together, Curtains pressed along one side’a me, Zeus standin’ on the other, Blue in my arms, the rest’a my brothers shoulder to shoulder in a line’a family that I knew in my bones could weather any fuckin’ storm, as we watched the White Raiders clubhouse burn to the ground.
BLUE
For the firsttime since our romance began, Aaron took me to his home.
It was a huge brick building at one end of Main Street where the commercial buildings collapsed into residential houses closer to the ocean. It used to be a post office, and the bronze plaque still remained beside one of the black-painted front doorsat the top of a series of short steps flanked by wrought-iron railings.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of home I’d have imagined for him if I thought about it.
Especially when he ushered me inside, flicking the lights on to reveal a tastefully restored, open-concept living space. The walls were exposed brick, the kitchen cabinets and appliances a sleek black, the countertops butcher block and gleaming with care under the copper hanging lights above the stove. The furniture was masculine but good looking, soft black couches and chairs, dark wood table and chairs, bookshelves against two walls forming one of two closed rooms on the main floor. Based on the neon sign that read “studio” on the door, I suspected it was where he made his art. Of course that art lit the walls, funny quotes mostly, and a huge, intricate replica of the Hephaestus Auto logo hung above the TV.
It was cool and cozy, somehow perfect for a man who was both a biker and a sweetheart, a funny man and an intensely complicated soul.
I lingered over a collection of framed photos on a long table behind the couch, touching one of Boner and Curtains with their arms wrapped around King at what looked like a wedding in the forest.
