“Motherfuckers,” I spat. “How the fuck they’d know about Edge Trucks, huh? Buck’s owned that company since before he was even a fuckin’ member and it’s under his old fuckin’ name. Explain that to me, would ya?”
“Can’t,” Nova said grimly. “Got that kid Curtains on it. I’m headin’ to Street Ink, Bat’s over in Squamish and Buck’s at the trucking company.”
“I’ll meet Bat,” I said.
“Uh, I’d meet me, Prez, the staff sergeant’s at Street Ink and he’s claimin’ the business was ‘unsafe’ and in violation of about a dozen fuckin’ codes.”
“Fuck,” I roared. “Who the fuck told them about this shit? I swear to motherfuckin’ God that heads will fuckin’ roll for this shit.”
I hung up, jammed the phone in my pocket and stormed over to the door.
“Later,” I called over my shoulder to King,
He was up and movin’ though. “I’m comin’.”
“You’re not a member of this club, kid.”
His eyes flashed grey as a lightning strike just like mine. “Fuck that. We both know I was born a member and I’ll die a member. Just ’cause I ain’t prospectin’ doesn’t mean this isn’t my goddamn family that’s been fucked with.”
I clapped him on the back and brought ’im close to press our foreheads together and squeeze the back of his neck. “How’d an old fuck like me end up with such a kickass kid?”
He grinned and clapped me on the back. “Pure luck.”
It was late, or fuckin’ early dependin’ on how you looked at it. It’d been a long fuckin’ night of puttin’ out fires, literally and metaphorically. Our friendly neighborhood cop, Hutchinson, had dealt with the fire at the grow-op but we’d lost the entire fuckin’ thing. It was a huge loss even for the scale of an operation like ours and to say I was pissed woulda been the understatement of the fuckin’ year.
There were three more of those glossy eight-by-ten photographs, one at each scene and each mutilated violently. King’s stuck in the empty till at Street Ink, Cress’s plastered on the gates to the Edge Trucking lot and Lou’s on the mailbox at the grow-op.
More warnings.
Only they weren’t warnings anymore. They were threats and I wasn’t havin’ fuckin’ anymore of that shit.
The problem was, I didn’t know where the fuck these fuckin’ Nightstalkers were. They weren’t actin’ like bikers. I didn’t see ’em drivin’ down the streets of Entrance in their colours or hear tell of them in any biker bars on the Sea to Sky. They were just these invisible enemies playin’ a game I didn’t want any fuckin’ part of.
They were bein’ smarter than last time, which meant that they had someone else helpin’ ’em. Someone smarter, and I intended to find out who that fuckin’ well was.
None of the brothers would be sleepin’ for a long fuckin’ time, includin’ me, but I was tired as shit, mad as hellfire and I wanted—fuckin’ needed—my girl.
Which was why I’d parked my bike down the road from her house and was calmly breakin’ into the backdoor of the Lafayette mansion. They had a weakass-alarm that I disarmed easily with a little help from The Fallen’s resident computer hacker, Curtains, and then crossed softly in my boots through the house and up the epic fuckin’ staircase.
Wasn’t a man who liked opulence, gold plated this or eighteenth century that, but even I could recognize that the place was worth a fuckin’ mint. It was fucked to me that my Lou grew up in a place like it, like a fuckin’ museum. There were no pictures of the kids on the walls, only old guys with huntin’ rifles, and there was no life in the house. No clothes on the stairs or keys and shit on tables. Just rich furniture and a smell like clean money.
I knew which bedroom was Lou’s from the letters. She’d always talked about the huge willow tree outside her bay window, about the fact that her nanny had let her paint her door pale pink in defiance of her parents and then promptly been fuckin’ fired for it.
So I knew when I pushed open that pink door that Lou would be asleep in her bed but I wasn’t prepared for what the sighta her curled up in a fuckin’ frilly white-and-pink bed would do to my cock.
I felt like the fuckin’ monster under the bed come to play with the little girl bedded down in it.
My cock hardened with each step as I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed to take off my boots.
She didn’t stir.
It was the first night she hadn’t spent in my bed in a week and there was no way after a night like the one I’d just had that I was okay goin’ to bed without her warmth beside me.
When I’d shucked the boots, I shrugged off my leather jacket, unbuckled my jeans and tugged off my shirt before leanin’ down into the bed to get a closer look at the girl who’d stolen this monster’s cold heart.
Her eyelids were pale purple and there were faint bruises at the tops of her cheeks. I frowned as I brushed a thumb over the silky bruises and wondered if I wasn’t lettin’ her get enough sleep. Those lids pulled slowly open when I slid my workingman’s hand ’cross her cheek and down her neck.
She stared at me without fear, her pure blue eyes filled with wonder instead.
“Zeus,” she breathed like I was a fuckin’ dream come true. “You’re here.”
I kissed her warm, sleep-soft mouth. Without hesitation, she kissed me back, sliding her small wet tongue against mine in an innocent way that had me groanin’.
When I pulled back to look into her face, she was frownin’.
“Bad day for my guardian monster,” she whispered, her hand comin’ up to stroke my cheek and into my hair.
Fuck but her sweetness did me in.
“Roughest in a while, all good now I got my girl with me,” I told her honestly.
“What happened?”
“Not tellin’ you much, Lou. Not ever and that’s for your own good, yeah? But there’s stuff goin’ down with another gang, Nightstalkers, and shit’s gonna get violent and real before it gets gone. Need you to know and need you to be fuckin’ careful, yeah? Don’t leave Mute’s fuckin’ side when you’re not with me.”
“You’re more than angry. I think you might even be scared,” she noticed like the sharp shooter she was.
I rubbed a weary hand over my tired eyes. “They went after King’s woman last year. Seems they’re gearin’ up to go after family again.”
“But why?” she asked, and I forgot that she was so fuckin’ innocent in all of this.
“Got a business that keeps me cash rich and morally poor, Lou. Lotsa people want a piece of that, good ones and bad. This club wants what The Fallen has and they’ve decided the best way to take it is by cripplin’ us with death and debt.”
“Fuck.”
“Burned down coupla our operations but it’s the threats, I’m not down with. Can’t have my kids getting’ hurt,” I leaned down to suck her bottom lip into my mouth. “Can’t have my girl getting’ hurt, either.”
She bit the lip I’d sucked, not realizin’ how it made my dick twitch. “I think my dad’s involved in it somehow. I heard him talking to Lionel after my cat-fight with H.R. earlier and it seemed like he was in trouble.”