Lucie wouldn’t lie to Ama.
I knew that like I knew my face in the mirror.
22
Ink
Funny how lying flat on your stomach for a couple hours could really start to hurt. Fuck. My face was buried in the grass, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the goddamn ants, which were making a meal out of me, and my elbows and wrists were killing me from being cuffed behind my back.
But there was no point in bitching. Every single one of my brothers was in this position. Anyone with a cut was down on the ground, face in the dirt, while pig fuckers went searching around our compound, trying to sniff out our secrets.
I’d seen Ama and Lucie being huddled away with the rest of the women. They’d been ‘stored’ in one of the outbuildings, and it wouldn’t have pissed me off if it weren’t for the fact it was goddamn boiling hot in there. They had to be suffering from heat exhaustion by now.
“Ink?”
I twisted my head to the side. “Yeah?”
“They’re letting the women out,” Flame rasped.
“Thank fuck for that. Means this shit’s almost over,” I grumbled with relief, not questioning how he knew that. Flame had better goddamn ears than a dog.
“Hopefully.” Flame tipped his chin up so he could look around the compound from our position on the lawn at the front of the building.
“What warrant did they show to get in?”
“They’re looking for contraband.”
I snorted. “That’s a nice loose term for a warrant. Swear to fuck, they’re handing those out like candy.”
“You saw Kenzie being hustled into a cop car. They had a lead, so that made shit easier.”
I gritted my teeth at that. It was going to kill Rodeo to know his daughter had jeopardized the club. Fuck, I just hoped this didn’t send him into a tailspin.
My nose was itching like fuck, but in this position, the only place I could scratch it was in the dirt—like that was about to happen.
“They can’t have found anything. They’d have come and shoved it in Wolfe’s face if they had,” I heard a brother a few rows down from me whisper into the silence.
“Shut your mouth,” I hissed, just loud enough for the idiot to hear.
A scraping sound ricocheted around the compound, one I recognized from the outbuilding the women had been stored in. The door rubbing against the corrugated iron was followed by the nervous chatter of the women as they were finally released, and when a gasp rang out, followed by startled cries, I jerked my chin upright to see what the fuck was going down.
My instincts told me it was Ama.
I wasn’t sure why.
Ama wasn’t physically weak. Nor was she mentally. I figured for her to go through what she did on a nightly basis was actually the opposite of weak, but still, I expected the gasp to be about her and I felt kind of shitty when I saw it was Bubbles. Looked like she’d dropped to her knees pretty much as soon as she’d left the outbuilding.
The women gathered around her, pecking at her like hens as they tried to help her to her feet, but it was Jinx who hollered, “You bastards. She’s fucking pregnant. You can’t put her in a fucking oven for goddamn how many hours and not expect her to get sick.”
Flame muttered, “Think we know who the daddy is?”
I grunted. “Either that or a brother who wishes he was.” I cut him a look. “Takes you off the hot seat.”
He shrugged. “What Lucie wants, she gets.”
“Spoiled,” I muttered wryly.
“And Ama won’t be?” He cocked a brow at me. “You get one chance with women like them. You and I both know it. Fucked around, the both of us, touched so many cunts in my life I can’t even count, but the one woman who ain’t just a walking pussy, the one who means more to me than just sex? Yeah, that means she’s special.
“When you think about a woman more than just about getting off, when you think about how she is, where she is, and if she’s safe… you spoil the fuck outta that woman because she’s become your reason for fucking living—”
“You’re preaching to the converted,” I said dryly. “Don’t wanna say I’m pussy-whipped—”
“Only fuckers who don’t get as much pussy as us say that we’re whipped,” Flame retorted, using more words than I’d heard from him in around a year. “And if being whipped means having a woman who’d never cheat on you, who gives a fuck where you are at night, and who wants you safe and healthy?”
I nodded, but something about his words had me frowning at him. “Healthy? Something wrong, Flame?”
His mouth tightened. “Been healthier.”
“Yeah? Anything I can do?”
“You a doctor?” He snorted. “Nothing too bad. High blood pressure. Caught it just in time. On meds.”
“You telling me this because I’m a brother, a councilor, or your son-in-law?”
“Ain’t my son-in-law until you wife her, but yeah, more because of Ama than anything else.”
I stared over at Bubbles who was splayed flat out on the ground. Jinx was swearing and cussing up a storm, wriggling around like a dying rat that’d been poisoned.
Wolfe, at his left, hissed, “You’re gonna get your ass thrown in jail, dumb fuck. Calm down. You’ll get to your bitch later.” Then, he muttered, “We’ll be having a conversation about her too.”
Seemed like Jinx heard because he calmed down, but he kept his eyes trained on Bubbles like his life depended on it.
Jinx wasn’t the prettiest brother, nor was he the cleverest. But he was a solid man, reliable. I had to wonder if Bubbles had trapped him like she’d tried to trap Saint and Wolfe, or if she’d just been lying all along because Jinx didn’t have the prospects Saint did or the position Wolfe possessed.
Fuck knew how bitches like her worked, but still, I was sorry she was down. Only God knew what that kind of temperature would do to a baby.
“I think we underestimate Ama,” I told Flame softly.
“How?”
“Didn’t you think she was the one who’d fainted?”
Flame frowned, then grunted. “Yeah.”
“But look at her.” I shook my head, even though it was awkward as hell. “She’s helping Bubbles. Even though she tried to mess up her momma’s marriage and tried to trap one of the men she loves.”
“Pretty much always underestimated her,” Flame admitted sadly. “Not her fault. Just…”
“Over-protecting her, I guess.”
“Yeah. She’s a better shot than me, did you know that?”
My brow puckered. “No. I didn’t. Not seen her with a gun since middle school.” And I’d stopped watching because seeing Ama armed and shooting had made Playboy look boring for my teen hormones.
Flame smirked. “Hell, you’re in for a show. Ask her sometime. You’ll get a kick out of it. She don’t like doing it, but she will if you ask nicely.”
Intrigued, I was about to pump him for more information when one of the main pigs, a dude who strutted around like John Wayne—even had fucking spurs on his goddamn cowboy boots, because that made him a real man—headed over to Wolfe, crouched down, and said, “You’re free to go. This time.”