Still, the money didn’t match what we’d earned with the drugs, and with a war on my doorstep, that was why I was interested in Lucie’s idea. Not only to increase our own firepower, but to top up our dwindling bank accounts. Our last shipment had gone to fuck when the Knights had shot at us. I’d told Bomber not to go on that fucking run, but he’d ignored me. As usual. He’d only ever listened when his back was to the wall.
Idiot.
Take this situation with Lucie’s business proposition? He’d never have thrown that to the MC. He’d have made his decision and the rest of us would have to abide by it. I refused to be that kind of Prez. But neither was I going to take their shit lying down.
I was the leader of this lunatic bunch of outlaws, and just because I was flexible, didn’t mean they could try to top me from the bottom.
Fuckers.
“Look,” I stated as I got to my feet. “You don’t have to understand it to accept it. My kid, my old lady. You treat her like she’s fucking glass and we’re okay. If I hear of you badmouthing her, talking shit to her face, or even BS about you not looking out for her when I set her up with guards, I’ll slice your throats myself.”
A bubble of sound roared through the crowd, but I just folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the conference table.
“How do you know she isn’t going to screw us over again?”
“Do you have a death wish, Locke?” Flame rasped, his eyes shifting from the flame dancing on his lighter to peer into the crowd.
“N-No, of course not,” Locke stuttered, pussying out. Not that I could blame him. If I was a mean fucker, Flame was the worst. Shit, he and Satan would make good buds.
“Well, then shut your fucking mouth. Lucie is mine. I’ll let Wolfe slice your throat open, but not before I piss in your mouth and shove your cock in it.” His mouth curved into an evil smile that made his eyes dance. “Lucie ain’t no traitor. She was set up. We know that, and it ain’t for you to know how.”
“That’s not how this works, brother,” Rodeo pointed out, and I didn’t want to slam my fist into his nose because he at least spoke politely.
Yeah, I appreciated politeness. Sue me.
“Ain’t it? You want to know the truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?” Flame sneered. “Far as I was aware, you were my brothers and you had my back. Didn’t realize you were all bacon.” He made an oinking sound that, from anyone else, would have triggered laughs.
Flame?
Everyone looked close to pissing themselves.
Rodeo cleared his throat but raised his hands in surrender.
A wise decision.
I cut another look around the room before I declared, “You don’t have to like her to be polite to her, you don’t have to talk to her to protect her if you’re on security detail. You got me?”
There was a chorus of ‘Ayes’ that had me dipping my chin, reassured that the message had been rammed home. Lucie was ours, under our protection, and that we’d kill to keep her safe.
There wasn’t much else I could ask for.
“Any other business before we get started?” Axe called out, his calm voice a stark contrast to the fear writhing around the atmosphere like a bomb that was waiting to blast.
When no one spoke up, I nodded and said, “Okay, one of the reasons Lucie came back is because Kid is dead.”
Curses fell at that—Ryan had been popular.
“How’d he die?”
I narrowed my eyes at Ink, a brother who ran the club’s ink parlor over in Jonsson, the next town over. “Lucie didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re fucking asking.”
At my snarl, he flinched. “No, man, I just wondered how—”
“Brain tumor.” The voice came from the back of the room and I grunted, pissed that she’d barged in before she was supposed to, and doubly pissed that she’d heard the brothers’ rejection of her.
Fuck.
I should have known.
She was incapable of obeying.
I sensed the brothers’ outrage at her presence, but she didn’t seem to care as she strode toward the table like a model walking down a catwalk.
Her eyes were trained on me, her head held high as she moved like sin on heels. When she reached my side, she turned around, and declared, “Kid had Glioblastoma. It’s the most lethal type.” She sucked down a shaky breath. “He went through three surgeries and three rounds of radiation, but nothing worked. When they were going to try something else, he decided against it. He died two months later.”
It was amazing how such a torturous time, one loaded with pain, suffering, misery, and grief, could be condensed into one chilly paragraph.
“You bring his ashes back?” Wheels asked. He ran our garage in Rutherford, and was pretty much a shoo-in for Road Captain.
“Of course.” She cleared her throat. “He’d have wanted the full works.”
“That’s what he’ll get.” I gently cupped her shoulder. “Kid, as always, was resilient. To the point where he was able to fabricate Ben Franklins… Anyone in the class know what a ghost gun is?”
Slugger, a brother I wanted as Sergeant-at-Arms if he’d stop thinking with his dick and start using his brain, called out, “Weapons with no licenses, no purchasing orders, and no need for registration.” He whistled. “Kid was making that shit? Bastard always did ace shop class.”
I snorted at that, because fuck, how had I forgotten that? “Yeah, I remember that now.”
“He figured out a way to build .45 semi-automatics,” Lucie stated.
At her words, the silence in the room was deafening. Especially considering the quantity of brothers in church.
“They’re listening, baby girl,” I told her as I turned away. “The show is yours.” And with that, I returned to my seat at the head of the conference table and let her do what she had to—sell the future of Hell’s Rebels to the hellions themselves.
❖
Lucie
A week later
“Baby, come here.”
Amaryllis’s mouth turned into a pout as she kept her attention fixed on her book.
Sighing, I tried again. “Amaryllis?”
When she ignored me for the second time, I switched between wanting to scream at her and wanting to shake her. Bad, I know, but hell, what was it about kids that tested your limits?
Granted, my limits were lower than most people’s, and I had a tendency to act on things most wouldn’t. But usually where Amaryllis was concerned, I was very patient. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was a super good mother, or if it was down to the fact that normally, at least nine out of ten times, she was well behaved.
After blowing out a breath, I stated, “I need you to put the book down, Amaryllis.”
“I’m at a good part,” she mumbled.
“I’ll bet, but I still need you to come sit with me, darlin’.”
With a huff that was pure drama, and one I couldn’t exactly reprimand her over because she’d seen me do it a thousand times in front of Ryan, she carefully inserted the leather bookmark Ryan had crafted for her, then placed the book down on the stand. Just so. Then, she climbed off the bed we were sharing and stepped toward me on the sofa I was sitting on.