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