Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,104

guys had kept me updated and I'd read their texts while I sipped at a boiling hot coffee and had learned Bear was alive, but he'd lost an arm and a leg.

Jesus.

He'd never be able to ride again.

That loss would hit him more than the physical one, I knew.

We were born to fucking fly, and Bear had just had his wings cut off.

Maybe with prosthetics they could reap a miracle, but as it stood, with the burn damage, I knew it would be a hard won thing to get him out of bed again, never mind on the back of a bike.

That was how I knew I had to come. Rex needed me, because he'd be unable to function while his dad was in the early days of recovery.

And when I saw the state of the clubhouse, I reasoned we were lucky to have lost only five of the family because the damage was extensive.

Half of the place I'd called home was a burned-out shell. Where the bar was, all the windows had blasted inward, not just on the ground floor, but on the top floor as well as the smaller windows on the roof that let light into the attic which Maverick called home.

As I stared at the building, squinting some at the pitch black sky, the smoke that drifted lazily off the wreckage of a place that had been my respite for more years than I could count, I tried to tell myself I wasn't crying.

Only pussies cried.

But fuck.

The damage... we truly were lucky to have so few casualties.

Though chapters often rallied around in times like these, I’d come by myself because my MC was in a state thanks to the early days of my leadership. Not because I’d fucked up, but because I’d had to demote the entirety of the council and put new guys in place.

Guys the old council were constantly disrespecting.

It was a mess, bar none.

Once law enforcement had fucked off, I’d be bringing in brothers from chapters across the States to help clean this shit up. We needed all hands on deck, guys who were trained in construction who’d help bring this place back to life fast.

When a man walked up to me, his scent that of expensive aftershave, I didn't even have to turn my head.

Sure, brothers could wear Hugo Boss or Hermes, but without the scent of the road on their skin? No way.

Without looking, I knew who I was talking to.

A pig.

"You the leader of this... group?"

I arched a brow. "Group? Why, sir, we're just a riding club."

I couldn't have sounded more 'Gone with the Wind' if I'd tried.

"A riding club, my ass. Half the East Coast authorities know exactly what you are. I'm not sure how you always scrape under the radar, but it looks like someone's got to you where LEAs can't."

"Is that approval I hear?" I countered, only now turning my head to take in the bastard who was smirking at my family's misfortune.

"Maybe. Sometimes, to take down a rabid pit-bull, you have to set a rabid pit-bull on it."

My mouth twisted into a snarl, but I kept my shit together because the last thing the MC needed was my ass locked up in jail.

I could break the bastard's nose, and I'd take great satisfaction in doing so, or I could see this through, get the pigs off our property, and start rebuilding the place that housed way too many of my brothers.

More importantly, I knew we had a corpse melting into goo at the Fridge. I really didn’t need the Feds to find either the body or our torture chamber.

Running a hand over my head, I was about to tell the fucker where to go, when I heard a, "Goddamnit, sir, you can't go in there."

My brow puckered as I twisted around, trying to see what was going down, who was trying to go into the clubhouse. Not seeing anything, I moved around, rushing to the side entrance, and when I saw Maverick wheeling down the corridor to Rex's office, which I had to hope one of my brothers had the wherewithal to trash before the emergency services got here, I called out, "Mav, you fucking idiot. Get your ass out of there."

He waved a hand at me, carried on rolling down the corridor toward only fuck knew where.

The basement was where he could catch the elevator to the top floor, his quarters, but surely he wasn't thinking about trying to use that now. Christ, hadn't they