Pierce wasn’t going to be easy to kill. Both knew it. All of them knew it.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alena snapped. “He doesn’t have to be killed. Leave him to me. He advocated for us. It was because of Pierce we didn’t go to war.”
“He may have advocated for us, Alena,” Reaper said, “but don’t kid yourself. He was there to kill us if anything went wrong.”
“He would have tried,” Savage said. “I was on him the entire time and he had no idea.”
Alena shrugged. “If it comes to that, I can do it myself.”
“We know if our club grows it will make the Diamondbacks nervous, but there was no limit put on how big our club could be. We’re charter members, but they expected growth,” Czar said. “They knew we had a couple of prospects.”
“Maybe not twenty-five new members,” Master said with a faint grin.
“Put it to a vote whether or not to meet with them,” Czar said. “This has come at a bad time for us, but we may as well get it done if we’re going to do it.”
“We’d have to send someone to Trinity for a few weeks. And then Savage will need to go back and forth. We have to trust these men if they’re part of us,” Steele said.
“I could go,” Casimir volunteered. “Lissa likes to travel and she’s all I need for backup.” Lissa and Casimir had done what no one else had been able to do. They had freed all those trained under Sorbacov’s brutal schools by assassinating Sorbacov and his son. Now, they were free to live their own lives and choose what they wanted to do. The problem was, they only knew how to seduce and kill. All of them were struggling to find their way.
Czar nodded. “Let’s take a vote on whether or not to bring them here for a trial.”
Steele knew the vote would go through. He actually liked the idea of having another chapter, men trained as they’d been trained in the art of assassination and warfare. If it came to war with the Diamondbacks—and that was always a very real possibility—Torpedo Ink was outnumbered. The Diamondbacks would have an endless army, just as the Swords did.
Financially, they’d broken the Swords. The money had been earned from trafficking, and Code had siphoned off every penny from every local chapter as well as international ones. They’d taken out a number of members in a massacre, as well as the president, Evan Shackler-Gratsos. Before they’d killed him, they’d hit his personal bank account as well as every one of his businesses. Code had made certain the money couldn’t be traced to their accounts. Torpedo Ink was wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. They were trying to spend the money wisely, using it to establish themselves in Caspar, with legitimate businesses. They tried to do business with locals as much as possible. Czar wanted their club to have a good reputation.
There was no 1-percenter patch on their vests. The local law enforcement didn’t believe them, but that was okay. No one could prove anything against them. They wanted to keep a low profile and fit in with their community. That was the plan—and the hope.
Steele glanced down at his watch. For the first time, he realized he wanted out of a meeting, so he could get back to Breezy, even if it was just to watch her sleep. It had been so long. He had made up his mind he would never have a woman of his own again. He’d had her, the right one, the only one, and he’d lost her. The ache in his chest hadn’t ceased, not from the moment he’d put her in a car and watched her go.
She’d been crying when she’d left him. Sobbing. That had torn out his fucking heart, but there had been no way he was going to risk her life. He’d known the war was coming and her father would never forgive her for being with him—even though her father had handed her over to him to incur favor. At first, after she was gone, he couldn’t stand another woman touching him. Then, no matter how many women blew him, desperate to feel something—to get relief from the agony of dreams waking him nightly with a raging hard-on that wouldn’t seem to go away.
The vote was unanimous to bring the others in, if they were suited for Torpedo Ink. That didn’t surprise Steele in the least.