Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132892 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Then I forced myself to think about what would happen if I did.
My brothers would be in unfamiliar territory, and with Marsh’s hangarounds they’d be outnumbered. Ultimately, I knew the Coeur d’Alene Reapers were tougher than those little fuckweasels. We’d take them in the end, that I knew for a fact.
The real question was how many of us would find ourselves in the morgue along the way. Could I justify risking my brothers’ lives over a woman who didn’t even know my real name?
The Portland and Bellingham brothers were still down in Cali. If I made the call, the Coeur d’Alene brothers would come. Period. That’s just how it worked in our world. But with that kind of loyalty comes the understanding that a man doesn’t make the call unless he’s run out of options.
Deal with it, asshole. It is what it is.
It was probably a good thing that Marsh dragged us back to the clubhouse. Guitar Fucker had been buying Tinker drinks all night, sitting next to her between sets.
Touching her.
If he’d tried to stick his tongue down her throat, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold my shit together. Of course, once we left the bar my imagination took over, and damned if it wasn’t already pretty vivid when it came to my curvy landlady. She’d been wearing bright red lipstick. Would it be smeared around his cock by the end of the night?
I’d have to hunt him down and shoot him.
Only reasonable response under the circumstances.
• • •
Things got worse when we reached the clubhouse. Not only was I tense as fuck, but I realized that the only men out there were Marsh’s people. Cord’s faction—the original brothers who didn’t like Marsh—hadn’t showed their faces all night. Either Marsh hadn’t invited them or they were planning something. Either way, the split was coming. Maybe soon.
Part of me thought we should pull them aside, maybe see if we could recruit them to our cause. On the other hand, they were the ones who let the situation get this bad in the first place.
We spent the night drinking and playing cards while Talia and her friends kept sneaking off to do more drugs. Marsh was so tense that he punched one of the prospects when he was stupid enough to win a hand at poker with a bluff. The Nighthawks’ president kept muttering about Hands, and how we all needed to look out for traitors.
I swear, his eyes followed me when he said it, too.
At least Talia wasn’t giving me too much shit—she was too busy hot railing meth with her girls in the bathroom. Around three that morning, Marsh got a text message that pissed him off enough that he threw a chair, screaming, “Shut the fuck up and play poker, you fucking losers!”
Good times.
Throughout it all, the girls were getting wilder and wilder, several of them doing stripteases on the bar—all under Talia’s direction. By four, she decided Sadie should pull a train in the back room, and most of the guys followed her back there while I sat against the wall, nursing a beer that’d long since grown warm.
Shit got real at five, when Marsh pulled out a gun and told us to hand over our cell phones. Said he didn’t want us warning the traitor. Didn’t like that idea, not one bit. Fortunately, I kept mine locked and clean. I also kept an extra burner hidden in a secret compartment on my bike—along with a spare piece—but that wouldn’t do me much good if I couldn’t make it out of the building. The other bikers’ eyes widened, but we all handed them over because what else were we supposed to do? I honestly didn’t think that up until that point, most of the poor dumbasses he’d drawn into his net had a fucking clue how serious this was.
Now they knew.
Around seven that morning, Marsh sent three of the women out for food. Then he spent the next hour pacing and muttering, alternating between staring at his phone and glaring at the rest of us. The whole damned clubhouse was like a pressure cooker, slowly building toward some sort of violent explosion.
I needed some fucking air.
Marsh had assigned a couple of his thugs to watch the front, telling them to stop anyone from leaving—comforting, that—so I headed out back instead, where a six foot fence topped with razor wire surrounded an area about half the size of the clubhouse. In the center were a fire pit and some broken-down picnic tables. Talia had told me they liked to have bonfires out there, but not even the Nighthawks were willing to risk a burn at this point. Smoke from the wildfires filled the air, and it was getting worse every day.
Leaning against the back wall, I closed my eyes, wondering what Tinker was doing. Had she gone home with Guitar Boy? Fucking hell, I’d gut him. He didn’t get to touch her. Nobody did. Totally rational thoughts, bro. That’s when I heard a soft sob. I followed the sound around the side of the building, where a young woman had curled up against the wall, knees tucked against her chest. She flinched when she saw me. Hair covered her face, and between that and the dim light I couldn’t see much of her.