“Because I’m in danger. L-Look, I know we’ve never gotten on well. But I’m Keys’ sister. You know it will hurt him if anything happens to me. And my daddy. I know you love him as well,” she wheedled. “It would kill them both if anything happened to me.”
“And exactly why would anything happen to you if you’ve done nothing wrong?” I inserted, striding into the room, unable to take this bullshit any longer. I wasn’t about to let Ama be manipulated. Not when there was so much at stake here.
Kenzie, upon seeing me, froze. She raised her hands into the air like I was a cop, and whispered, “Please, Keys. Just let me go.”
“Like Ama said, you worked so hard to get here, Kenz. Why the fuck do you feel the need to leave now?”
Her words were strangled when she whispered, “I had no choice.”
Everything inside me froze. “No choice to do what?”
“Help them. They needed an in.”
“Who did?”
She released a shaky breath. “W-When I left here, things didn’t go so well. I hung around at the Knights’ compound for a while, but shit didn’t work out there. I’m not made out to be a clubwhore.”
“Fuck no, you’re not. You’re a councilor’s daughter,” I growled, my hands balling into fists at my sides.
She gulped. “Well, it didn’t take me long to pick myself up and get the hell out of there. But in El Paso, things were harder.”
“Why? Because you actually had to work?” Ama sneered, but the pad was still resting on her knees, her pencil moving as she worked.
“Like you’re one to talk. You’re away with the fucking fairies most of the time, Ama,” Kenzie snarled back.
“Until this summer, I’ve been at school, you idiot. I only just fucking graduated. With a 3.9 GPA. I’m not a lazy bitch like some people. I don’t need to pay my bills on my back.”
Kenzie flinched at that but snapped, “I tried to make a go of it in El Paso, I really did. But I ended up with some bad people. Got myself into some shit, and ended up in jail with a possession charge.”
“You were dealing drugs?” I choked out.
“Yeah.” She raised her hands and covered her face. “I’m not proud of it, and I’m not proud of what I did next.”
“What?”
“They were going to throw me behind bars for eight years, Jamie. Eight. I couldn’t—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it. I agreed to help them.”
“You cut a deal,” I snarled.
“They wanted me to go back to the Knights, so I did. And when I told them what they were running, and with whom, then they got interested in the Rebels’ operation.”
“So you brought them here? Ain’t you heard of never shitting in your own backyard?”
She flinched at my yell. “I didn’t have a choice!”
“We always have a choice.” I scrubbed a hand over my face before I turned away from her, trying to process what the fuck was happening. “This is bad shit, Kenzie. I don’t think we can help you. If you weren’t pregnant, you’d be in The Pit for this shit.”
Kenzie gulped. “I know. That’s why I have to get out of here.”
“We can’t help you,” Ama said softly. “Not without implicating ourselves in your BS. We can’t even let you get away, not without getting blamed too. I’m not about to take any heat for the mess you’ve fallen into, Kenzie. Don’t care if you’re Jamie’s sister or Rodeo’s kid. You’re not worth it. You don’t deserve either of them. And you sure as fuck don’t deserve any help from us—”
“Well said, Ama.”
Kenzie hissed and her eyes rounded in fear as Lucie strode into the room. It felt like the space around her throbbed with chaotic energy. I knew her well enough to recognize that look—that bitter, gnarly look was what had overcome her when they’d dragged Jodie-May, kicking and screaming, into the clubhouse for her punishment.
A punishment that Lucie had no problem meting out.
Kenzie backed off, but there was nowhere to go. She flattened herself to the wall and rasped, “Please, Lucie. Please. Just let me go. I won’t be no more bother.”
“No, you sure as shit won’t,” Lucie growled, as she strode toward my sister, but Ama wasn’t wrong—she wasn’t worthy of us. Didn’t deserve us as family.
She was no fucking sister of mine.
When Lucie stepped toward her, Kenzie looked like she was going to piss herself, then, Lucie froze and bit off, “What the fuck have you done?”
Unsure what she meant, I stared where she looked, Ama, finally getting to her feet, did too.
“Oh my God,” Ama whispered at the surge of cop cars that rammed the road to the compound. “What the fuck did you tell them?”
Kenzie released a shaky breath, one that was loaded with a sense of relief that made me hate her even more. With a cockiness that made me wish she was a man so I could beat the shit out of her, she murmured, “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Lucie surged forward at that and with all her force, raised her hand and slapped Kenzie. “Be grateful you’re pregnant. If you weren’t, I’d have done more.” She spat at Kenzie who was holding her cheek, then spat again. The globule of spit landed on my sister’s forehead. “If you do anything to hurt my family again, I will find you and I’ll make you pay.”
“I never wanted to hurt you in the first place.”
Lucie sneered. “Scurry along to your pig friends, bitch. Oink, oink.” She grabbed her arm and hurled her away. Kenzie caught herself but did as bid, scurried off like the rat she was.
“Ama, you’re about to hear some stuff and see some stuff that might frighten you. But please, baby,” Lucie urged her, grabbing hold of her hands and squeezing them tightly. “Don’t worry. Just keep your mouth shut. Say you don’t know anything, and keep it on repeat. This will all be over by tomorrow.”
Ama gulped, but kissed her momma’s cheek. “Will everyone be safe?”
Lucie stared her in the eye and nodded, and I released a relieved breath because that meant, no matter how hard they tried, the cops were about to have a wasted journey.
Lucie wouldn’t lie to Ama.
I knew that like I knew my face in the mirror.
22
Ink
Funny how lying flat on your stomach for a couple hours could really start to hurt. Fuck. My face was buried in the grass, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the goddamn ants, which were making a meal out of me, and my elbows and wrists were killing me from being cuffed behind my back.
But there was no point in bitching. Every single one of my brothers was in this position. Anyone with a cut was down on the ground, face in the dirt, while pig fuckers went searching around our compound, trying to sniff out our secrets.
I’d seen Ama and Lucie being huddled away with the rest of the women. They’d been ‘stored’ in one of the outbuildings, and it wouldn’t have pissed me off if it weren’t for the fact it was goddamn boiling hot in there. They had to be suffering from heat exhaustion by now.
“Ink?”
I twisted my head to the side. “Yeah?”
“They’re letting the women out,” Flame rasped.
“Thank fuck for that. Means this shit’s almost over,” I grumbled with relief, not questioning how he knew that. Flame had better goddamn ears than a dog.
“Hopefully.” Flame tipped his chin up so he could look around the compound from our position on the lawn at the front of the building.
“What warrant did they show to get in?”
“They’re looking for contraband.”
I snorted. “That’s a nice loose term for a warrant. Swear to fuck, they’re handing those out like candy.”
“You saw Kenzie being hustled into a cop car. They had a lead, so that made shit easier.”
I gritted my teeth at that. It was going to kill Rodeo to know his daughter had jeopardized the club. Fuck, I just hoped this didn’t send him into a tailspin.
My nose was itching like fuck, but in this pos
ition, the only place I could scratch it was in the dirt—like that was about to happen.
“They can’t have found anything. They’d have come and shoved it in Wolfe’s face if they had,” I heard a brother a few rows down from me whisper into the silence.
“Shut your mouth,” I hissed, just loud enough for the idiot to hear.
A scraping sound ricocheted around the compound, one I recognized from the outbuilding the women had been stored in. The door rubbing against the corrugated iron was followed by the nervous chatter of the women as they were finally released, and when a gasp rang out, followed by startled cries, I jerked my chin upright to see what the fuck was going down.
My instincts told me it was Ama.
I wasn’t sure why.
Ama wasn’t physically weak. Nor was she mentally. I figured for her to go through what she did on a nightly basis was actually the opposite of weak, but still, I expected the gasp to be about her and I felt kind of shitty when I saw it was Bubbles. Looked like she’d dropped to her knees pretty much as soon as she’d left the outbuilding.
The women gathered around her, pecking at her like hens as they tried to help her to her feet, but it was Jinx who hollered, “You bastards. She’s fucking pregnant. You can’t put her in a fucking oven for goddamn how many hours and not expect her to get sick.”
Flame muttered, “Think we know who the daddy is?”
I grunted. “Either that or a brother who wishes he was.” I cut him a look. “Takes you off the hot seat.”
He shrugged. “What Lucie wants, she gets.”
“Spoiled,” I muttered wryly.
“And Ama won’t be?” He cocked a brow at me. “You get one chance with women like them. You and I both know it. Fucked around, the both of us, touched so many cunts in my life I can’t even count, but the one woman who ain’t just a walking pussy, the one who means more to me than just sex? Yeah, that means she’s special.
“When you think about a woman more than just about getting off, when you think about how she is, where she is, and if she’s safe… you spoil the fuck outta that woman because she’s become your reason for fucking living—”
“You’re preaching to the converted,” I said dryly. “Don’t wanna say I’m pussy-whipped—”
“Only fuckers who don’t get as much pussy as us say that we’re whipped,” Flame retorted, using more words than I’d heard from him in around a year. “And if being whipped means having a woman who’d never cheat on you, who gives a fuck where you are at night, and who wants you safe and healthy?”
I nodded, but something about his words had me frowning at him. “Healthy? Something wrong, Flame?”
His mouth tightened. “Been healthier.”
“Yeah? Anything I can do?”
“You a doctor?” He snorted. “Nothing too bad. High blood pressure. Caught it just in time. On meds.”
“You telling me this because I’m a brother, a councilor, or your son-in-law?”
“Ain’t my son-in-law until you wife her, but yeah, more because of Ama than anything else.”
I stared over at Bubbles who was splayed flat out on the ground. Jinx was swearing and cussing up a storm, wriggling around like a dying rat that’d been poisoned.
Wolfe, at his left, hissed, “You’re gonna get your ass thrown in jail, dumb fuck. Calm down. You’ll get to your bitch later.” Then, he muttered, “We’ll be having a conversation about her too.”
Seemed like Jinx heard because he calmed down, but he kept his eyes trained on Bubbles like his life depended on it.
Jinx wasn’t the prettiest brother, nor was he the cleverest. But he was a solid man, reliable. I had to wonder if Bubbles had trapped him like she’d tried to trap Saint and Wolfe, or if she’d just been lying all along because Jinx didn’t have the prospects Saint did or the position Wolfe possessed.
Fuck knew how bitches like her worked, but still, I was sorry she was down. Only God knew what that kind of temperature would do to a baby.
“I think we underestimate Ama,” I told Flame softly.
“How?”
“Didn’t you think she was the one who’d fainted?”
Flame frowned, then grunted. “Yeah.”
“But look at her.” I shook my head, even though it was awkward as hell. “She’s helping Bubbles. Even though she tried to mess up her momma’s marriage and tried to trap one of the men she loves.”
“Pretty much always underestimated her,” Flame admitted sadly. “Not her fault. Just…”
“Over-protecting her, I guess.”
“Yeah. She’s a better shot than me, did you know that?”
My brow puckered. “No. I didn’t. Not seen her with a gun since middle school.” And I’d stopped watching because seeing Ama armed and shooting had made Playboy look boring for my teen hormones.
Flame smirked. “Hell, you’re in for a show. Ask her sometime. You’ll get a kick out of it. She don’t like doing it, but she will if you ask nicely.”
Intrigued, I was about to pump him for more information when one of the main pigs, a dude who strutted around like John Wayne—even had fucking spurs on his goddamn cowboy boots, because that made him a real man—headed over to Wolfe, crouched down, and said, “You’re free to go. This time.”
Though I could feel the cheer we all wanted to holler, none of us said shit. We kept things quiet and waited until we were all released from our cuffs.
When Flame and I were free, we headed over to where Wolfe was, and I overheard, “This sounds like entrapment to me, sir,” Wolfe snarled, his eyes shifting first to Lucie and Ama who were both safe and were still waiting on an ambulance—if they could even get out here with all the goddamn cars taking up the road—and then over to us, his council, as we circled him.
John Wayne spat on the ground and said softly, too softly for the colleagues still freeing my brothers to hear, “This can become a regular thing or it can be wiped away… your choice. You got my number. I’ll be waiting on your call.”
When the douche stepped away, I saw the card Wolfe was flipping between his fingers. Flame, spying it, grabbed it, and then began flickering with the lighter that was pretty much glued to him.
“Don’t set it alight,” Wolfe growled.
“Not gonna,” Flame denied. “What’s he want?”
“Guess,” Wolfe rumbled, his eyes on the officers who were heading into their cars.
Over thirty vehicles, sixty cops, all with doors wide open, and lights flashing like this was something from a goddamn movie.
I shook my head at the sight. “Ain’t they got other clubs to go irritate? Not like we’re heavy into the drugs anymore.”
Wolfe shrugged. “If that cunt gave them an in, they’re going to go where the shit stinks. Like true pigs,” he hollered as the cars took off in a wave of dust that had us all choking on it.
When they were finally cleared, Dagger muttered, “Gonna go and check for bugs.”
Wolfe nodded. “Sweep in church first, then the surrounding areas. Let everyone know we got a proposition to deal with.”
“Sure.”
As he strode off, nodding at a few of the guys to help him work, I grabbed my cell and shot out a text to the church-going brothers.
“Done,” I told Wolfe, who was staring after the cop cars in the distance. The lay of our land was such that we were on high ground, so we could see all the way down to the turn off for the highway.
“Glad to know the hidden partition is still good enough,” the Prez muttered.
I grimaced. “Yeah. Last thing we need to explain is The Pit.”
A grunt escaped him. “It’s clean, but yeah, explaining that shit would require an Oscar-worthy performance too. Ain’t none of us that good at lying.” He paused, then gritted out, “Speaking of which.” When he strode over to Jinx who’d run over to Bubbles the second he’d been freed, I wasn’t surprised when he picked him up by his cut and demanded, “Is that baby yours? Or is she fobbing it off on you too?”
Lucie grunted. “Sadly, darlin’, she’s right.” But she didn’t look happy about it, and considering I’d seen her fucking cry in church? Hell, no, I could understand why she wasn’t.
Wolfe didn’t stand down, though, just glowered at Jinx who shrugged. “Says it’s mine.”
“She’s said it’s mine and Saint’s too,” he growled.
“Mine as well,” Dax hollered.
“Me, too,” Hound muttered.
“Fuck me, that’s five daddies. Jesus, kid’s gonna have more than you, Ama, if this shit carries on,” Lucie grumbled, and I couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped me at that.
Jinx turned bright red. “It’s mine.”
“How the fuck you know that?”
He wriggled his shoulders. “Did it on purpose.”
Wolfe’s eyes bugged out for a second. “You trapped her?”
Another shrug. “Mebbe.”
“Fuck me,” Wolfe ground out. “Okay, I’ll deal with your ass later. But you can’t leave until after church. We got shit to discuss.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Wolfe snarled. “Jesus, what now?” he snapped, when more sirens appeared. As he twisted around, he grunted at the sight of an ambulance speeding up this way.
“I’ll go with her, sweetheart,” Lucie said softly, tugging on his hand.
“No. Need you here for church.”
Lucie tipped her head to the side. “Something important?”
He cupped her chin and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Very important.”
Curiosity sparkled in her eyes, but she shrugged and to Ama, asked, “You want to go with her, baby girl?”
Ama shrugged. “Can do.”
Now that she was on her feet, I curved my arm around her shoulders and hauled her into me. “You did good today, babe.”
She snorted. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No? You didn’t get panicked or anything?”
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