A rumble moved around the table as members agreed. Maverick was sure on board—though he worried how Jenny would take the news that already he’d brought danger to her and Kelsey. It hadn’t even been a week since they’d moved in with him.
But Delaney shook his head. “We can’t lock down. Not now. Not yet.”
“What are you talkin’ about, D?” Sitting beside Maverick, Gunner surged forward. His leg was going like a rabbit on meth; Maverick hadn’t seen that kind of nervous energy in his friend since he’d been back. “That bastard is talking about a fucking war. He means to wipe us out. He took out Dyson. We can’t leave our families unprotected.”
“He was gonna kill Wally right in front of us,” Apollo added. “Just snatched him off the street. To send a message. We’re not gonna let that stand, right?”
Just about everybody had something to say then, and Delaney used the gavel to shut them up. “Enough. Talking all at once isn’t gonna get us anywhere. We go in turns. Me first. Think about what a lockdown says. He makes his big threat, and we run home and pull up the drawbridge? That is the wrong fuckin’ answer to his message, and you all know it. We need a show of strength.”
Slick, who normally stayed quiet at the table, like just about every new patch Maverick had ever known, slapped his hands on the wood before him. “Wally’s out there getting patched up. It’s the second time in a few months that some Northside assholes tuned him up. Please tell me we’re gonna do something about it.”
“We are, son,” Dane answered. The VP spoke quietly, and Maverick sensed him trying to settle the table.
But Slick wasn’t finished. He turned on Delaney. “You were gonna let them cap him. Just walk away? Because he doesn’t have a patch? Who the fuck are we, then?”
That quieted the room in a way neither Delaney nor Dane had managed. The president set down the gavel he’d still held, and he leaned in, crossing his arms on the table. “We are Brazen Bulls. We are brothers. Only us, around this table. I will choose any one of my brothers over any other man, and I won’t blink before I do. Wally hasn’t earned his patch yet. He is not my brother until he does. So I would have walked away. To save one of our own, we all would have.”
His eyes narrowed. “And if you wouldn’t, Slick, then that shiny new Bull on your back isn’t your fit.”
Slick sat back, his righteous anger deflating while they watched. “We came in together. He’s as loyal to the club as I am. I don’t know why I’m sitting here and he’s not.”
“Because your sponsor put your name up, kid,” Rad replied. “Wally’s didn’t. Simple as that.”
Everybody turned to Ox, Wally’s sponsor. The big man shrugged. “He’s loyal, yeah. Good kid. Hard worker. Tough. No initiative, though. He needs to step up more. He’s not ready.”
“He’s bled for this club. He’s bleeding for this club right now,” Slick insisted.
Ox shook his head. “A patch isn’t a consolation prize, brother. When he’s ready, I’ll put his name up.”
“Not everybody at the table has to be a leader. Loyal and hardworking might be enough. Especially now. We’re gonna need the bodies if we’re about to start a war.” Dane stubbed out his cigarette and looked down the table at Ox. “Just something to think about.”
Ox nodded once, acknowledging Dane’s observation but not agreeing.
“We won’t start it,” Delaney corrected. “Howard already has. But we’ll damn well finish it. There anything more to be said on the question of a lockdown?”
Yes, there was much more to be said. Maverick pulled a fresh beer from the tub in the center of the table. It was going to be a long meeting.
~oOo~
Three hours later, Maverick pulled onto his driveway and parked next to the Cherokee. He sat there for a minute, astride his bike, and studied the front of the house. The windows glowed warmly as the lights inside beamed through the sheer curtains into the night. That was one of the best sights—his house, lit up in the night though he hadn’t been home, because his family was. He imagined Jenny in there, putting Kelsey to bed, sitting in bed with her and reading her a story while she hugged the night’s choice for slumber party guest.
Just like the dream he’d held close most of his life. His family. At home.
He was frazzled and half-drunk and scared. The word ‘war’ had been thrown around like a goddamn ball all night. They’d spent half an hour arguing about whether to lock the clubhouse down, ultimately voting not to. Delaney’s insistence that it was too soon and too weak had eventually persuaded most of the table.
Maverick had voted for the lockdown, wanting to do whatever they could to keep their people safe. But at the same time, he’d been afraid that it would go through. They hadn’t had a lockdown while he’d been with Jenny before, and she’d been uncomfortable enough with the club. Now, she was finding her place in it, but what would she do if he told her that his world had become so unsafe she and Kelsey had to be locked away? Could he lose them again?
No. She’d made her choice. She knew enough about the Bulls, and about him, to know what being with him meant. They were together, and he wouldn’t lose them again. End of story.
Something landed on his leg, and he jumped as several little points of light pain sank into his calf. He looked down and saw two gleaming eyes looking up at him. While he tried to decide what kind of critter was claiming him, it mewed. A kitten.
“Hey, shorty. You alone out here?” He picked it up and brought it to his chest. Just a tiny thing, more fur than animal. It made its little squeaking mewl again and began to purr, its chest rumbling against Maverick’s gloved hand, and its front paws paddling back and forth. “You got a mom out here? Kitty, kitty? Here, kitty?”
He called a few times and made kissing sounds, trying to draw a mother cat into the open. The kitten did its part, too, crying. He dismounted and rooted around the yard, but found nothing. Just this tiny puff in his hands, purring and mewing and shivering.
He’d wanted to get Kelsey a puppy or a kitten. He’d been thinking Christmas, but maybe Fate had a better idea. “You need a home, shorty? I just happen to have one right here. Brand spankin’ new.”
The turmoil of the night forgotten for now, Maverick carried the kitten up to the porch—in the light, he could see that it was grey stripes with white feet—and into the house.
Jenny sat in the living room, watching television. She muted it with the remote and stood as he worked his way out of his gloves, kutte, and jacket while holding the kitten. It mewed, opening its mouth wide for that tiny sound, and Jenny stopped in her path toward him.
“What d’you got there?”
Maverick grinned, hoping it was charming. “Found it outside. Climbed right up my leg. I don’t think there’s a mom around. I looked all over. It’s too cold to leave him out there.”
He held his breath for her reaction and released it in a puff when she smiled. “Definitely too cold. Probably too cold for fleas, too, and that’s a good thing.” She took the kitten from him and turned it over. “Girl.” Scratching at its little grey belly, she seemed to be examining it. “She’s skinny. But looks like no fleas.” Her beautiful eyes came up, and she smiled. “Kelsey’s still awake. She’s been telling herself her books. She won’t sleep for a long time if you bring that to her now.”
“Should I not?”
“Go ahead. I’ll keep her home tomorrow if she doesn’t get enough sleep. Seems like this is a day to make our family bigger.”
That seemed an odd thing to say. As the kitten escaped her grip and climbed up her shoulder, Maverick picked it up again. “What’s that mean?”
Jenny’s smile was wide and happy, and as her mouth began to form the words, he knew what she would say. “I’m pregnant.”
“Holy shit!” he shouted, startling the kitten, who promptly sank all her claws into his chest. He could not have cared less. He grabbed Jenny and crushed her close, slamming his mouth over hers. The kiss was wild, frenzied, and brief. When he broke a
way, he said, “Marry me, Jenny. Marry me now.”
She laughed. “Right now? Not sure we can put it all together at ten o’clock at night if you want it to be legal.”
“As soon as we can, then.” When she nodded, he kissed her again. “Thank you, babe.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Just love me.”
“That’s easy,” he said and kissed her again. The kitten crawled onto the back of his neck.
~oOo~
Late that night, as Jenny slept at his side, and Miss Shorty—so christened by their ecstatic little girl after hearing him call her ‘shorty’—slept on his pillow, purring loudly, Maverick lay and stared up at the ceiling. His brain was too busy for rest.
He wasn’t upset. The bliss of his evening at home with his family, of Kelsey staying up long past her bedtime to play with her new baby and finally simply falling over on the sofa, unconscious, and of Jenny, pregnant and, as far as he was concerned, already glowing—that bliss had eased his worry away. So he wasn’t upset.
But he was aware. Alert. Needing to process everything about the day, and about so much more. He had everything to lose. But he wouldn’t lose it. He would keep them safe and healthy and happy, and he would do it smart this time. Delaney had been fucking brilliant in that warehouse, and Maverick trusted him again one-hundred percent. If he said Irina Volkov would have their backs, then Maverick would believe it.
He still believed that Volkov owed him. Big. But what he felt for her was no longer a grudge. Just a debt he would expect to be repaid. A substantial debt. He had killed for her and paid dearly for it, and he had not been compensated. It was a favor in the Bulls’ bank. Delaney believed her to be honorable. If she was, then Maverick could trust her to feel that obligation. That would keep the Bulls and their family protected.
Maybe, then, what had happened inside, had been...not worth it, never that, but at least something good might balance out its bad.
He hadn’t really considered that people outside would know everything that had happened. As far as he was aware, until tonight, his brothers had had no idea, and he had absolutely intended to keep it that way. If they’d understood what Howard had meant, none of them had said so, or even looked at Maverick askance. But none of his brothers was an idiot. They’d heard, and they knew. Maybe it would come up in some way, someday. If so, he’d deal with it then.
Howard had gotten it wrong. Never had he been Carver’s bitch or anyone else’s. He’d been ambushed, and he’d been badly hurt, but that was different.
And he had made Carver pay.
July 1996
The hit had gone down smoothly. A shiv had been delivered to him, he’d found Jennings in the showers and slammed it repeatedly into the man’s neck while Jenning’s eyes were covered in shampoo suds, and he’d dropped it in the mop bucket, which was full of bleach, as instructed. He’d done the hit naked himself, so he’d rinsed off, dried off, and gone back to his dreary routine.
One, two, three, done.
A week later, the guards had turned everybody’s cell over, looking for evidence. They’d found the shiv in his bunk. He’d been fucking framed for a murder he’d actually committed.
He hadn’t reacted, and he hadn’t fought, but the guards had been brutal anyway, getting him into the hole.
Now he sat here, with probably a few busted ribs and a concussion, at least. Four walls hemmed him in on all sides, and he was alone except for his thoughts—and those thoughts were black as pitch. Once upon a time, he’d been slated to do a few months in county jail. Instead he’d gotten three years in the pen, and the guards here had seen immediately to it that he wouldn’t get parole. Now, with mere weeks left of his full sentence, he sat in solitary, waiting to be tried for murder.
He was going to die inside.
~oOo~
He’d lost track of how many days he’d been down here, but the lights were out, so it was probably night when the door slammed open and light from the corridor blinded him for a second. He could only make out shapes, but he could hear, and smell, that men had entered his small cell. Men, in the plural, slamming into his cell in the dark.
Maverick jumped to his feet, just as the cell door clanged shut and near-total darkness took over again.
But he was used to the dark, and his eyesight, faulty thought it was, improved once the blinding light from beyond his cell had been doused.
Five men. There were five men in here with him, in his tiny cell. He could make out their shapes, could see them arc around him, wedging him into the corner.
He didn’t need to spend a single thought to know who it was: Dyson. He’d figured already that it must have been them who’d planted the shiv. A murder sentence wasn’t enough retaliation for Jennings’ death, apparently.
They’d cornered him, but he’d fought in the ring for years, on the streets for longer than that, and in here, fighting the most brutal battles of his life, since the second week of his sentence. He knew how to use his environment. He could use the walls, and the dark, and the simple mass of them all, against them.
“This is for Linc,” said one near the door. He knew that voice. Clem Carver. Head of the Dysons at McAlester.
Carver stood near the door, but the others came at him all at once.
He grabbed the first body he could and jumped, putting his bare feet on the wall and climbing up, jumping over, holding on, trying to wrench the head he’d gotten hold of. His still-broken ribs screamed in his chest, but he was fighting for his life, and he let the scream out through his mouth. He never yelled, not in fighting, not in life, but he yelled now. He roared.
The body in his arms dropped as he took a heavy punch to his face and the darkness lit up with stars. Ducking low, he slammed blindly forward, taking another body in the fleshy middle, and he reached out, ignoring the blows and kicks raining all over him, and wrapped his arms around two legs. He heaved and arched back, feeling his ribs separate, the fragile healing they’d started breaking free. The body in his hands came up, and he heard a satisfying crack as some part of it—the head, he hoped—hit the metal edge of his bolted-on bunk. Two down. Two to go. And then Carver to deal with.
He could taste blood coming up with his breath, and his head clanged and whirled, but he wasn’t going down. He fucking was not.
“Enough. I’m bored. Time to make some memories.”
Maverick heard the words but had barely made sense of them before fiery pain sliced across his gut and folded him forward, and he felt a wash of hot liquid spread over his belly and down his leg. And then another blaze of pain in his side. He’d been shanked. Twice.
Fuck it. He was not going down. He roared again and turned in the direction the shiv had come from, but one of the men he’d put down got up again, right under him, and sent him headlong to the floor. His chest crashed into his bunk, and he couldn’t breathe.
“Get him down. Let’s go.”
He tried to fight without air, but there were too many hands, too many fists, too many arms. He was yanked up as he finally managed to drag white-hot agony into his lungs, and they slammed him onto his bunk.
Face down.
Knowing what was next, Maverick was already trying to shout again when he felt hands at his prison-issue pants, tearing and yanking. NO! His desperate lungs held onto the little bit of air he’d given them, and his shouts, his screams, were silent.
NO! NO!
They held his arms, pulled his legs apart, pressed down on his back. And then there was a heavy body on him, skin to skin.
Carver’s voice was soft at his ear, almost sensual, and that—his quiet ease, his enjoyment—made everything all the more horrible. “This is what you get when you fuck with Dyson, son. We fuck you right back. You’re gonna remember that for next time.”
~oOo~
Maverick woke with a breathing tube down his throat and knew immediately that he wasn’t in the penitentiary. The room was too big and bright, too cheery. He was shackled to a bed, but there was a window at hi
s side, without wire or bars, showing bright sun and blue sky.
He was in the local hospital. They’d fucked him up bad, then. Bad enough that the infirmary couldn’t help him. He’d almost died.
That would have been a better result. An end to this miserable existence.
But he was alive, and they’d send him back the second he was strong enough not to die of his injuries. He’d go back in, and every single day, probably for the rest of his life, he would face the men who’d done this to him.
Four of the men who’d attacked him were nothing but dark forms, faceless, anonymous. He’d have to take down all of Dyson to be sure to get them, and that was impossible. Even if he strengthened his relationship with Groddo and his band of idiots, they wouldn’t take on a war like that. Evans and the other guards would tear them all to pieces.
But he’d known Clement Carver. That voice in the dark, in his ear. Carver was the one who’d really hurt him. He was their leader, but he was not invincible.
Carver had told him he would remember. And he did. He remembered every fucking second.
He would never forget.
He would make him pay for all of it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They were married in the clubhouse, a week before Thanksgiving.
Not long ago, Jenny would have sworn up and down and all over that she’d never even step foot in the Bulls’ clubhouse again, much less hold her wedding ceremony in the party room, next to the bar and the pool table and in full sight of the obscene pinball machine.
After the night that she’d told him she was pregnant and they’d decided to hurry the wedding up, they’d spent about a day talking about the wheres and hows. Maverick had suggested they just go to the courthouse, but he’d visibly flinched when he’d said the word, and Jenny didn’t want their marriage associated with his other experiences in that place—she had her own bad memories of the last time she’d been in the courthouse.
So then where? It was November, and the blush of warmth they’d had when they’d moved had faded. The weather was grey and cold, so they couldn’t exactly go to a park or something like that. A church was out of the question. When he’d suggested a banquet hall, some generic, tacky box of a place, Jenny had seen the obvious: there was only one place they could get married.
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