by Naomi West
“But I just got you back,” Halley protested. “I spent so many years—”
“I know,” I said gently. “But Halley, you have to see that this is the only way. For your safety, and for Cole's. God, it would kill me if anything were to happen to the two of you because of the choices that I've made in life.”
After a long moment, Halley nodded and squeezed my hand. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. My parents and I will take Cole away for a little while. We'll go on a sort of vacation. But the minute anything happens, you have to let me know, all right? And I understand what you're saying about not chatting and all, but I need you to check in with me from time to time, okay? Just so that I know that you're still...”
“Okay,” I agreed, even though I knew the smartest thing would be to cut all contact with them, so that Emilio and his goons wouldn't be able to track where she was. But I couldn't leave her with nothing. It was bad enough that I had gotten her into this mess to start with.
Halley stared at me for a long moment and then suddenly switched positions, until she was lying there on the couch with me, her back pressed against my chest. There wasn't really room for both of us there, but I wasn't about to push her away. I was just glad that she was mindful of my injury and left some space there.
“I'll miss you,” she told me, her voice the barest of whispers.
I lightly kissed her hair, unable to say anything more.
Chapter Twenty-One
I was the last person to hobble into our meeting at headquarters, and I was already kind of exhausted when I finally make it there. I never really realized how many flights of stairs the place had or how big it was. Then again, I never knew that just walking somewhere would really take it out of me like this.
“You're looking like shit, boss,” Bryce said as I collapsed into my usual chair next to him. He was grinning teasingly, but I wondered how I must look to all of them. Weak, probably. Pathetic.
My eyes found Max's, and I could see something, some confirmation, there in that little smirk of his. And shit, I just wanted to kill the fucker. To whip out a gun and put a bullet right there between those smug-looking eyes. He wouldn't even see it coming. I wondered if he knew that I knew he was behind Frank's death. I wondered if he realized that his own death would be coming shortly, at my hands.
But if he knew anything, it didn't show on his face, and as stupid as the man was, I bet I would know it the second he realized something was up.
I suddenly realized everyone was staring at me, and it took me a moment to figure out why. “Oh,” I said, clearing my throat a little. “I guess I, uh, call this meeting to order.”
I was embarrassed at that start to my leadership, but I could see a few smiles around the table, mostly from the older guys. They were probably imagining what I must be going through right now, or thinking about what they would have been like as leaders of one of the top motorcycle clubs in the area at my young age. It was only the younger ones who saw it as a sign of my weakness and uncertainty, who saw it as a chink in the armor.
“Look, if this is another meeting about your fiancée and your kid—” Max started, that familiar sneer on his face.
“Actually, this meeting's about you, Max,” I told him, giving him a fierce scowl. And for a moment — just for a moment — I could see a little flicker of hesitation on his face.
But then he was back to his usual, flippant self. “Oh really?” he said. He looked around the table, grinning. “What, you've finally decided to go along with my birthright rather than going along with what Frank said in his delusion? You're going to make me leader of the Devil's Route?”
It was my turn to sneer at him. “Far from it,” I told him. “Instead, I plan to expose you for the lying snake that you are.”
“Oh really?” Max said, but again, I could sense that hesitation, that uncertainty.
I looked around the table, making sure that I made eye contact with everyone who mattered. “I'm sure it goes without saying that we'd all like to find Frank's killer and murder the man,” I said, and I was happy to see a number of nods around the table. “Well, Max may not be the one who pulled the trigger in the end, but you can believe that he played a key part in the man's death. Emilio says Max was the one who ordered the hit.”
A murmur rose up from the table, and I let everyone talk things out for a moment. I didn't want anyone to feel as though I was pressuring them into believing that Max was the culprit here, but with just a little time, I knew they'd be thinking back over all of Max's actions surrounding the raid and those events that had directly preceded it. They would draw the same conclusions that I had always had: that Max would truly stop at nothing to get the position that he really wanted, as leader of the Devil's Route MC.
“Emilio Alvarez tells me that he and Max have a sort of agreement,” I continued. “Where Max finally gets to be leader of the Devil's Route and they work in conjunction with the Holy Flames. The only problem with that plan, as it currently stands, is that I'm still alive. They didn't manage to kill me when they killed Frank, and here I am, a thorn in their sides.” I finally turned to face Max, whose face was white with either fear or anger but I couldn't tell which. Maybe it was a combination of the two.
“You have no proof of any of this,” Max hissed, practically spitting with rage. He looked around the group. “None of you believe this bullshit, do you? This is my father that we're talking about here! What kind of person would I be if I could callously have the man murdered?”
“A power-hungry, failure of a—” Bryce began, but I laid a hand on his arm.
“Look, Max,” I said, shaking my head. “Unlike you, I'm a fair man, and I don't believe in taking a man's life when he hasn't got the chance to look out and defend himself. You must realize that you're a sitting duck here in our headquarters. So, I'm going to ask you to leave. But rest assured, your death is already on its way, and it won't be pretty.”
There was silence in the room. Then, Mike began to clap his hands—and other men joined in, until half the room was applauding what I'd said.
“That's the way to deal with your enemies,” Tom said approvingly. “Give them fair warning and let them do whatever they can to defend themselves.” He gave Max a look. “We don't just have them gunned down by rival clubs.”
“Your own father,” someone else said, and there was a hum of agreement with that.
I was glad we were all on the same page.
I narrowed my eyes at Max as he started to protest. “Get out,” I told him. “Or else I will reconsider my position.”
Max stared at me for a long moment, challenging me with his eyes. But finally, faced with the fact that the majority of the room was on my side, regardless of what little evidence I had, he had no choice but to get up and walk out. I hated the way he kept his chin held high, as though he had any right to call himself a man after what he'd done. But I'd get back at him eventually.
I looked back to the table. “Right now, we have bigger problems to focus on than Max,” I told them all grimly. “As I'm sure you can infer, the Holy Flames are trying their damnedest to take over our motorcycle club.” I wasn't about to tell them the specifics of what Emilio had said to me in the hospital, but I needed to gauge their feelings about all of this, as well as hear if any of them had any sort of solutions that I might not have thought of.
“They've always been trying their damnedest to take over our motorcycle club,” Joe said, snorting a little. “They've just never been much good at it before.”
“Well, they're doing much better lately,” I said grimly. “Of course, Max had a hand in Frank's murder, but that doesn't mean it was solely up to him. As I said, he wasn't the one to pull the trigger.”
“They've been making serious forays into our territory too,” Bryce spoke up. He glanced around. “No one really wanted to tell you this while you were in the hospital because of course we all just wanted for you to heal up. You were pretty shaky there for a while. But they've totally choked off our con
nection with our arms supplier. We have no positive revenue at the moment.”
I groaned and shook my head. “That's worse than I'd thought,” I said. “Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for how we're going to counter them? Because that's the other part of this. A large reason why they're being so successful in encroaching on our territory at the moment is because we're being stupid. That raid? What the hell was that?”
“Hang on, now, I don't think it was a total loss,” one of the younger guys, Danny, one of Max's close friends, protested.
“Oh really?” I snapped, narrowing my eyes at him as I wondered just how close to Max he was, just what lengths he would go to to defend the other man. Didn't he realize that it was time to change alliances, when Max was clearly on the outs? But no. Max hadn't picked any of those men for their brains. They blundered along behind him because they honestly didn't know what else to do.
But I wasn't about to let that comment slide. “You really don't think it was a total loss?” I asked. “The thing was a tactical nightmare. We had all of the top members of our organization all in the same place, at the same time, and on enemy territory, no less. We let them draw us into their complex, and they picked us off one by one. We're lucky not to have suffered greater casualties.”
“Amen,” Bryce muttered under his breath, but it seemed that a lot of people were echoing his sentiment, based on the number of nods I saw around the table.
And funny, to think that I had been the only vocal person voting against the raid before the whole thing had happened. Maybe that was our problem right there: we were too busy listening to the people and less busy listening to the ideas behind them. If we couldn't impassively make decisions on important things like dangerous raids, maybe it would be better to disband the club. We weren't acting like much of a brotherhood if we couldn't manage to keep our brothers safe.
My phone buzzed suddenly and I glanced down at it. My heart skipped a beat when I saw I had a new message from Halley and then dropped as I saw the single word there on the screen: kidnapped.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Max
I tore up in front of the Holy Flames' headquarters and skidded into a parking spot, heedless of my car at the moment. I was fucking livid; I couldn't believe that Emilio had gone behind my back like that and told Jake all about the real cause of Frank's death. We'd had a deal, he and I. And part of that deal meant that you didn't stab the other person in the back, which was effectively what the asshole had done to me.
I would have words for him.
And I would make sure Jake paid as well. I knew Emilio must have threatened Jake using Halley as leverage; there was no other sensible thing for the man to do. So, on my way over to the Holy Flames' headquarters, I had stopped off to pick up Halley. I had thought about taking the kid as well, but it was easier to pass off having an uncooperative woman in my car than having a screaming brat in case something happened and I got pulled over.
Fortunately, nothing happened, despite my speeding.
I stormed into the building, dragging Halley behind me, tugging at the duct tape that I had wrapped around her wrists. I had duct taped her mouth shut as well, so the only way I could really sense her fury was in the way her eyes stayed narrowed towards me. As soon as we reached Emilio's office, I tossed her into a chair, heedless of the way she fell into it.
“You've got some explaining to do,” I snarled at Emilio, who looked mildly up at me from behind his desk, meeting my rage with cool collectedness that only further galvanized me. I snarled and furiously swiped everything off to the side of his desk, planting my palms on the dark mahogany wood so that I was towering over him. “How dare you double-cross me!”
Emilio slowly rose from his desk, a little smile on his face. “Nice to see you too, Max. What, do you need my help again? Are the Devil's Route not listening to you still? You know, maybe if you just joined your club with mine...”
“It's not my club!” I spat. “You promised that you would deliver the Devil's Route into my hands, but you've gone back on that promise. And you've told Jake, apparently, that my father's death was on my orders! If I didn't know better, I'd say that you never meant for Jake to be killed in the first place and you planned this whole thing to get me removed from my own club!”
Emilio silkily raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you suggesting that I'd go back on my word? That's pretty dangerous territory for you to be on, given that you're currently in the headquarters of the Holy Flames. I'm surprised that I would need to remind you of that. After all, your own father died here … you know what sorts of things can happen in these halls.”
I could practically breathe fire, that's how livid I was at the moment. “Don't you threaten me!” I told him. “I wonder what the Holy Flames would think of you if they knew that after making a deal with me — that if I took out my father and his successor that I could take over the Devil's Route MC — you then went ahead and sabotaged any chances I might have at every taking over our club!”
“I told you to take out your father and Jake on your own and that then we would recognize your authority,” Emilio reminded me, a steely look in his eyes for the first time. “I didn't tell you to fling them at me so that I had no choice but to kill them. I didn't want the Holy Flames to be involved in your father's death, or in Jake's, for that matter. We're not here to clean up your messes.”
I scowled at him. “It's hardly my mess, but Jake is your problem. You're never going to take over the Devil's Route MC while he's got power there. You have to know that. He's never going to agree.”
“Every man has his price, Max,” Emilio said, shaking his head. “I begin to see why your father didn't want to put you in charge of his motorcycle club after him.”
“Hey!” I snarled.
“It's true, though,” Emilio said. “You aren't any sort of leader. You believe that everything that you want can be taken purely with brute force. But that's not the way that the world works, Max. That's not the way that these clubs work, especially when you want to escape the notice of the police, or at least to work alongside them. You need to be subtle, and you need to be able to plan ahead. You need to recognize how other men think and work, rather than just eliminating them whenever your anger overcomes you.”
“And what would you have done in my place?” I snapped. “How was I supposed to lure my father out on his own and eliminate him?”
Emilio shrugged. “Jake was your real target there. Your father would have done anything to save that man. And that makes sense. He basically rescued the kid from the streets and brought him into your fold. But Jake is an easy target. You know as well as I do what Jake values.”
My eyes slid over to Halley, and I grinned a little. “Well, yeah. I mean, I threatened his family by bringing her here and—”
“You got my motorcycle club into the middle of all of this again,” Emilio said, his tone unforgiving. “After all of this, you would think you would have learned, Max Cordell. I don't want to do your killing for you. I don't want to play the scary bad guy and ransom this girl. I've already made threats, and Jake knows I'll be good on my word if he doesn't do what I want. There was no need to do something as messy as kidnapping the woman. And now, if we don't release her, the cops will come after us, and the whole club will be in danger. Especially since, thanks to the Devil's Route, lately the cops have been breathing down our necks to clean up our act.”
I watched as he pulled a gun from his pocket, pointing it at my head and cocking it before I even had the chance to react and pull out a weapon of my own. I held up both hands, suddenly nervous for the first time since I'd entered their clubhouse. “Come on, Emilio,” I said. “You don't really want to shoot me.”
“Don't I?” Emilio asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “I didn't want to kill your father, but you left me with no choice. And even if I didn't want to kill you right now ... well, you've left me with no choice. I need to send a clear message to Jake and to the authorities that I don't stand with you. I do
n't agree with this kidnapping. This isn't the way I would run things. And you have crossed the line for the final time.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Halley
The first thing I did when Emilio let me go free was to call Jake.
“Honey? Honey, where are you?” he asked, his voice frantic. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Are you—”
“Jake, relax,” I said, trying to keep my tone soothing. “I'm fine. Everything is fine. Emilio let me go.”
“Emilio?” Jake swore colorfully. “I'm going to fucking kill that bastard! And I'm sure that everything he said about Max was a lie too, wasn't it?” He swore again.
“Jake, wait,” I pleaded with him. “It was Max that kidnapped me. He brought me over to Emilio's and ... look, can you just come meet me? Please?” I couldn't keep from sobbing. It was one thing to know that I was caught up in some sort of motorcycle club stuff, one thing to know that sometimes people died on these “missions” that they had and everything else. But it was another thing to hear the gunshot, to see Max fall to the floor right in front of my very eyes. I couldn't believe I had been stupid enough to get Cole involved in all of this, even if it did mean that we were free from Brian.