Death’s Deal (Broken Bows, Hade’s Army MC #1)

Chapter 35

H er voice still batters my mind, beating around in my head like a billiard ball missing all of the pockets. Damaging, dangerous, and plagued. I agreed to what the government wanted. I had given in. Even though I’d made that call, the one that would help J, it still left us in the lurch. Not to mention, they have the book.

The Queen’s fucking book!

Piper’s legend is tucked inside it, along with the phone number for my guardian angel and the contestable truth about my parentage.

Fuck. I’m going to hell for this. He better know I’ll gladly drag Johnson along with me as I fall down into the pit.

Walking in a stupor, drunk on my own self-hatred, I take a seat at the bar. Elbows on the worn wooden top, I lay my head in my hands.

Storming through the front door, his wild hair untied and unkempt from a ride, Tlaloc strides through the space with an anger I’ve never seen from him. “You did it! You all fucking did it.”

“We don’t need this shit right now, kid—” Busta starts before Poc interjects.

“Don’t fucking start with me. You sold her out, just as bad as my own brother did, all for your lives to continue as lawless as it ever was. Fucking pussies.”

Grasping the chair I was going to sit in, it flies across the space, crashing into the dancers’ stage. The violent outburst causes a silence to rest over the crew. Booming into the vacant space of the empty club. “Tlaloc! You do not get a vote yet in the club and they decided it. As family, your vote and mine were just that. Ours. We may not like this, want this, or wish it to go this way, but we had no other options. Unless you have a way to house over a hundred people and their families in your trailer.”

Grabbing a second chair, I sit down still on edge and spoiling for someone to fight me. Someone other than my baby brother.

As he cools his own temper, if slightly. “Death, this is not the way it should go down. There had to be another option.”

“Kid, you gotta know none of us wanted this to happen,” Busta interjects as I try to calm my already frayed nerves. “The last thing anyone wanted was for her to be handed to our enemy. It’s a shit deal, no matter how we did it, but it had to be done.”

Taking a seat on the right of me, grasping two highballs from below the bar, gripping the neck of a whiskey bottle, Busta pours us both a glass full to overflowing. The amber liquid pools on the bar where it spilled over. “You’re a shit brother, Death, and I’m going to hell forever. Obi would shoot me in the balls for this if she were alive,” he says while upending his glassful.

Staring at the glass, knowing I don’t deserve to be celebrating or wallowing, I agree with him, “I know.”

The only thing I deserve is her hatred.

Pouring himself a second and not saying anything further, the others appear beside us at the bar.

Each reflects the same expression I possess.

Each is dangerously close to finding a bullet for our mouths, mainly to save ourselves the pain of what J will do to us.

Joker, then Miss, each pull up a seat, palming a glass of their own. Pouring their drinks in silence, each drinks to erase the pain.

We all know the truth. We’re all fucked. It was wrong and it is nothing we can fix.

Taking a deep breath, I push the whiskey away. “I’m the asshole who just gave my sister to the enemy.”

“You had no choice.” Sliding up behind me, placing her hand around my waist, Toni turns my chair until she can take a seat with me. “They didn’t give you a chance to make any other deals.” Reaching for the highball of whiskey, Toni drags it across the bar top. When it sloshes across her fingers, licking the wet digits, she upends her glass until only dribbles are left. Giving it a tap on the bar, Miss graciously refills it for her.

She places it before me. “It was a fight you couldn’t win. Jazmine is strong. She’ll give him hell and make him pay for all he’s done. There’s no question, she’ll survive.”

As the room echoes Toni’s comment, that I know is true, it doesn’t leave me with a sigh of relief. Yes, she is strong. Far stronger than any of us. “She will give him hell. I just don’t want us to be who she comes after next.” Fuck me if she won’t make me pay for it with my life. Even with the help I’ve arranged, I know it won’t save me from her wrath.

As we all wallow in self-doubt, pity, and anger, the day drags into the afternoon. Tlaloc and I had a moment to talk calmly in my office and as I explained to him about the Queen’s book, without imparting the information about my supposed parentage, he leaves a short while after, less annoyed with those who chose this and more ireful at the government goons and Murianos, who put us in this position.

None of us leave the club until nearly midnight. We have no ambition to ride, to sleep, or even eat. We drank ourselves until our self-loathing turned into a pitiful excuse to be saddened that no matter how strong and willful we thought we were, in the truest sense of a fight for our lives, we gave in.

We all know what we’ve done.

And we hate ourselves.

To be continued in Loyalty or Royalty .