Chapter 11
REID (RATCHET)
“Why?” Patrick asked.
“What do you mean, why?” She huffed and stood up.
“Sit down.” I pointed.
She glared at me but slowly lowered herself back into the chair.
“He killed my mother,” she screeched. The pain in her voice hit me in the chest. “He sent those guys to my house to rape and murder my mother.”
“How did you know?” I asked. It wasn’t clear who all was at Mackenzie’s house that night, except for the guys left to wait for her.
“Because I heard them say so.” Her eyes teared up.
“She screamed his name to stop until she could no longer scream anymore.” She wiped at her tears but held it together.
The rage was so raw but controlled. That took practice.
I admired the hell out of her. Part of me wanted to hold her and make all the bad stuff go away.
Part of me wanted to grab her and throw her in the trunk of a car and drive her as far away from here as possible.
“Why now?” Patrick leaned forward. “What will it accomplish? You try to kill Sonny and most likely get yourself killed in the process.”
“I don’t care about myself.”
“Well, you should.” Patrick got up and paced the floor.
Kenzie narrowed her eyes and shook her head.
Patrick fidgeted and rubbed his chest.
He wasn’t oblivious to the situation. There were a thousand and one reasons to take Sonny down.
Nothing more justified than a daughter avenging her mother’s death.
Or maybe he asked because he needed a better reason.
A more personal reason. Yeah, we were brothers, but on paper, the golden boy Patrick had a charmed life.
A devoted father, who sat next to his wife’s deathbed for months as she battled cancer.
He never wanted for anything in his life.
Lived in a nice house. Sonny attended the grief counseling and the parent-teacher conferences, and although he tried to make his son kill a homeless man who disrespected the club—again, not a family member.
It wasn’t personal for Patrick. Not like it was for Mackenzie or for me.
Righting the club’s wrongs was a noble endeavor, but revenge made it easier to live with after the fact.
Maybe sharing in his sister’s rage was what he needed to pull the trigger.
“What’s the deal here?” Kenzie stood in front of him. “Isn’t that what you were planning to do?”
“This isn’t just about some revenge scheme against Sonny.” Patrick stood in the middle of the room. His mind was racing. “It’s bigger than that.”
“Then what is it about?” she asked.
Patrick crossed his arms over his chest. She stood and mimicked his stance. They stared each other down. He stood about a foot taller than her, but I could see it. They shared features. Same nose, same jawline.
“Guys,” I yelled.
They both turned their heads toward me. Even with the dark contacts, they had the same shaped eyes. Not sure how I didn’t notice the moment I laid eyes on her in that diner.
“No, you asked me my reasons. What are yours?” She nudged him with her shoulder and then sat down.
He dropped his hands and sat in the chair next to her.
“We’ve put in work for years to make sure what happened to your mother doesn’t happen to anyone else.” He rubbed the arm of the chair. “But just killing Sonny won’t accomplish that, and we don’t need you interfering.”
“But I can help.” She leaned forward.
Patrick looked over at her. His sister.
No one had seen his older brother Marty since his mother died.
Besides Dana, he had no other family left.
Family by blood anyway. We were brothers, but we grew up very different.
I recalled the same conversation when my father died.
Him talking me off the ledge of burning Sonny and everything he touched to the ground.
We didn’t talk for six months because I thought Patrick had taken his father’s side.
His idea of fucking with the Infinity Kings from the inside out brought us back together.
He sat with his head in his hands. His body tense, his shoulders up by his ears. His internal dialogue warring with itself. Patrick was impulsive, but he’s had it stifled by my counsel and his father’s secret contempt. He stood and stared down at Mackenzie.
“Get her out of here.” He nodded as if it was final. He headed toward the door.
“What the hell?” She stood up. “You can’t just send me away.”
“I just did.” He shuffled back toward her, pointing a finger in her face. She slapped his hand away. It was my turn to stand between them. “If you can’t make her leave, then lock her up somewhere until this is over.
“Patrick.” I shook my head.
“I mean it.” He headed toward the door. “Keep her out of it.” He paused at the door but didn’t turn back. He walked out and slammed the door shut behind him.
We both stared at the door, expecting him to return.
“What the hell was that?” She turned toward me.
“I don’t know.” I rubbed my face. “But he’s right. I need to get you out of—”
Muffled sounds came from down the stairs.
“Shit.” I grabbed Mackenzie around the waist, lifted her, and ducked into the closet she’d popped out of.
“What are you doing?” She struggled against me and pushed away, heading for the closet door.
I pushed her up against it. “What the fu—” I slapped a hand over her mouth.
She elbowed me in the side of the head. I grabbed the back of her neck, and she scratched at my arm and lifted her foot, no doubt to kick me in the shin or worse.
She stopped struggling when she heard Sonny’s voice.
“You had something to say to me, Stacks?” His voice was low.
“Yeah, uhm, I just hope with this information, you’ll see my loyalty.
” Stacks sniffled. “I joined the Infinity Kings because of you, Sonny. You’ve always been like a father to me.
I only went along with Patrick because I thought he made some sense about the future of the club, but I didn’t realize you weren’t on board until it was almost too late. ”
“I understand,” Sonny said. “And Patrick brought you in. You have loyalty to him, too. I get it. I don’t think this is about Patrick. It’s Reid calling the shots. Always has been.”
“That’s right.” Stacks’s voice came out in a high-pitched screech. “It’s Reid. He’s been doing all the talking in these meetings.”
“Who else was in these meetings?” another voice I didn’t recognize piped up.
“Uhm.”
“Listen, I just want to protect them.” Sonny sounded almost jovial. “They were just confused like you were, and we need to talk to them and make sure they understand the truth.”
“Yeah, you know, we all look up to Patrick, but lately he’s changed.” Stacks sniffled against. The guy had had a cold since junior high.
“Here, write down the names of who we need to talk to and then go and enjoy the rest of the party.” The room went silent for a while. “Where’s Patrick and Reid?”
“Patrick is out front, but I haven’t seen Reid in a minute,” Daniels answered. His gruff Irish accent was hard to miss.
“I want a man on each of them for the rest of the night.” A phone rang. “What?”
Another stint of silence.
Kenzie pulled my hand away from her mouth.
I placed a finger in front of my mouth to signal for her to be quiet. She nodded and leaned into me. My body reacted the same way it did the last time she rubbed her ass up against me.
“Something’s wrong at Albert’s. They can’t find his family.” Sonny snarled.
“It is Halloween. Maybe they’re out trick-or-treating or something.” Danial’s voice faded away.
“I thought we had someone on the house,” Sonny asked.
“We did.” Daniels came close to the closet. “It was Brice and Maddox.”
“Fucking Brice. Get him back here as well. I want all of them in this room by midnight. Eddie, Marco, I want you two in this room manning the phones all night, and once they get here, you keep them here.”
A door slammed, and a television went on.
I pulled my phone out of my back pocket.
Reid: Plan B - stay away from the clubhouse.
I sent a text off to our group message. She waited while those three dots appeared and disappeared. He wasn’t supposed to text me back.
“Don’t you need to warn him?” she whispered.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the door.
“I already did.” I took the battery and SIM card out of the burner phone and broke it in half. I shoved the pieces into the pocket of a jacket hanging in the closet.
I pulled Mackenzie behind the stack of chairs and grabbed one down and quietly jammed it against the closet door. At least we’d have some warning if they tried to come in. Eddie and Marco weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, so I didn’t expect them to cover their bases.
I sat down on another chair and slid one next to me for her to sit on.
“We can’t just sit here,” she whispered.
I pulled her down and sat her on my lap. “Let go of me.”
“You don’t enjoy being in my arms anymore?” I pouted. “That’s a shame.”
“This isn’t a game,” she said in a whisper.
“I don’t agree.” I rubbed my face. “We’re all playing a game. If you weren’t playing a game, you would have told me when you recognized me. If this weren’t a game, you’d be in Florida by now.”
“You recognized me first.” She settled back against me. “You fucked me knowing who I was.”
“True.” I ran my hands down her leather-clad thighs. “But that wasn’t part of the game. That was strictly for selfish reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“I figured if I fucked you, I’d get you out of my system instead of following you to the ends of the earth.”
Her eyes blinked.
“Why would you follow me?” She looked away.
“Trouble seems to find you.” I shrugged and squeezed her waist. “I wanted to protect you.” Her ass rubbed against my cock. “Turns out you seek out the trouble. Or maybe you yourself are trouble.”
“I’m not trouble.” She shrugged. “Can’t wait for the universe to make things right. Sometimes you must take matters into your own hands.”
“What would things set right look like in your head?”
“Sonny assaulted with a hot lead pipe in every orifice and then slowly dying in a pool of his own blood.”
I missed her light eyes, but they sparkled the same as she talked about Sonny’s death.
“You’ve thought about this.”
“Since I was fourteen.” She settled back against me. “I also wondered if I would ever see you two again. You dropped out of the sky and protected me.”
She rubbed the tattoo over the scar on my forearm. “You took a bullet that was meant for me, and I never got to thank you.”
“Consider me thanked thoroughly.” I smirked.
That got a smile out of her. She had the prettiest smile. She didn’t smile nearly enough.
“Sonny’s death would set it right?”
She shrugged again.
“What else?” I nudged her.
“Destroying the Infinity Kings, one member at a time.”
“Pretty fucked up that the same gang that hurt your mother also saved your life.” I untied the mask and let it drop to the ground. She rubbed her eyes.
“Take those contacts out.”
She removed them and flicked them across the room.
“There are those pretty eyes.” I kissed the side of her neck. She shifted and rubbed against my cock. It grew hard.
“You’re turned on.” She continued to rock against me. “Now.” She pointed to the door.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got some time.” I rubbed the inside of her thigh. “Patrick won’t be back until it’s done.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?” She turned toward me, her lips lingering near mine. “Then what happens?”
“We die.” I nipped at her lips. She nipped back.
“You’re crazy.” Her tongue snaked out and licked my bottom lip. She drew it between her teeth and gnawed on it like a puppy. Fucking sexy move.
I need more. I plunged my tongue between her lips and devoured her.
She stood and straddled me.
I slid the zipper of her catsuit down, exposing her beautiful brown skin. She wore nothing under the suit. Her skin glistened in the dim light from a bulb over our heads. I leaned her back and captured her left nipple in my mouth and sucked. She grunted and slapped a hand over her mouth.
I brought her back up and silenced her with my mouth.
She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and stood to remove the suit completely.
I eyed the door. A muffled conversation floated under the door, but no sign that they knew we were here.
The whole clubhouse was wired with hidden cameras, but only Patrick and Jordan, our tech guy, knew.
I could pull it up on my phone, but my actual phone was sitting in the compartment under the seat on my bike.
No cameras in here, but they would soon catch on that we hadn’t left.
She slid back onto my lap and made quick work of my zipper and pulled me out.
“Fuck.” Her fingers felt good wrapped around me. I guided her on my cock. She was so wet and tight, and from this angle, staring into those eyes, I was at her mercy. I vowed to be her avenger and her protector, but I wasn’t going to let her go.
Not again.
She was mine.