7. SIN
Scrubbing the back of my neck with a handkerchief where sweat had gathered, I stayed as still as I otherwise could in the tree where I was sitting.
It wasn’t the most ridiculous position I’d ever been in for the club, but this was on my own time and dime.
I had a purpose.
I wanted to go home, and the fucker in the house opposite me was my means to an end.
Nyx had two weaknesses.
Giulia was one of them, and the other?
The bastard in front of me, who didn’t deserve to live.
I’d been here for three hours, just waiting on him to make a move. With none of the connections I was used to hitting up in NJ, I was having to track this bastard in a truly old-school way.
It was a pain in the ass, but it’d be worth it to get back to West Orange.
I deserved to be here. I’d left my post, had left Giulia in danger, and the only reason I wasn’t fertilizing the compound grounds was because I had proof.
Proof that my woman had been messed with.
Of course, said woman didn’t know she was mine because I didn’t have time to claim her officially before I rode the fuck out of Jersey with Nyx baying for my blood.
The thought had my jaw popping to the side, and I carefully eased the cramp in my foot as I stretched it out.
The dick was supposed to have left an hour ago, but he was still here.
I’d cloned his phone, so I knew his plans had him heading out tonight, but he hadn’t specified a time.
If he left it any longer, he’d be leaving tomorrow instead of tonight, which would ease into my new duties at the clubhouse.
Hissing at the inconvenience, I watched as, slowly, the dick got himself ready to leave.
When he finally pissed off a half hour later, the cramp in my foot had turned it numb.
As he roared off into the distance, unaware that I was tracing him, I hopped down from the branch that had become my bench and winced when I almost dropped to the ground.
Ignoring the pins and needles which instantly bombarded my extremities, I hustled into the shadows and walked to the front door.
Kneeling, I picked the lock, crawled into the house, and closed it up behind me the second I could.
I wasn’t here just for shits and giggles.
I’d been watching him go into that damn safe every night for the past three weeks I’d been tracking him, and last night, I’d finally seen his combination.
I knew what was in there, but I needed the proof. Needed something to give to Nyx to make him forgive me.
Ohio might be great for the chapter of the Sinners who lived here, but it wasn’t my place.
I was an East Coaster, born and bred, and being in the middle of the country was only making me antsy.
I needed to go home, and I didn’t want to lose a fucking limb in the process.
With a grunt, I unlocked the safe and trained my flashlight on my phone into the dark cavern of the strong box.
Shuffling through the different files, I came across the material I’d been seeking.
Once I had it confirmed, I switched off the flashlight, not needing to see another fucking picture, and connected the call to Rex—the first time I’d spoken with him in weeks, because I was well aware I needed to earn my place back home.
He’d already gone above and beyond for me by not kicking my ass out of the MC, telling Nyx he’d sent me to Oklahoma and not Ohio to save me from his wrath. Last thing I wanted was to waste his time too.
“You already know the answer if you’re asking if you can come home,” was his greeting. “Nyx ain’t nowhere close to forgiving you.”
Pulling a face at that, I told him, “He will be. I found him a toy.”
Silence echoed in my ear, then he muttered, “Might not be enough, bro.”
“I know, but I had to try, didn’t I?” I rubbed my chin, hating how fucking good it felt to be talking to him.
Shit, I missed my family.
This fucking exile sucked.
It was, I also realized, a testament to my feelings for Tiff that I’d go through this shit for her.
My voice turned gruff as I muttered, “I’ll send you his name and details so Mav can confirm the kill order is just, and fair warning, if Nyx doesn’t take out the trash, I will.”
“That bad?”
I could almost imagine my Prez’s brows rising at my statement.
He knew I didn’t get my hands dirty unless someone deserved it.
“That bad,” I confirmed. It was sickening, but I was insensate to the images I’d just seen.
The first time I’d ever come across that shit, back when I was younger, I’d actually puked, and it was the only time the brothers wouldn’t rip me a new one for being a pussy.
Our business was more than just the usual.
We dealt in blood, we dealt in protection, and no one would ever thank us for it, because no one knew we were behind the eradication of these sick fucks.
But, numbed as I was, my stomach still snarled uneasily with what I’d seen in the fucker’s folders.
I’d make him pay for every single picture, and if Nyx got involved, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to reap vengeance on the fucker’s soul.
“I’ll tell him. Wait to move on his word.”
“I will.”
He disconnected the call without another word, and I replaced everything in the safe as I’d found it.
With all the fucker’s documents restored to its original neatness, I locked it up, then retreated to the outside once the door was closed too.
I left the place like the specter I was and headed for my bike.
I’d seen the message waiting on me, and while I wanted to reply, I knew that would be beyond stupid.
I needed to get out of here, away from David Faudreaux’s house and subdivision.
The second someone saw me, I’d be implicating myself in the investigation when he was eliminated.
For that reason, I retrieved the kickstand and put the bike into neutral before rolling my hog down the road.
It took me a while, and each goddamn step felt like it took twice as long.
By the time I was at the unsecured entrance to the housing estate, where the noise from the highway shielded the kickstart of my ignition, I rolled away and back to the Sinners’ compound.
Ohio wasn’t for me. Sure, it was great and all that, but it just wasn’t my place. My home was in the Northeast.
Everything was just that little bit different.
The smell, the way the people were.
They were actually nicer, but I wasn’t used to it, and I missed home.
I missed her.
I didn’t think I’d be that pussy who’d get sentimental about his girl, but I kind of felt like a soldier who was on a deployment.
I’d been there back in the day, and I could honestly say that I missed Tiffany more than I’d ever missed my bitch of an ex.
The only consolation was that here, sand wasn’t getting in every crease of my body—how the fuck it got in my asscrack with all the gear I’d had to wear back then, I’d never know—I wasn’t being shot at, and I didn’t have to kill anyone.
Not technically, at any rate.
Shit was starting to go down with the Famiglia, that much I knew, even if the council in Ohio kept things to themselves.
I’d lost any ranking I’d earned with my exile here, but while even the average brother was kept out of the loop, we’d all learned that the Hell’s Rebels down in Texas had declared unofficial war on them, as had the Five Points, and since we were tied to them, that meant we technically were as well.
The Italians were sleazy fucks, trading in flesh and bone, selling women like they were property, and now the Russians were at war with them too, nowhere was going to be safe for very long.
The prospect of Tiffany being in danger didn’t sit well with me, but there was fuck all I could do about it.
Fuck. All.
That killed me, but it made me haul my ass.
I could have drowned myself in easy pussy the second I made it down here.
Nyx held long grudges.
He was the meanest motherfucker I’d ever met in my life, capable of things that would make a Spanish Inquisitor look soft-core. I’d known, the second I heard that Giulia had been attacked, my life was on the line.
I felt like a pussy for leaving with my tail between my legs, but the truth was, I knew my brothers.
And I got it.
If I’d set a guard on Tiffany and they left their post when she was attacked? I’d want blood too.
But instead of feeling hopeless, instead of accepting my fate, I was working toward getting my ass back home.
It was either that or bring Tiffany down here.
And I really couldn’t see her in Ohio.
New Jersey was a come-down for her, even though she never said anything.
I mean, I could just tell she didn’t like West Orange, and though it was my home, I got it.
I’d been born and bred in Manhattan, Five Points’ territory, so I knew what the sparkle of the city that never slept felt like.
But it was no home.
Not for me anyway.
Still, Tiff and Podunk, Ohio—nope.
It was an option, but it was one I’d prefer not to take.
I had a gut feeling she was pregnant.
Why?
Because life sucked sometimes, and kids always had a habit of popping up when the timing was never ideal.
You picked that up really fast when you lived in an MC for as long as I had.
And what could be worse than my being in another fucking part of the States, forced to stay here at risk of Nyx giving me a Colombian necktie, while a half dozen of the nation’s criminal underworld were at war?
What a perfect time to bring a new life into the world, huh?
Of course, that was just my gut talking, and my gut had been known to be wrong.
But the pill and then the drugs?
She’d puked all over herself, several times until there was nothing left in her, and she ate like a bird anyway.
If that morning after pill stuck, then it was a miracle.
As I rode past a cornfield—I’d never seen so much fucking corn in my fucking life—I pulled into the clubhouse.
A party was raging, and I’d skipped it to go monitor Faudreaux. To be honest, I wasn’t in the mood.
Back home, I was the life and soul of the party, along with Link, but here, I was a miserable bastard, and I felt sorry for the fuckers who called me brother and had to deal with my sorry ass.
It didn’t help that I was cutting back on the booze, and that was mostly because I’d known I was drinking too much.
Socializing, being friendly, and enjoying a party didn’t come natural to me. I needed the lubrication to fully enjoy those kinds of things, so without a bottle of tequila lining my stomach, I wasn’t going to appreciate shit.
If anything, at the moment, I was maudlin as hell, and I had the feeling alcohol would only make that worse.
With that in mind, I gave a mock salute to the Prospect manning the gate and drove around to my digs.
Because I was, technically, a visitor, until I earned my place here, I wasn’t staying in the clubhouse proper. I preferred that though.
These people weren’t my people.
They were my brothers, and I’d die for them and kill for them if need be, but they weren’t family.
I knew that wouldn’t make much sense to most folk, but only those of us in the life could understand the mentality we had.
We were united against the Man, and the Man might change from time to time, but we remained as one.
Rubbing my chin the second I was off my bike, I grabbed my shit and ducked into the bunkhouse.
It wasn’t unlike the Sinners’ place, where there were small bunkhouses that a visiting chapter could crash in, or that unexpected guests like Giulia and her brothers who were newly patched in Prospects could stay at until they proved themselves or found some digs of their own.
Here, it wasn’t as nice.
Sure, those bunkhouses were old-fashioned and filled with shit from another era, but they were better than the row of beds that made me feel like I was staying in a POW camp, especially since shower curtains were the only partitions we had as some semblance of privacy.
I’d been here before on a long run, and it had sucked back then, but now that I was here on a semi-permanent basis—I refused to look for extra accommodation because that would be admitting defeat—it was even worse.
The only consolation was I slept at one end, and the only brother, a guy called Brakes, who shared with me took the opposite end.
When I saw Brakes was absent, I strode toward my bunk and pulled out my phone.
The scent of mildew was in the air, and it was tinged with perfume that told me Brakes had either been boning someone in here earlier, or a club snatch had been waiting on my bunk for me to return and had grown bored with my absence before fucking off.
They didn’t get that I wasn’t interested, and the truth was, it still blew my fucking mind that I wasn’t.
Rubbing a hand over my jaw, scratching at the stubble, I pulled out my cell and opened the message app.
Tiff and I had been in communication since Rex had exiled me down here for my own safety, and while that made me feel like a pussy again, I’d prefer to be on Al Qaeda’s radar than Nyx’s.
Yeah.
Fucking Nyx.
Good thing I loved him like a brother and understood his fury with me, or I’d have needed to shoot his brains out before he got to mine.
With the app open, I saw Tiff had sent a few more messages since I’d taken off from Faudreaux’s place, but so had Rex, and because I knew my fate rested in whatever he had to say, I opened that one first.
Prez: We’ll be riding in the next couple of hours.
I fist pumped the air, knowing quite well that if Nyx was satisfied with my pedo haul, I’d be home sooner than anticipated.
And that was a good thing, because Tiff’s final message?
Didn’t bode well.
Tiff: We need to talk.
Fuck.