Chapter 5 – Rook
ROOK
M averick and a small group of his men entered the underground fight club, chins raised like the Kings they thought they were. Mav went straight for Dies, his hand extended, a carefully placed grin on his lips.
“A righteous win, St. Crow,” Mav said. “My boys and I just finished sweeping the area west of Spirit Lake. None escaped.”
Dies nodded, continuing the pre-meeting conversation with Maverick. Going over which areas specifically Mav and his men covered as well as several other things that needed to be seen to.
I spied Drake beside his leader and caught his eye.
He lifted his chin in greeting, excusing himself from Mav’s side to come over to the edge of the room near the bar where Grey and I sat at one of the high top tables. The three chairs already occupied by both of us and my bum fucking leg.
I wouldn’t be moving it for Drake’s ass, either.
“Hey,” he said, waving the bartender Dies called on short notice behind the bar for a beer. “Heard anything from your girl, yet?”
He pushed his sandy blond hair away from his forehead, leaning over the table to look between us.
“Nothing,” Grey said, his tone clipped.
Drake shook his head. “I don’t get it. I searched the entire Deadwood for her. She couldn’t have gotten that far on foot.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if she jacked one of the Kings’ cars or bikes,” I put in, also waving to the bartender for a whiskey.
Her jaw clenched and she stilled, brown eyes jerking between my father across the room and me.
“I’m only supposed to give you water,” she said tensely after a second.
I ran my tongue over my teeth, sending Dies a glare.
Did he want me to take the painkillers?
Because taking away the only thing dulling the aching in my leg would’ve made most people turn to the drugs as the only other viable option for fucking pain management. As it was, antibiotics were all I was allowed, though I doubted those would work if I drank too much, either.
“Make you a deal sweetheart,” I told her with a wicked smirk. “You give me two fingers of whiskey, neat, and I’ll drink all the water you put on this table.”
She grimaced, hesitating before pulling down that good Canadian rye whiskey I liked from the top shelf and pouring it into a short glass.
“Atta girl.”
“Thanks,” Drake muttered after the bartender dropped the drinks off at the table, including two brimming glasses of water next to my whiskey.
“If you haven’t heard from her at all by now…” He trailed off, pursing his lips.
“ What? ” Grey growled.
“Well, I mean, she’s probably gone for good then, yeah? Maybe this life wasn’t for her after all?—”
Grey tensed, but it was me who acted, dragging Drake across the table by his jacket, making the zipper done all the way up to his throat come partially undone.
“ You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about ,” I seethed, seeing something in his blue eyes tighten, the fear I was used to seeing reflected back at me absent.
He gripped the hand knotted in his jacket and pried it off, keeping eye contact. “I’m not your enemy, man,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just… if she still isn’t back, then where is she?”
Neither of us could answer that and instead of savoring my whiskey like I planned to, I downed it in one, baring my teeth at the glorious burn chasing the darkness back down my throat.
Behind Drake, Mav and Dies seemed to have begun the formal meeting, sitting opposite one another in the long table Dies had brought down and placed just next to the fighting ring.
Pinkie sat next to Dies where Corvus would’ve been sitting if he’d made it back in time and three other seats sat empty on the right of the table.
Mav’s men sat next to him, one empty seat near the edge of the table remained, and I assumed it was meant for Drake. I hadn’t realized he was part of Mav’s main men.
“Here,” Drake offered, jerking his head. “Let me help you.”
I snarled angrily, hating that I needed to be helped to my fucking seat like some goddamned senior citizen.
“I’m good,” I retorted, nostrils flaring as I eased my leg down from the chair and went to take a step and nearly fell on my face as all the blood drained from my upper body to congregate in my leg, filling it so it felt near bursting.
“ Fucking hell ,” I ground out, clutching the table.
“Come on, big guy,” I barely heard Drake say as he dragged one of my arms over his shoulder and Grey took my other arm, leading us all to the table for the meet.
They deposited me in my chair next to Pinkie, and I sniffed, catching the scent of Pinkie’s rum and Coke on the table in front of him.
I slid it over to myself, giving him a warning look when he opened his mouth to protest. He rolled his eyes, staying silent like a good Pinkie Pie.
“We all know why this meet was called,” Mav began, and I studied him over the rim of my drink as I sipped away.
He was a big guy. At least two-twenty, most of it muscle, with tattoos up the right side of his neck and a teardrop tat beneath his right eye that looked pretty sick in combination with the word SUBMIT scribbled above his brow.
But I’d pegged him as a weak ally from the first moment I’d seen him.
His men were a different story—some of them were true warriors, but this guy? He looked the part but that was where it ended. Underneath that jerky gaze and all those pounds of muscle was a man who had no fucking idea what he was doing.
He lacked the confidence a man in his position should have. Lacked the sort of vicious bearing he needed to properly lead a gang of his size.
It was a wonder he’d managed for as many years as he had.
“We do,” Diesel agreed. “But I’ll hear your concerns properly voiced all the same.”
Mav nodded, his gaze slipping to his men down the table beside him. “I need to know what this win means for our alliance.”
I tuned them out, playing with the condensation on my glass, the alcohol working against me now. My vision blurred, and I shook my head sharply, regaining focus.
Unlike my brothers, I hadn’t had the luxury of passing out from my wounds, and I couldn’t fucking sleep until my Ghost was back where she belonged.
“Can I get some fucking food,” I piped up, shouting across the space to the bartender, interrupting the pointless talks going on at the table.
Diesel eyed me, and I lifted a brow. “What?”
They went on with their conversation, and I sat back in my chair, ignoring Grey’s quiet pleas to get my attention with his elbow jamming into my ribs.
“I’m fine,” I hissed at him, finishing the cocktail only to get a bit more sugar into my bloodstream.
“We’d like to offer for the alliance to continue,” Diesel said. “We have the arms connections you need and you have the clientele we need to get rid of the last of our smack. Besides, not having to circumvent Lennox to get to our arms dealers would save us a fuckload of time and resources.”
Mav nodded as Diesel spoke, and I ripped the corn nuts from the bartender’s hands as she brought them to the table, tearing into the packaging to dump the contents into my mouth.
“We accept,” Mav said, like we all knew he would. He’d be an idiot to turn down Diesel’s offer. And Dies would be the even bigger fool not to have offered for the alliance to continue in the face of our current losses.
“This isn’t a permanent situation,” Diesel added. “We’ll continue the alliance on a trial basis. Temporary. For now.”
It was the for now that gave Mav the hope he needed to conclude this meeting with any measure of triumph. A permanent alliance with the Saints would cement him and his gang among the top predators of this great nation. It wouldn’t be given or won so easily.
Mav nodded again, slowly, to show he understood.
I nudged Dies, and his jaw ticked.
“There’s one more thing, a condition of this alliance’s continuance.”
“A condition?” Mav repeated, his brows pulling together, gaze slipping down the table again, making me wonder if he was the one calling the shots here or if they formed more of a council between the four of them seated at the table.
I put a cigarette to my lips, cursing as I flicked my zippo and nothing but sparks came out.
“Your man, Aries .”
Surprise registered in Mav’s eyes, but he didn’t reply.
“We have reason to believe he may have less than honorable intent toward one of my Saints.”
I flicked again, a tremor of annoyance scraping up the back of my skull.
“How so?”
Diesel set his jaw again. He didn’t have to explain himself to Mav, and it seemed, in this case, he wouldn’t. It was a power move. He wanted to see if Mav would fight him on it or if he would bend, giving Diesel what he wanted without him having to work for it.
“What do you want with him?” Maverick asked after an uncomfortable silence.
A lighter slid noisily across the table between us and I glanced up to see Drake had tossed me his. I gave him a nod, abandoning mine as I lifted his to light my smoke, finding a set of initials engraved in the worn silver surface.
I inhaled greedily, shoving the lighter back across to him, catching a mean side eye from Diesel that asked me without the need for words if I was fucking finished.
I nodded.
“I want you to call him in,” Diesel continued his conversation with Mav. “Me and my boys would like to have a little… conversation … with him.”
“What sort of conversation?”
“The kind where I will determine whether a man like him has a place allied to my crew.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
The silence carried with it the threat no one needed spoken.
If Aries turned out to be the monster my Ghost thought him to be, there was nowhere on this earth he would be safe from us.
Fuck, I would be just as likely to chase his ass to hell and torment him for the rest of his miserable fucking afterlife too.