Chapter Ten #2
As much as I hated to see Ranger like this, he wasn’t a part of it.
He’d already had Devil’s showing up at his door.
Seemed they hadn’t harmed him, which in itself was a concern to me.
He was totally at their mercy and they’d left him?
They could have tried to use him against us.
They clearly hadn’t known he was out in the cold, or they wouldn’t have come to see him, but they hadn’t used him as leverage to get Waverley back.
I pondered for a moment. I didn’t understand their reasons for that.
“Messing with the Devil’s Chaos is a bad idea,” Ranger said darkly.
I gave him a knowing frown. If he thought I’d gone along with the plans to mess with them, he was an idiot. I’d tried to be the voice of reason, to talk him down, but Nytro wouldn’t hear it. Danica was his aunt. If she was spewing shit to Waverley, then she was doing the same to Nytro.
He’d hated his father but he loved the club, or more accurately, he loved being in control of the club.
He was the kind of guy who got off on adoration and power.
Didn’t matter that he didn’t deserve it, or that on the sly some members of the club were coming to me to express their dislike and distrust of Nytro.
I hated what was happening, but I had little control.
Nytro didn’t see me as his VP, to him, it was name only.
Our meetings were a mess, the books were all over the place, he was doing business with rival factions all the time, trying to undercut them.
He was going to end up getting us killed even before he decided to go after the Devil’s Chaos.
He was too stupid to realise he’d lost control months ago.
Danica had been subtle initially, supporting him and whispering in his ear.
She’d done it from afar, but I’d taken notice of where he was going and who he was talking to, long before Ranger had his accident, because I was a good VP and I gave a shit about my club.
She’d played the doting aunt, encouraging him and filling his tiny brain with an impossible sense of self-importance.
Until he got made President, then she started doing things a little differently.
I’m sure he didn’t realise she was manipulating him.
He’d go to his deathbed denying it but he was deluded.
She was good though, she’d done it all without anyone really catching on, or realising Nytro didn’t make any decisions without running them by her first. And Mad Hog, the fucking asshole best friend of his who he’d made Sargent-At-Arms. They grew up together and were both as dense as each other.
I’d been sucked into the vortex of his insanity, but I’d held my ground and luckily the brothers were on my side when it came to places within the council. I wasn’t ousted like Ranger was. But I did get fucked over with stepping up to the President role, which was club rules.
First thing I did was let Danica know she couldn’t sway me.
She caught on quickly, she knew not to mess with me, but she also knew how to get to me.
Putting me on Waverley was her way of doing that.
I didn’t care what Danica said about wanting to look after her daughter.
She was looking after one person and one person only.
Herself. And as much as it pained me to say it, I didn’t trust Nytro to be around Waverley.
The bastard had made disgusting comments and tried to hit her within the first five minutes of meeting her.
I wasn’t sure if he knew she was his cousin, or he was just that fucking stupid.
Either way, me being the one to watch her was the only thing keeping her from being seriously hurt.
I hated that I needed to worry someone in my club could harm her.
Whether she was their family or not, I didn’t condone that shit.
“They’re a big club, and not just the Sussex Chapter, the whole country. We’re small fry to them,” Ranger went on. “Just a few chapters in Jersey, New York and Philly. They want to bring the weight of their club down on us… you,” he corrected. “Then you better be prepared to fight. Or run.”
“I’ll never run.”
“Yeah, I know. But that doesn’t mean you can’t play it smart.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?” I asked but I knew what he was getting at.
Over my dead body. The Kingsmen were my life, all I’d ever known, and I wasn’t going to let Danica, or Nytro sink them.
But at the same time, I wasn’t going to align myself with our rivals.
Not that they’d want that either, given the shit that had gone down between the two clubs lately.
Nytro and Danica had well and truly killed any chance at an amicable relationship.
“They work smart,” Ranger got a faraway look on his face. “Always did. I never had any trouble with them. We kept out of each other’s way, knew the score on territory. You know yourself, if we had to, we spoke to them, but we didn’t go out of the way to deal with them.”
He was right. I’d had dealings with War Curtis a few times.
I’d never met King though. War had always been the one to iron out any issues between our two clubs.
He was a decade younger than me, and I’d been surprised when I first met him, but he wasn’t stupid, I’d caught on to that real quick.
And Ballistic, his Enforcer was usually with him if we met face to face.
It took a lot to unnerve me. I wasn’t afraid of Ballistic, he’d put up a good fight if it came to it. I thought we would be an even match, even though he was about twenty years older than me. I wouldn’t want to mess with him.
“King is a tough son of a bitch, but he’s always been fair with me. You know it never hurts to keep your enemies close.”
He was preaching to the choir, but I let him.
I could tell he was slowly dying out here.
He was less than a shadow of his former self.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he was dead before the year was out.
By his own hand. I hated the idea of that, which was why I kept in touch, why I still came around to try and keep him motivated to stay the fuck alive.
“Mace, listen to me,” Ranger shifted a little, he tried to push himself up a little higher with his one good arm, but he only slipped sideways.
I wouldn’t offer to help, it would only make him angry. He huffed and straightened the top half of his body, his cheeks reddening slightly. I held his gaze without changing my facial expression.
“I don’t know what is going on and I don’t want to know. You can’t tell me and I understand that. But taking King Curtis’s daughter was a huge mistake. It’s going to end up getting people killed.”
Already happening, I thought. When Ranger nodded, I knew he’d read that all over my face.
“It will get worse the longer you hold her. If I were you,” he pointed at me. “I’d have nothing to do with that. Family means everything to them. They will be all in on this. Watch your back.”
I nodded, he didn’t know I was so close I was practically up Waverley Curtis’s ass. Rubbing a hand over my mouth I tried not to think about her ass. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help anyone.
“I’m serious,” Ranger said. “The Kingsmen aren’t what they used to be, Mace. There is no loyalty, no rules and no trust. If you can’t trust your own brothers…You end up like this,” he glared at his useless legs. “Or worse.”
My phone rang. I got to my feet, nodding to Ranger as I walked out of the room. I could hear the TV coming from somewhere else, wherever Marla was, so I went out front before answering.
“What?”
“Hog’s place just blew up.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear at the screaming. “Blew up? How?”
“The whole place is burnt to the ground, people said they heard explosions, all the bikes, the building...Someone hacked the cameras, so they were shut off but I know who did it. It was them, the fucking Devil’s.”
I raised my brows as I headed to my bike. Explosions? That seemed a little out there. Nytro sounded manic. It made sense that it was Devil’s behind it. They were going after everything and now I was really pissed. I didn’t give a shit about Hog’s fuck and drug palace, as he referred to it.
Only a few hardcore assholes who were staunch supporters of Nytro hung out there.
I didn’t like the place because I knew they invited high school kids there to sell to them, they’d get the girls high and do whatever the fuck they wanted to them.
I fucking hated the place and in a way was glad it was gone.
“Anyone hurt?”
“They found a fucking body upstairs, in the office where Hog works.”
‘Works’ was a loose interpretation of what he worked on up there.
There was no love lost between me and Mad Hog.
I knew he was vying for my role and Nytro was scheming to figure out a way to do it, I wasn’t stupid.
If the asshole was dead, I wouldn’t mourn him, I wouldn’t even care. But there was more at stake here.
“The bikes were all there but the cops said there was no one inside besides the one body but it was burnt to fuck. I know for a fucking fact Hog was there because he called me about twenty minutes before I got word. This is fucked, this is so fucked. I’m not sitting back and taking this shit anymore. I’m going to make them fucking pay.”
I got on my bike and stared at Ranger’s house.
“I’m sick of this, Mace,” Nytro snarled. “Fuck the plan and fuck her. If he was in there, if he’s fucking dead…” he trailed off, his breath coming heavy.
Was he referring to Danica… or Waverley? My stomach dropped and I nudged the kickstand with my foot and balanced the bike. I never should have left her alone, because if he was talking like this then he would lose what little rationality he had left.
“They outman us right now and they’re not playing around,” I tried to calm him down but he was irrational when it came to Mad Hog. Shit, he was irrational when it came to most things.
“It’s because of that bitch, King’s fucking spawn. If we didn’t have her this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Calm down, we need to think this through.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” he yelled. “Do it, fucking kill her and we’ll throw her ass outside the clubhouse. God, fuck if he’s dead, I’ll kill them all.”
“We’re not killing anyone,” I told him. “Where are you?”
“The Funnel. I’m at the Funnel. Shit. I can’t breathe.”
“Get a drink, stay where you are,” I told him. I didn’t want to start my bike and let him know I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. The Funnel was a bar a few blocks away from the apartment. “I’ll look into it more, just don’t do anything yet until we figure out if it was actually Hog.”
He had resorted to mumbling now. I couldn’t let him go after Waverley over this. “Nytro, don’t move okay, I’m gonna figure this out.”
“Yeah, okay, yeah.”
I hung up before he could say anything else, then started the bike.
I swung it around, tearing up the grass, which I knew Marla was going to have something to say about but I didn’t care.
I had an awful feeling growing inside me.
A weird foreboding this was the trigger that would destroy everything.
As I sped towards the highway, red and blue lights suddenly started flashing behind me, a siren blared.
“Fuck.”
I thought about trying to lose them but the chances were I knew whoever this guy was, I couldn’t afford to lead any cops to the apartment and didn’t have time for a police chase.
I pulled over and grabbed my phone again, but for once, I had absolutely no one I could call.
No one I could trust. And Waverley was in that apartment like a sitting duck.
I quickly opened up the surveillance app.
She was sitting on the bed, cross legged, watching something on TV. For now, she was safe.
Holding up my hands I got off the bike and turned to face the cop. I hadn’t put my helmet on so my face was visible. The cop took his sweet ass time ambling out of his squad car.
I didn’t recognize him.
“Damn,” I grunted, I had to deal with this, and fast.