Chapter 8
PAGAN
Iducked right to avoid Rodeo’s fist as it came flying toward my jaw.
“You’re a slippery fucker,” Bootneck yelled up at the ring. “It’s like watchin’ Teflon. Nothin’ sticks.”
It was easy for that prick to play it down, but he knew better than anyone that my fitness was top-notch.
I ran six miles a day for cardio and then did an hour in the gym for strength and weight training.
I was strong because I was fit, not because I was lucky.
That thick-assed fuck wouldn’t know it, though, seeing as he spent most of his time in the bar.
I’d been fighting on the streets since I was eight years old, and I learned pretty fast that the best way to avoid getting beaten was to make them miss. If I could outlast my opponent, I’d win.
The very first fight I had, I got my ass handed to me, and the next, and the one after that, so I befriended one of the older boys in the neighborhood, started doing him some favors, and we became buds. He taught me how to punch, kick, and fight dirty.
Didn’t get beaten much after that.
A meaty fist came hurtling toward me, and I swerved it just in time.
“Motherfucker,” Rodeo muttered under his ragged breaths, sawing in and out.
I grinned because, yep, he was getting tired.
“What’s so funny—” he began just before a crack sounded as I landed a punch across his face.
He staggered back.
Collective laughter rose through the air.
“Poor fucker’s seein’ stars,” Castle called out.
“You’re too slow, brother.” I sneered, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “Maybe you’re getting a little too old for it.”
My brothers, standing outside the ring watching us, laughed.
I pulled my gloves up in front of my face and aimed a jab at his nose, which he dodged, but he was too slow to avoid the second one, which glanced off his jaw. His head snapped back, and I jabbed again, missing that time, so I pulled out an uppercut that caught Rodeo’s chin.
My brother let out a pained groan, and feeling emboldened, I followed through with a flurry of punches, until the brother went down onto his knees.
“Motherfucker,” he said on a moan.
My jaw tightened, and I cracked my neck from side to side, my gut flaring with a simmering heat that had burned inside since the moment Aislynn had driven off a few days earlier.
I rode out to her mom’s house the next morning and waited in the shadows for hours, ready to snatch her and throw her on the back of my bike. But after watching her mom leave and return home a few times, with no sign of Aislynn, I had to accept she’d gone into hiding.
That was when my hunter instinct kicked in.
She wasn’t due back at work yet, and the cameras my boys had planted in her apartment showed she hadn’t been back there, either, so there was no point in riding down to Denver.
Wiki was on phone watch, but that was also quiet, in fact, too quiet.
A few of her friends had sent messages to check in and some funny memes, but she hadn’t replied to any of them, which was weird in itself.
Eventually, I gave up stalking her mom’s house and rode back to the clubhouse with my tail between my legs, almost wiping out on the icy roads a few times because I kept losing concentration.
Rodeo struck out and his jab glanced off my temple, and my brain rattled inside my skull.
Cursing under my breath, I landed a hard blow to his kidney and watched with a satisfied smile as his body contorted in pain.
My blood pumped so hard that I could hear it rush through my ears, and I struck out again, landing another punch across his jaw.
On I went, releasing all my pent-up frustration.
I rained blows on Rodeo for a good minute before the men began to shout at me to stop.
Their voices hardly registered through the wildfire sweeping through me.
My vision tunneled in on the enemy, and then, throwing a wide hook, I grunted as my fist landed in what seemed like slow motion across the motherfucker’s jaw.
The entire lower half of his face seemed to shift, and I watched, fascinated, as the fucker’s head whipped to one side and a tooth flew from his mouth, followed by a spurt of blood as his body dropped onto the canvas.
I let out a roar and pulled my arm back again, ready to drop to my knees and finish him off when strong arms banded around my torso, and somebody pulled me back.
“Stand down, Prez,” a familiar voice said quietly in my ear.
“Get your shit together and breathe.” Boot’s soothing words hardly registered as I stared down blankly at Rodeo, who lay on the floor of the ring, knocked out cold.
Castle and Bounty jumped to the ring, quickly surrounding Rodeo, trying to bring him around.
Cuts and newly-formed bruises covered his face, and I could already see his jaw starting to swell. That was when my consciousness roared back to me, and my shoulders sagged.
“Where’s Slice?” I croaked.
Bootneck released me and pulled his cell out, walking away as he began to search through it to contact our club medic.
After a brief conversation, he slipped his phone away.
“He’s on his way, boss,” he confirmed, eyeing me with the disdainful look he reserved for my ass in the times when I clearly needed to get my shit together.
I scraped a gloved hand over my head, wondering how my life had gone to hell in a handbasket over the course of two days, but deep down, I knew exactly why I was losing the damned plot.
I’d fucked up with Aislynn.
It wasn’t lost on me that the crew standing in the ring, staring at me like I’d just landed on Earth in a spaceship, had gone deathly silent. The only sound filling the gym was the wet, raspy snorts coming from Rodeo’s nose, where I’d obviously broken it.
I had two choices.
Double down or apologize.
Seeing I’d never apologized to anyone in my life, I decided there and then that I wouldn’t start with Rodeo, especially since he was a cocky bastard.
He knew what he was doing when he got into the ring with me; I mean, it wasn’t the first time this had happened. Still, I was his prez, and he was my responsibility, so I had to make sure he was okay.
I dropped to one knee, relief washing through me when Rodeo’s eyes flickered open and he let out a soft moan.
“There he is,” Castle muttered from beside him. “Welcome back, brother.”
“Fuck,” Rodeo said on a wheeze, his jaw hanging weirdly on one side.
“Don’t talk,” Castle advised. “Slice is on his way. I want him to look at your face. Prez has fucked it up.”
Rodeo’s eyes slid to me, and his eyebrows drew together as if he couldn’t quite believe what I’d done to him.
My throat tightened, and for a split second, my mind flashed back to a time when I saw the same expression on my dad’s face whenever I’d failed to meet his expectations, usually followed by a fleeting look of disappointment.
My dad was a bastard to my mom; though she was a bitch, so I got why. Still, she was my mother and the only person who even attempted to care for me, so I tried to be a good son and look after her whenever she passed out in a puddle of her own vomit.
I think my old man expected me to be as disrespectful and downright mean to her as he was, but I always reckoned it was that air of disgust that turned her to drink and drugs in the first place.
I suspected, deep down, that my mom loved him, so when she told him she was knocked up, and he told her to fuck off, go to a clinic, and get rid of me, she crumbled.
For years, I wished she could be the type of mom who cooked, cleaned, and laundered my clothes, but it didn’t take long to give up the dream, accept her as the weak woman she was, and learn to look after myself.
The door flew open, and Slice entered, his calculated stare flicking over the scene and taking everything in. “For fuck’s sake,” I heard him mutter under his breath as he approached the ring.
I couldn’t help wincing at his tone.
He lowered to his haunches, quickly and efficiently examining Rodeo before his head swiveled and he looked up at me.
“Broken nose, fractured jaw, and a couple of bruised ribs. Can’t determine much more without an X-ray, but I reckon he’ll live.
He needs rest, and it looks like he’ll be drinkin’ through a straw for a while.
He’ll be on bed rest for a few days, and he can’t fight for six weeks, so he’ll be outta commission for work.
If his breathin’ gets worse, we’ll need to get him straight to the ER. ”
“Fuck,” Bootneck spat, throwing me an accusing look. “If Rodeo can’t enforce, we’ll have to tell Thug he’s up.”
The men groaned and spat curses.
Thug was a brother who assisted Rodeo in his enforcement duties.
He was good at it—some would say too good.
He had a goddamned screw loose and was covered in scars and marks because he was a sadist and loved inflicting wounds on other men as well as himself (or better still, getting the whores to do it).
Weirdly, although he got off on that shit, he was the most religious, morally astute man I’d ever met.
He adored sweet, kind women, and kids loved him.
The crazy fucker would cry over an abandoned puppy and then hunt down and decapitate whichever fucker dumped it.
If I ever needed my two boys guarded, Thug was the first one I’d call on. The world would burn before he’d let them come to any harm. Still, he was a lot to handle, so I could understand why the boys were pissed.
“I'd better go find Thug,” I grated out, suddenly desperate to get away from the accusing glances of my brothers. “Help Rodeo to his room.”
Heading for the door, I’d almost made it out when I heard footsteps behind me. I knew who it was without even looking because it was always the same man at my back, even when I fucked up.
We hit the corridor, and I sent him a warning look. “I don’t wanna talk, brother.”