Chapter 39 Rex
REX
I should have known Kendra would show up.
Maybe I should even have thrown her out, but I didn’t.
He was her dad too, though it pained me to admit it.
She skirted the edge of the ceremony, the edges of the wake. I tracked her with my gaze, making sure she went nowhere near Storm or Keira, but she actively avoided them so it made it easier to relax. Her chameleon act was so good that, after a while, I forgot about her.
People drank and ate, smoked and vaped. Kids snacked on ambrosia salad and ran screaming through the clubhouse and out into the yard. Women congregated together and gossiped; men bitched in small clusters.
A few of my dad’s original club—no one from his council had survived—were all seated, getting drunk on whiskey.
I watched it all with a distance that would have been disturbing if the sense of numbness wasn’t appreciated.
Maybe that was why I saw it.
Just out of the corner of my eye—a movement in the hallway.
No one expected much from me, that was the only relief. No conversation, no chitchat. They let me wander from group to group, not saying anything apart from dipping their chin in greeting.
It provided me with a reverse kind of anonymity. Everyone knew who I was but they were going out of their way to give me space, that meant when I turned into the hallway, I moved into the room silently.
It meant that I saw, with my own eyes, what Rain had told me.
“You bastard,” Harlow was spitting, struggling against the hold two of my brothers, Anchor and River, had him in. His arms windmilled, spinning faster and faster until Anchor and River were struggling to contain him.
Opposite, sneering and laughing all the fucking while, Lever had a book in his hand. He tore out a page and dropped it to the floor where there was a pile of dog shit—the strays had clearly taken advantage of the open doors.
Goddamn Quin.
“Need a few more sheets,” Lever cackled as he raised the book just a couple of inches, which was when the light gleamed off the silver copperplate writing on the front of it.
Holy Bible
This time, the shredding of paper ricocheted through the room like a bomb blast.
Despair etched into his expression, Harlow ceased struggling, watching with distraught eyes as Lever broke so many unspoken fucking rules that I couldn’t even begin to count them.
Harlow had come here for acceptance, for help, and this was what he was given.
I wasn’t a religious man. Not because of what I did for a living, not because you couldn’t attend church and be a brother—some guys actually drove over to Hanover to attend church there with a pastor who didn’t know their rep. It just wasn’t in me to believe in a higher power.
Religion wasn’t scorned here, however.
You could do whatever you wanted—liberty was celebrated.
So to see Harlow’s liberty being scorned, to see a text that he held dear, that he believed to be holy, being destroyed simply because Lever was a prick, because he wanted to belittle Harlow, made something inside me snap.
The numbness that had infected me ever since the ceremony, making me grow colder and colder, had put everything on ice. The emotional pain was buried away, deep in my soul.
But all that pain exploded to the surface, no longer content to be buried away, tearing to the fore as he crouched down and went to pick up the shit with the pages that Harlow held so dear.
It hit me like a red wave.
I stormed into the room, ignoring the ground out, ‘Fucks,’ from Anchor and River who immediately let go of Harlow. They dropped him so fast that he rocked back on his heels, actually falling to the ground with a dull thud without their unwanted support before they backed away.
It was too late for them.
Too fucking late.
Lever, still cackling, peered up at me, his face dropping at the sight of me.
He knew he was doing wrong.
He knew he was pushing the club’s limits.
Before he could get out, “Prez, I—” I grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into my fist. Jerking him to his feet, ignoring the punches he tried to land on me in self-defense, I beat into him over and over again.
The few punches he landed, I didn’t feel.
When his hands slapped at me, his nails scoring into my flesh in an attempt to stop me, I didn’t feel a thing then either.
His grunts became cries, his pleading became sobs as I smashed his fucking face into pieces.
Cartilage shattered, blood vessels ruptured, bones crunched beneath my fist, blood and drool sprayed me as I beat into him, and I still didn’t stop.
Over and fucking over, that red wave of fury held me in its grip.
“Please,” he said on a soft sob, but where was his mercy?
Why should I give him any?
I dropped him to the ground and he cried out with relief, great shudders wracking his frame. Only, he was wrong—we weren’t done.
I knelt down at his side, not looking up when I heard the hushed whispers of a crowd that was watching me, not looking up when I heard Nyx muttering something to Storm and Link.
Unluckily for Lever, he had all my attention even if I was aware of my surroundings.
“You think you can pull your stunts today of all days with no repercussions?”
I grabbed his chin, staring at the mush of his flesh, the features that had blurred under the pounding of my knuckles. It was a credit to him that he hadn’t passed out.
“You want me to stop?” I crooned.
He sniffed and bleated, “I’m so sorry, Prez, so sorry. So sorry, so sorry.”
Over and over again, he apologized.
But it was too late for that.
The second he’d torn those pages out, it was too late.
I pinched his chin between fingers that would ache in the morning and whispered, “That didn’t answer my question.”
His mouth trembled, the torn and bleeding lips shaking as he stared at me. “I-I need you to stop, Prez.”
I nodded. “Pick up the shit, Lever.”
His gaze drifted to the pieces of holy text he’d been using. He went to pick up the sheets, but I grabbed his hand, twisted his fingers around, not stopping until the appendage flopped back and he was screaming.
“Jesus Christ,” someone hissed behind me.
Knowing that his consciousness would be fading, I grabbed his hair once more—he didn’t even yelp, that was how much pain he was in—and I pressed his face nearer to the shit.
“Eat it.”
“Rex, fuck,” Nyx snapped.
I lifted my head to stare at him, his jaw clenched at whatever he was reading on my face.
Storm stepped closer. “There are kids watching.”
“Then their mothers should take them away,” I growled. “And if they don’t, that’s on them, not on me. I will protect every Sinner under my roof, even if it’s from another brother.” To Lever, I snarled, “EAT IT!”
“He’s gonna pass out—”
“Link, he’s gonna spew first,” Sin said softly, amusement lacing his words. He knew what this felt like. Knew what I was going through. “He’s lucky to get out with his life.”
Maybe Lever heard him, maybe he recognized the truth in what my cousin said, because he opened his mouth and, gagging, bit into the turd on the floor.
There were a couple gagging sounds from behind me too, and the stench wasn’t pretty, but I held him in place by his hair, making sure he ate every fucking bite. He sobbed throughout it, sniffling and retching with each swallow.
Only when he was done did I lift him up.
But my hand tightened on his hair as the other went to his chin.
In one swift move, I snapped his neck and let his body fall to the ground.
A stunned gasp swept among the crowd, and I peered up and saw brothers were watching me.
Rachel was too.
She stared at me.
I stared back.
Unapologetic.
She swallowed.
Then, she stunned me.
She didn’t run away.
Inevitable—the word drifted through my mind. Through the numbness.
Her eyes on me all the while, her shock clear, her distaste clearer, she intoned, “Cruz, I think we need your assistance.”
Her words shifted me into movement. I got to my feet, collecting the Bible as I did so, and I moved over to Harlow who was watching me in bewilderment, his mouth rounding as I approached.
Without looking at either of them, to Anchor and River, I rumbled, “Help Cruz deal with his body. No pay for the next four weeks.”
I got two garbled, “Yes, Prez,” when Nyx and Storm, who had a firm hold on their arms, kicked them to trigger their answer.
“Let them go,” I said grimly.
Nyx and Storm listened to me.
I held out my other hand.
They frowned.
“Your cuts.”
Anchor whispered, “You want us to give you our cuts?”
I didn’t reply, just waited.
“Think you should be grateful that’s all he’s asking for,” Sin said snidely.
That got them moving.
I tossed the leather on top of Lever’s corpse.
“Destroy them with him.“
“No!” Anchor bit off. “This ain’t right. We didn’t do nothing.”
I shot him a look. “Doing nothing is sometimes the worst thing you can do. But you didn’t do nothing. ‘Nothing’ I could forgive. You held Harlow down.
“What fucking club is this, Anchor? You think you can do whatever the fuck you want? You can. With your liberty. Not with another brother’s.
“He’s a Prospect; I can see that you’re about to throw that at me.
Prospects get treated like shit, and I can handle that.
It’s fucking pathetic to me, but I get it.
Men are pathetic. So I let you haze them and I let you give them the disgusting jobs and that’s fine because there’ll be plenty worse asked of a brother along the way.
But there’s a fine line between hazing and this bullshit.
“I tell you what, you can earn back your cuts. You wanna belong to this club, you can learn how to be a brother again. Consider yourself Prospects.”
Sin, chuckling, snagged the cuts. I didn’t need to turn around to know that he was ripping off their patches. “I’ll keep a hold of these until I think you deserve ‘em.”
With that, he tossed their patches on top of Lever.
Ignoring him, and still holding the Bible in my hand, I flicked to the beginning of the book.
God made you beautiful, but your soul is so much more stunning than your face.
I love you. Thank you for being my brother.
Jessie.
I’d had a feeling, and as usual, my gut was right.
Staring down at the inscription, I asked, “You want a patch?”
Harlow was quiet for too long, so I finally looked at him.
His eyes were wide as they clashed with mine before he stared down at the Bible in my hand, flicked a glance at Lever’s corpse, shot a look at Nyx, then returned his focus to me.
There was no escaping the ugliness of this scene.
But he didn’t want to.
He retrieved the Bible from my hold. “Yes.”
Nodding, I found Nyx’s gaze and said, “Make it happen.”
“Sure, Prez.”
Not Rex. Not King. Prez.
That was who I was at that moment.
Anyone who thought I was weak because I was strategic, diplomatic, even, was wrong.
I stepped away from the mess and I called out, “Celebrate my father’s life, enjoy our hospitality, but remember that he started all of this. We’re outlaws to the rest of the world, but inside these walls, we’re brothers. Brothers don’t disrespect each other.”
My fist flew into Anchor’s face, and the other soared into River’s gut.
As one grabbed their nose and the other dropped to their knees, I drifted away, leaving Nyx and Storm to clear up my mess for once.