Chapter 52
CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO
DARE
“How in the fuck are we supposed to get that asshole to The Site in time and make sure he burns alive?” Wrath asks.
I’ve told him the half-baked plan that Hippie and I just came up with. Hippie’s left my office. He’s got some other shit to take care of, like ordering some serious goddamn gunfire for this war that I may or may not be starting.
“Got not one single clue,” I admit.
Wrath shakes his head a couple of times and runs his fingers through his hair, tugging on the ends slightly.
He clears his throat as he stands, then turns away from me for a moment.
I expect him to walk over to the window, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he just takes a step away from the chair that’s across from my desk, then another, until he’s standing in front of my father’s picture.
If he were still alive, my dad would be seventy-two. He had me when he was twenty. I didn’t know him well. He might have been here at the club, the president and all, but I couldn’t tell you a single fucking thing about him.
Couldn’t even tell someone what his favorite food was.
He died a few years ago, and I don’t regret not knowing him.
I’m indifferent to the father-son relationship we had.
It makes me think of the baby Chassis is carrying.
I don’t want our relationship to be indifferent.
I want family dinners, laughter, and a real life together. All of us.
“Do you think he’d be good with that plan?” he asks, staring at the picture.
My lips press together, and I roll them a few times before I clear my throat.
Leaning back in my seat, I stare at the picture with him.
I ignore myself and only focus on him. He’s probably my age in the photograph.
No smile, and his arm isn’t around me. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than posing for a picture.
“The plan or the reason behind it?” I ask.
Wrath turns his head and looks over his shoulder at me. He smirks then chuckles. “Both maybe?”
“He’d hate the reason behind the plan,” I simply state before I continue. “Starting a war over a woman? That would never fly, not even if someone came in and hurt an old lady. My dad wouldn’t give much of a fuck. He’d never start a war about that. It would have to be about something bigger.”
“Yeah?” Wrath asks, even though he knows.
He, of all people, knows exactly who my father was on the inside. He might say that family was everything and old ladies were protected by the club, but inside, he didn’t give a fuck about women, especially not the ones in his family… like my mother.
“He might start a war over principalities,” Wrath murmurs.
“Now that he would do.”
I almost ask him why he gives a fuck what my father would do. He’s not here, and this isn’t his club anymore. He wouldn’t be working with the Russians at all to begin with, so he wouldn’t be in this situation.
“I’d love to do the exact fucking opposite of what my father would do,” I say. “Mainly because that’s what I’ve always done.”
Wrath’s lips twitch into a smirk. “Your gut calls you to defy the man, protect your woman, and start a war by burning that sonofabitch and listening to him scream.” Yes. That’s exactly what I want.
“Protect my woman, start a war, burn him to the ground. Maybe we can get by without the war stuff. But I’m ready for it, if it needs to happen. I hope it won’t come to that,” I state.
“But be prepared,” Wrath states.
“Exactly.”
We stare at one another in silence, passing a look that only we could ever begin to understand. Then he takes a step toward me, and another, until he’s standing in front of my desk. He places his palm on the wood, his focus on me and only me, and dips his chin slightly, his focus unwavering.
“I always have your back,” he announces. “We need to make sure that our women are protected.”
“Agreed,” I state. “Let’s get the plan locked down, and then we put the women on lockdown until it’s executed and we know what retaliation is going to look like.”
“You know Rustik best,” he says. “What does retaliation look like with him?”
He stands up straight, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches me, waiting for my response. “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t have a fucking clue. It’s anyone’s fucking guess, and I mean that shit.”
“Great,” he grunts.
“Agreed. So what we do is protect our own and prepare. If he can’t understand why I’ve done what I’ve done, then he’s not a man I want to be associated with.”
The door flies open, and we both swing our attention to the man standing in the doorway. It’s Speed. Jerking my chin, I arch a brow as I wait for him to say whatever the fuck he thought he could interrupt my meeting to say.
“I talked to Hippie. He was telling me about the weapons and shit. I kind of put it together. I don’t think locking him inside a building is the way to do it,” he announces.
I wave him inside the office. “What do you suggest?”
Speed is a brother of the club. He isn’t an officer, but he’s smart as fuck. He pays attention, and he’s in the trenches as far as working for the club goes, so he probably knows a little more about the Russians than I do. He’s got his ear to the ground.
“Make it loud. Make it visible. They need to know who has the bigger balls. They’ll respect it.”
I slide my tongue across my bottom lip as I think about the repercussions of that. Even if they respect it—respect us—that doesn’t mean they’ll allow us to walk away scot-free. “They’ll respect it, but will they retaliate?”
Speed shrugs a shoulder. “Price we’re willing to pay and all that, or maybe…”
His words trail off, and I think about this, maybe because something pops into my head, and now I’m thinking of a whole different idea. Going in a whole different direction.
“What if Rustik finds out Samuil plans on betraying him?” Speed asks.
“And how do we find that out?” Wrath asks.
Speed shrugs a shoulder, his focus shifting between us, as if he’s waiting for one of us to have the answer.
Honest to fuck, if I had that answer, I’d have gone with that shit first instead of burning him alive, although I would absolutely love to watch that asshole burn, so maybe this actually is the only idea I like.
“I still like the idea that he burns, and then we tell Rustik about his betrayal.”
Speed chuckles. “Sick. I’m fucking here for it. Let me see what I can dig up. A bastard like that leaves a trail. When do you plan on burning him?”
I love that Speed is here for it. I fucking love it. “Next week,” I state. “You think you can get some intel by then?”
“I’m on it.” He stands and is out of the office before I can even say another word. Wrath chuckles from across the desk. Flicking my attention back to him, I smirk at the sight of him laughing.
“Acts like he’s twenty, not forty,” he mutters. He does. Truly. “I’m heading home to my woman. She’s not going to like lockdown,” he states.
“You gonna give her a tail for her workdays?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Not real lockdown, then, I guess.”
Placing my palms on the desk, I push myself up to stand. “I’m going home to my woman, too. I haven’t heard from Gauge or her all day. I can only assume they’re spending the day playing cards or whatever they do, talking shit, whatever.”
“Regroup tomorrow, and we’ll meet first thing, say ten?” Wrath asks.
“I’ll be here.”