Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Romeo
The ride to Little Rock took a day and a half, and there wasn’t a mile of it where I completely relaxed. Any vehicle that stayed behind us too long caught my attention, and every overpass, side road, and gas station became another place someone could be waiting.
By the time the old warehouse came into view, every muscle in my body ached. I should’ve felt something coming back here. Nostalgia. Anger. Maybe even relief.
Instead, I found myself calculating how many more miles Little Rock had put between me and Rosewood.
We killed our engines outside the clubhouse, but Chasm remained on his bike. He stared at the building for so long that I finally walked over.
“You having second thoughts?”
“And third and fourth.” He blew out a breath before swinging his leg over the seat.
The front door slammed open before we made it much farther, and men poured outside.
They descended on Chasm almost immediately. Their anger couldn’t hide the relief underneath it. These men had believed him dead. They’d carried on inside the same club run by the men who’d tried to kill him, with no body to bury and no chance to demand answers from the brother they’d lost.
Now he was standing in front of them.
Zombie reached him first and wrapped both arms around him.
“You stupid son of a bitch!”
“Where the fuck have you been, Chasm?” Warden demanded behind him.
“Hiding in plain fucking sight, brother.” Chasm smirked as he looked around at them. “Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
I followed them into the clubhouse.
Little had changed since the last time I’d been there. Stale smoke and beer still clung to the air. The same scarred furniture filled the main room, and the walls held years of history no coat of paint would ever cover.
There had been a time when walking through those doors felt like coming home.
It didn’t anymore.
My brothers were in Nebraska. My business was there. Somewhere along the way, without any grand decision or announcement, Little Rock had become the place I used to belong instead of the place I belonged.
“This place is fucking depressing,” Chasm said.
“Yeah, we need to do some updating. Still working on getting all the accounts straight. Steele and Stone weren’t exactly forthcoming with everything.”
I glanced around again.
New furniture wouldn’t fix this place. Neither would new paint.
Chasm had inherited men who had spent years trusting leadership that lied to them. Before he worried about the walls, he had to figure out what Steele had done inside them.
“So what’s this bullshit about me being president?” Chasm asked.
Zombie grinned and slammed the patch against his chest. “Congratulations, brother.”
Chasm looked down at it. “You guys really want this?”
“No one else we’d rather have. Except maybe King, but I don’t think he’s willing to come back.”
Chasm snorted.
There was no pride on his face as he stared at the patch. If anything, he looked like a man holding something heavier than a few inches of embroidered cloth.
Good.
Men who wanted that chair too badly were usually the last bastards who belonged in it.
“What about everyone else?” he asked, looking around the room. “Who are my officers?”
“Everyone handed in their patch. Starting fresh, now that the trash is gone.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone,” Zombie confirmed. “We figured you knew who you could trust.”
Chasm surveyed the room before his attention settled on Ace and me.
“You two staying or going?”
“We’ll stay for a few days; help you get set up. But our place is in Nebraska now.” The answer came without hesitation. I’d help him rebuild. I’d stand beside these men while they figured out what Steele had left behind.
Then I was turning my fucking bike toward Virginia.
“Okay, I guess we better have church and figure out what the fuck we’re doing.”
The room came alive as everyone headed down the hallway.
Ace and I followed them into church and stayed along the wall with the other Nebraska brothers. Chasm stopped just inside the room and looked around.
“Where’s Steele’s desk?”
“After you... died,” Ambush began, “Steele moved into an office. That was when things really started getting shady.”
“Guess I’ll have to check that out later. Anyone opposed to me moving the desk back into church?”
A chorus of nos answered him.
The men took their seats, leaving the chair at the head of the table empty. Chasm walked toward it slowly and gripped the back, but he didn’t sit.
“Not sure I can sit in this chair, brothers. Not sure I deserve it.”
“You deserve it, brother. King told us everything.”
Chasm stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
Venom looked toward Krypto, who passed the attention to Ambush.
“He told us what happened that day. How Steele held him back. He said he didn’t have the proof, but he believed Steele set you up. He told us you’d been suspicious for a while about Steele and Stone having something to do with Titan’s death.”
“And he told us how it was his fault you were in that warehouse alone,” Omen added. “He’s never forgiven himself.”
Chasm looked at me.
I raised an eyebrow.
That sounded like King.
He could carry guilt until it became part of his fucking skeleton but ask him to admit it hurt and you’d be waiting until the end of time. Instead, he tried to fix everything around it.
Chasm wasn’t much different.
He’d spent years believing King betrayed him. Maybe anger had been easier to live with than wondering whether he’d condemned the wrong man.
Now he had a room full of brothers waiting to see which version of the truth he planned to build their future on.
“I wasn’t completely honest with King that day.” Chasm tightened his hands around the chair. “I was meeting someone. Someone who had the information I needed to prove Steele had Titan killed. But somehow Steele found out and turned it around on me. When King stalled, I assumed he was in on it.”
Then he stopped, and I knew exactly why.
Names carried weight in our world, and some of them had the power to change the balance of an entire room. Hemlock’s name wasn’t only connected to what happened in that warehouse. It opened another door into King’s family.
I pushed away from the wall and crossed my arms.
“Tell them who you met,” I growled.
Silence settled over the room.
Chasm looked around the table before answering.
“I was meeting a man named Hemlock. He is King’s younger brother, but King didn’t know at the time.”
“How many fucking brothers does he have?”
“Three. Two now,” I answered. “Ravage of the Golden Skulls is King’s brother. Ravage’s father is Morpheus.”
The name landed exactly as expected.
Even after everything we’d learned, it was still fucking ridiculous how many members of King’s family had spent years moving through the same underworld without knowing the blood connection between them.
“What about Hemlock?” Baltimore asked.
“Hemlock was the twin brother to Shamrock. Also in the Golden Skulls. Shamrock was killed by Reaper when all that shit went down with Reaper’s mother and the Society. Their father is Snoopy from the Soulless Sinners.”
“Jesus, and King didn’t know about any of them?” Smokey asked.
“King didn’t know O’Malley was his father until this past December,” Ace explained, then he looked at Chasm. “You gonna tell them who your brother is?”
“You have a brother?” Tito asked.
Chasm released a long breath.
The hesitation on his face didn’t surprise me. Men like us learned early that information was leverage and family was a weakness someone could exploit. Keeping your mouth shut could keep a person alive.
Except secrets had a nasty habit of eventually choosing their own time to come out.
“My brother is Justin Peterson, also known as Shame from the Soulless Sinners. And since we’re laying it all out, my father was Samuel Peterson.”
“The fucking cult leader?” Psycho shouted.
“The one and only. Justin and I didn’t grow up with him. We barely knew him. Our mothers raised us. We also have a sister. Janelle Ingalls.”
Recognition crossed several of the older members’ faces.
“Who is Janelle Ingalls?” someone asked.
“The wife of Karl Ingalls Sr., the former governor of Alabama.” Chasm looked around the table. “Now, with all that shit out there, you still want me?”
For the first time since we arrived, he had nowhere left to hide.
These men knew who his father was, who his brother was, what he’d concealed from King, and what his own suspicions had cost him.
“Hell yes!” Cobra shouted.
Fists hit the table as the rest joined him.
Chasm’s shoulders loosened.
They knew the man standing in front of them and chose him anyway.
My hand went instinctively toward the phone in my pocket.
Fiona had been trying to tell me something for months. Something she thought could change the way I saw her. I’d told her it wouldn’t.
Standing there watching Chasm’s brothers prove the same thing to him made me wonder how long it would take before she believed me enough to test that promise.
“Alright. Then let’s get started.” Chasm finally released the chair. “I’m not going to assign anything. We make these decisions together. Who do you want for Veep?”
“B!” the men shouted.
“Fucking hell,” Zombie cursed.
Chasm grinned. “King said you were willing to be my VP, but you didn’t want to be president.”
“King’s a fucking liar. I never said shit about being VP.”
Chasm threw his head back and laughed.
For the first time since we arrived, he looked less like a man trying to decide whether he still belonged here and more like the brother these men remembered.
“All in favor of B being Veep?”
The response nearly shook the damn room.
They moved through the remaining positions, rebuilding the club one patch at a time. I listened, but this wasn’t my circle to shape. These men would have to live with the decisions made around that table long after Ace and I returned to Nebraska.
And, if I had anything to say about it, long after I finally made it to Virginia.
I touched the phone through my pocket.
Fiona had said she was tired of missing me.
So was I.
That didn’t mean I could abandon Chasm in the middle of this, but it sure as hell meant I was counting every day it took to finish.
Once the final decision had been made, Chasm looked around the table.
“Things are going to be different here. Church won’t just be the officers; it will be everyone. We’re brothers. We do this shit together, or we don’t do it at all.”
“Together!” everyone shouted.
Chasm finally lowered himself into the president’s chair.
He still looked uncomfortable there. I figured that was probably one of the best arguments for keeping his ass in it. Voices filled the room and fists struck the table as men welcomed back a brother they’d believed dead and accepted him as the man who would lead them forward.
I was happy for Chasm.
I was.
But somewhere beneath it lived the memory of a seventeen-year-old girl sitting beside me in front of a fireplace and asking whether girls like her ever got a happily ever after.
I’d told her yes.
Nine months later, I was beginning to understand just how badly I wanted to be right.