Trigger (Satan’s Worshippers MC #4)

Chapter 1

1

Trigger

I leaned over the engine, trying to force my long, thick fingers to screw on the nut needed to secure this fucking alternator in place, but car manufacturers never made these spaces big enough for men like me. I’d bought this piece of shit truck a few months ago, but I was about damn ready to just push it off a bridge. It was proving to be a lot more trouble than it was actually worth, and I was over it. Sure, it gave me something to do on days like today, where shit wasn’t happening, but this mother fucker should’ve been running already.

“Still working on that piece of shit?” Geek asked, coming to lean against the fender. He was holding a beer in his left hand, and he braced his right forearm on the truck to lean over so he could see what I was doing. Nosy fucker.

Geek was our tech guy. We had Scorpion—the president of the Texas Charter—who was practically a tech genius, but we needed someone here in the mother charter, too. Johnston had pulled strings to get him out of prison when he got wind of a hacker being locked up, and Geek had been our Treasurer ever since then, which was a couple of years now. He was a genius at laundering club money, and he was even better at hacking into shit we had no business putting our fingers in. If Johnston, our president, ever asked Geek to hack the FBI, I had no doubt Geek could accomplish it—and would gleefully do it.

None of us knew where he got his skills from, but we weren’t going to ask either. Sometimes, it was just better not knowing.

“Don’t you have some database to hack or something?” I asked, sighing when I finally got the nut on. Fuck, that took forever. I grabbed the wrench I needed and worked on tightening it while hoping Geek would fuck off somewhere.

I missed my woman, and I just wanted to be left the fuck alone. She’d been mopey this morning when I’d called her, and while I knew Chase, the Vice President of the Texas Charter and her old man, would take care of her, it didn’t make this achy feeling inside of me any easier to deal with.

Sophia, who had already been claimed by Chase, and I had started our relationship a little over a year ago when she’d been tipsy and wanted to be shared. Chase, wanting to give her everything she desired, let it happen. But she’d gotten hooked, and so had I. Chase and I were making it work for her sake, and neither of us was jealous of the other.

In fact, I was head over goddamn heels for Chase too, but the man was as straight as a man could be.

“Nah. Did that while eating breakfast this morning,” Geek teased.

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “What do you want, Geek?”

He harrumphed but got on with whatever he was actually bothering me for. “Johnston asked me to come get you. Said he needs to talk to you about something.”

Damn . If the Prez was calling me to his office, he needed me to take care of something. And as his Sergeant at Arms and being ex-SEAL, I was his number one option to take care of shit that needed to be done quietly and with a low profile.

I finished tightening the nut onto the bolt and set my wrench aside. Grabbing my grease rag, which was dangling over the raised hood, I wiped my hands on it. “He say what about?”

Geek shook his head. “Nah. Seemed pissed though.” Just great . Johnston was an asshole when he was angry. Geek lifted his beer to his lips, swallowing a healthy swig. “Then again, Johnston always seems pissed.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong.

I snorted and grabbed my wrench, tossing it into the tool bag at my feet before reaching up to close the hood. “Let him know I’ll meet him in his office as soon as I wash my hands,” I told him. The hood closed with a slam that made Geek curl his lip at me. He wasn’t a fan of loud noises.

“I’ll let him know.” Turning, Geek headed back toward the clubhouse. Picking up my tool bag, I tossed it into the driver’s seat of my truck before slamming the door shut and heading inside. Heading to the bathroom just inside the clubhouse, I scrubbed my hands clean with the Fast Orange hand cleaner, then headed down the hall toward Johnston’s office.

He was already seated behind his desk and waiting for me when I knocked on the open door. Without looking up, he beckoned me in. “Shut the door behind you.”

I did as he instructed before shoving my hands into the pockets of my cargo pants. “What’s up, Prez?” I asked

Johnston was a cold-blooded monster. The only thing in this world he truly gave a fuck about was his wife, Aaliyah. He ran this charter and the Texas charter with an iron-clad fist, and if any of us stepped out of line, we had him to contend with. None of us were afraid of him, but we did respect him. Because Johnston gave us all a place to belong when the rest of society deemed us unfit. He’d given us a home and a second chance at life.

That was something that could never truly be repaid.

He grabbed some pictures off his desk and tossed them in my direction. I grabbed them before they could scatter to the floor, my jaw clenching at what I saw. Someone had been stalking Aaliyah, and she was clearly unaware the pictures were being taken. In each picture, she was doing regular day-to-day things: sweeping the porch, grocery shopping, getting her nails done, getting her hair done, shopping for clothes.

“What the absolute fuck,” I growled.

Johnston leaned back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arm rests, linking his tattooed fingers together over his flat stomach. “These were waiting for me on the seat of my bike this morning,” Johnston informed me. “They left a note with it.” Reaching forward, he snatched a piece of paper off the desk and handed it to me.

In blocky letters on plain, white printer paper, the note read:

Give me what I want, Trim, or she’s next .

My stomach clenched. About a year ago, the woman I was madly in fucking love with had been brutally beaten and raped and left unconscious behind the bakery display case in her bookstore. Chase had been watching her through the cameras at her store, essentially stalking her. He’d rushed to get to her as fast as he could, but he hadn’t gotten there in time to stop what’d happened.

Sophia still hadn’t fully recovered from what happened to her—not mentally. And I knew every fucking day, Chase lived with the guilt of not saving her in time, even if he never let her see it. And I knew most days when he looked at his hands, he still saw them stained with her blood.

And now, these mother fuckers were threatening to do the same thing to Johnston’s wife.

“What’s the plan here?” I demanded, setting the note on his desk. I wouldn’t let these assholes touch another woman, especially not one who belonged to this club and one I looked at like a sister.

Johnston scratched at his jaw. “You’re going to the Texas Charter’s clubhouse and staying there until you find the son of a bitch responsible for stalking my woman and thinking he can threaten her. This is clearly Russian-related. They’ll get our territory and my woman over my dead fucking body,” he snarled.

I nodded once. “Understood.” I was the Sergeant at Arms of the Mother Charter for a reason. I wasn’t afraid of putting my life on the line. The only two people I had to live for also had each other. They’d be okay if I didn’t make it out of a situation alive. Besides, Chase definitely wasn’t even into me like I was him. Did we occasionally share his wife, and were Sophia and I sort-of together? Yes. But while I was pansexual and definitely also in love with Chase, he’d given no hint so far that he was into me.

“I want you on the road and headed to Texas as soon as possible,” Johnston ordered. “I’ll touch base with Scorpion and inform him of what’s going on. For now, I want this under wraps.” He looked up at me and rested his elbows on his desk before steepling his fingers together and resting his chin on them. “You can tell Chase.” My lips quirked in amusement. Chase and I had kept my relationship with Sophia a secret, but nothing slipped past this man. “But Sophia does not get told, understand?”

I nodded once. “Understood, Prez.”

I left his office after he dismissed me and headed up the stairs, pulling my phone up to my ear to let Sophia know I was coming to Texas. “Hello?”

I smiled at the sound of her sweet voice. Nothing in this world could calm me like she could.

I could hear chatter in the background and the sound of a coffee machine, which meant she was more than likely at her store and somewhere around the cafe/bakery part of her bookstore. She was always running around during the day, and while I knew Chase did his best to help take some of the load off her shoulders, she still very much preferred to be in control of every aspect of her business.

“Hey, sunshine,” I greeted. “I’m about to shower and pack, and then, I’m headed to you.”

“Really?” Her surprise and happiness made my heart do funny things in my chest. Fuck, I loved this woman so goddamn much.

“Yeah, sunshine. Really.”

“Sophia, I need help at the register,” I heard one of her employees say, cutting into our conversation. Sophia sighed.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” Sophia told her. “Trigger, I need to go.” Her voice was full of sadness. She hated when our time was interrupted, and I did, too, but she was a businesswoman—and a damn good one at that. “I’m sorry. But I’m so fucking excited you’re coming.”

“Me, too. Go work. I’ll touch base with Chase in a bit.”

When we ended the call, I set my phone on the bathroom counter and worked on stripping out of my clothes so I could shower. I had just turned the water on when my burner phone vibrated from my room. I quickly left the bathroom and snatched it off my nightstand, answering Chase’s call. Figured Sophia would tell him, and Chase wasn’t going to let it go until he was in the loop.

“What’s going on, Trigger?” Chase demanded as soon as I answered, not even giving me a moment to say anything.

I snorted. “Hello to you, too,” I sarcastically greeted.

He sighed. “Cut the shit,” he snapped. I rolled my eyes at his brash attitude. “You never come here unless something’s going on. What’s happening?”

I sighed. “Not over the phone,” I told him. I didn’t care that it was a burner and a secure line. This was sensitive information, and Johnston was being tight-lipped about it for now. I wouldn’t break his trust in me. “I’ll tell you what’s going on when I get there, alright?”

Chase made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, but I knew he understood. He hadn’t become a VP for no reason.

“Fine. You can bunk with me and Soph while you’re here if you want.”

I chuckled. “You really think your old lady is about to let me sleep anywhere else, Chase?”

He sighed. “She’s your woman, too, Trigger, even if you’re not here that often.”

Yeah… I knew she was. What had started as a night of fun for the three of us had turned into something long-term. Sophia had gotten attached, even if I’d done everything I could to keep it from happening. But Chase… he didn’t mind, even if I originally thought he would. He was so territorial when it came to Sophia, but he also never denied her anything that she really wanted.

And she wanted me. And fuck, knowing that sweet woman wanted me as much as she wanted her old man… it was a heady, addictive feeling. I never wanted to lose it.

Chase loved seeing Sophia thrive, especially after what had happened to her. I was sure some of his decisions surrounding Sophia could be attributed to his guilt, but I knew the bigger part of his reasoning was that he just loved seeing her happy.

And fuck, I did, too. Seeing her glowing was just… there were no words for it, honestly.

“I’ll be there in a few hours,” I told him. “I’ll be riding in by myself.”

Chase grunted, his distaste clear. “Don’t like it, but be careful.”

“Always am,” I assured him.

He hung up, and I set my phone back down on the nightstand, my chest aching.

Wanting someone who clearly didn’t want me in the same way fucking sucked .