Chapter Forty-Three
Zeppelin
Misty’s okay. She’s handling what happened a lot better than I fucking am, and she’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever met before. No one has given me an update on what the plan is to take out Butch, so I’m bringing it up tonight.
Butch may have gotten away with what he did to Mom because of the danger back then. I don’t necessarily forgive Johnny for the decision, but I understand it. And Butch has gotten lucky that we can’t prove he killed Johnny, so he’s still breathing for that.
But what he did to Misty? What he tried to do? Fuck him. Fuck his club. I want them all dead.
Including Wylie.
They may have saved Butch that night when I attended to Misty, but they can’t protect him forever. This will be the last thing he does to my family.
No one quite makes eye contact with me as they filter into the Chapel, and my stomach flips. I can’t help but think this means we’re not getting revenge.
Just like with Mom. And Johnny. Now Misty.
Pacino finally meets my eye, and I see it. The confirmation.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Zep—”
“Save it.”
Why am I even wearing this patch? This kutte? This club is my legacy, but it’s working against me now. Fighting against me. Not standing by me when I need them most.
Well, if that’s the case, fuck them all.
Jethro walks in, and I glare at him as he sits down. “How’s Misty holding up?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good,” he says. “I guess you got something you wanna get off your chest. Go ahead.”
He bangs the gavel on the table, and I lower my hands to my lap, fisting them into balls. “Why is Butch Fucking Ballard still alive?”
“Because we can’t kill him,” Jethro says.
His tone comes across like he’s talking to a child. I’m not a child, and I sure as hell am not his child. “Why the hell not?”
“Because it’s complicated,” Capone says.
For some reason, when he says it, I believe it. He’d be one of the first to help me kill a man who hurt my girl. Him and Kannon. But it still doesn’t explain.
“What’s so damn complicated? We have the proof. I fucking witnessed it. I stopped it. Pulling him off of her, and you and everyone else saw how beat up she was. What makes it complicated? Why can’t I take out the bastard who tried to…”
I can’t even say the words. Vomit rises in my throat as I think back to what almost happened.
What I saw him doing to her is something no man should ever have to witness, let alone with the woman he loves.
It keeps me awake at night. When I close my eyes, I see the scene in my mind, and I don’t want to fall asleep because I know I’ll dream about it, too.
This is where Misty’s proven she’s stronger than me. She still has nightmares, but she pushes through. I’m the one who gets stuck and spirals.
“He’s currently untouchable unless we want to fuck ourselves,” Pacino says.
“You know, it would be really fucking helpful to stop me from ripping all of your heads from your bodies and tossing them against the walls like basketballs if you just… you know… FUCKING EXPLAINED!”
It’s true. Right now, I’m envisioning ripping Jethro’s head off his body, leaving blood spurting from his neck as his body lies slack against the chair, and smashing his face into the wall.
I might have a slight anger problem. I’ve had the exact same dream with Butch, but he actually deserves the gore.
“He has more cops than just Vold in his pocket,” Penn says.
This is what counts as explaining? “So?”
“So, if anything happens to him, we all go down. But you will be the main target,” Pacino says.
“Fucking let them!”
“If that happens, there is no one to protect Misty or Bernie or Lainey, or your mom,” Jethro says. “Getting revenge will put them in danger. Butch will take whatever he wants, and no one will be able to stop him.”
“Except he’ll be fucking dead,” I remind them.
Putting his hands up, I know he’s placating me. Which pisses me off even more. Maybe recommending him to take that head seat wasn’t my best decision.
“Okay, so maybe Butch won’t. But you really think the rest of his club wouldn’t take their revenge out on your family?” he asks. “His club is so blindly loyal that they’ll still function as though he’s the one wearing that PRESIDENT patch.”
Looking around the room, I try to find someone—anyone, really—who backs me. But even Kannon looks resigned to this fact. But what did I really expect? No one here has a woman to defend the honor of. To take her pain personally like I do.
I’m the only one who feels the pain. For Mom. For Misty. For fucking Johnny.
“So that’s it?” I ask, my hands shaking as I seethe.
“We’re not letting it go,” Pacino says.
“Pacino—”
“Jethro, we’re not,” he says. “We just have to be smart about this. We can’t kill the club and put everyone in harm’s way because we want revenge.”
Capone leans forward and turns to look me in the eyes. “And we want revenge. No one should get away with what Butch did to Misty. But we don’t want to risk letting what you stopped actually happen because we’re either dead or behind bars.”
Leave it to Capone to be the voice of reason. There’s something in his gaze that calms me. He understands how this feels somehow. He’s just as pissed as I am.
“We’re going to do what we can to weaken the Venom. And when we do, we’re going to strike. We will cut their fucking heads off,” Pacino says. “But we can’t do it before we have our ducks in a row.”
I hate this. I really fucking hate this. All I want is revenge. “How do I go home and tell my girl that my club is doing fucking nothing about what happened to her?”
My question blankets the room in silence. Apparently in their thought process about how we can’t kill the bastard, they never thought about how to break the news to the woman who was attacked.
A new fear fills me. What if Misty no longer feels safe? If my club won’t take out the man who hurt her, what fucking good are we? Why expose herself or Bernie to us?
“How do I tell her that we’re not taking care of our own?” I ask again, but this time, I look right at Jethro. “You realize how that makes us look? Like a bunch of fucking pussies.”
“Zep—”
“I get it. You don’t have a woman who was directly hurt by the president of our rival club.
You don’t have to explain anything to her.
Why it happened. Why she was targeted. Why we’re not cutting off his balls, bronzing them, and hanging them from the fucking mantle like a prize.
But I do. I have multiple people in my family hurt by the same motherfucker. ”
Capone runs a hand over his face. “Maybe I can call in a favor. That way it’s not us directly.”
“No,” Jethro says. “It’ll still get us taken out.”
“We can’t do nothing,” Pacino says. “Zep’s right. How do we just act like it’s okay?”
Finally, someone’s on my side. Two someone’s, actually.
“It’s not okay. And I’ll tell Misty that myself,” Jethro says. “But I have to be the voice of reason right now. Emotions are running high, and we’re all pissed. I know you don’t believe that, Zep—”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “We will do something. We just have to be strategic about it. If we go in all guns blazing, we’re fucking ourselves as well as Misty and Bernie. We should never go into battle knowing our loved ones will be collateral damage.”
Fuck. He has a point. I don’t like it, but he does.
“So what are we fucking doing, then?” I ask.
Pacino smirks. “First of all, I’m going to figure out which cops are on Butch’s payroll, and we’re going to take them out. Not quite as dramatically as you took out Vold’s house, though. We need a bit of subtlety.”
Remembering the fire makes me smile. “But it was fun.”
“Yeah, I bet,” he says with a chuckle. “Once the cops are taken care of, we’re going to make attacks that weaken them. When we finally go all in and kill Butch, we want to demolish the entire fucking club.”
“And hopefully get rid of Venom Dust while we’re at it,” Kannon says. “We just lost one of our new girls to that shit.”
That’s something. “What kind of timeframe are we looking at?”
All eyes shift to the table, walls, or ceiling. Anywhere but at me. “It’s going to take us some time,” Jethro says. “But we will make sure this happens.”
“I’ll see what Misty has to say. If she’s feels like we’re a bunch of pussies for it… I’m out.”
I never thought I’d say those words, but it’s the truth. If our actions mean I lose her respect, the patch means nothing. It used to stand for honor and courage. Everything that’s happened since Johnny’s death has changed that a bit for me.
“I can’t stop you,” Jethro says.
“But I think Misty will understand,” Rooster says. “She’ll understand the risk of diving in headfirst. And I think she’ll appreciate that her safety is a huge factor in this decision.”
He’s right. He’s scared of fucking birds, but he has common sense. Sometimes.
“Okay. Anything else we need to discuss?”