Chapter Thirteen
N ow Mel thought his head was going to explode right off his shoulders.
He was so angry his heart pounded, his hands shook—fuck, even his vision was wonky; enough rage really could make you see red.
And oh, he had enough rage. Angry at Maniac, at the whole Montana charter, at his own charter, at himself, and worst of all, now he was angry at Abigail.
He’d hurt her? How in the fuck had he hurt her? By defending her? That was some serious bullshit.
Okay, so she didn’t take offense at Maniac’s bitch’s nastiness. She could be as Gandhi as she wanted, that was great, admirable even, but how in the ever-loving FUCK was he wrong for taking offense on her behalf? How could that possibly have hurt her?
What a fucking mess. He had no clue how to sort it out, but there was no fucking way he was going to apologize for defending her.
Yanking the clubhouse door open so hard it slammed back against the wall, he stepped into the Hall—and found himself in an even bigger mess.
He’d been gone like five minutes, but in that time, a war had happened. Chairs were busted, tables upended. Food and liquid was smeared everywhere. The chess game was wrecked—and maybe the chess table itself. Again.
Men sat on the floor, leaned against the bar, slumped in the sofas, bleeding, bruised, and disheveled.
A battalion of women moved through the carnage, tending to wounds or trying to clean up.
The men who’d either been uninjured or had shaken it off were collecting broken furniture.
Isaac and Showdown, neither looking too banged up, crouched in the corner, gathering the remnants of their game.
Mel had been in enough brawls to be impressed at the damage but not especially surprised. When a brawl got started, a handful of men could tear a room apart in about a minute. Two MC charters was a sight more than a handful of men.
Good thing SoCal wasn’t here yet.
Off to the side, between the hallway to the kitchen and storage rooms and the hallway to Badger’s office and the warehouse, Badger, Double A, Rhett, and Gravy stood in an angry cluster.
Rhett was growling something at Badger, and when he shoved his pointed finger in Badger’s chest, Badger knocked it away and stepped in, going chest-to-chest with the Montana president.
Double A grabbed his president’s shoulder, holding him back. Gravy did not do the same with his president. Dub tossed an angry look at Gravy and then saw Mel watching. He made a karate-chop wave of his free hand, summoning him over.
Mel headed that direction, but there wasn’t an ice cube’s chance in hell he was taking responsibility for whatever had happened while he was in the fucking parking lot . His thing with Maniac had been over when he’d left.
In general he was a laid-back guy, but today he was a rage monster.
Both Badge and Dub gaped at him when he charged right up to them.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened here, but it ain’t on me,” he barked as he came up on the snarling knot of presidents and veeps.
“My shit with Maniac was done when I left.” Saying that name made him realize he hadn’t seen that crazy fucker in the debris. “Where is that fucker, anyway?”
“He’s back in a bunk,” Badger answered. “Tash is with him. Cox fuckin’ cut him.”
“And I want his goddamn head for it,” Rhett snarled at Badger, clearly not for the first time.
Now Mel had an idea about how the brawl had gotten started. If anybody was going to start slashing, Cox was fairly high on the list of likely doers, but not without a good reason. He was a hothead, but he aimed true, no matter how hot he got.
“If Cox cut him, Maniac deserved it.”
At Mel’s statement, Gravy turned on him and grabbed him by the kutte. “You watch your fuckin’ mouth, boy,” the ugly asshole gritted.
Mel yanked Gravy’s hand free. “Don’t you fuckin’ touch me, you piece of shit.”
Double A goggled at him, clearly shocked by Mel’s shiny new personality transplant. Under his rage, Mel was pretty shocked himself.
Gravy cocked a fist, and Mel stepped in, daring him to go for it. And he meant it, too; in this moment, he wanted nothing in the world like he wanted to pull apart the mismatched pieces of the old asshole’s face.
“FUCK!” Badger yelled, loud enough to catch the attention of the whole Hall. “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING HERE?”
The room went quiet. Even Rhett and Gravy backed off a little.
Into that sliver of relative peace, Mel asked, “Where’s Cox?” If an altercation between him and Maniac got this mess going, why wasn’t he getting pulled into this tribunal instead of Mel?
“He’s hurt, isn’t he?” he added, putting the equation together.
Double A nodded. “He got dogpiled after Maniac went down, so yeah, he took some lumps. Not bad, but enough to need some tending. Autumn’s cleaning him up.”
Mel almost chuckled. At first glance—second glance, too—Autumn Rooney, a VP at the development company that owned the Signal Bend Pavilion, was a prissy little urban corporate princess.
She was about five feet tall and wore ankle-breaking heels and fancy suits with snugly tailored skirts.
But inside all that she was a tough little chick, and she’d taped Cox back together several times.
At first glance—and second—crabby, hotheaded Cox and elegant, sophisticated Autumn were a wild mismatch as a couple. But damn if they weren’t making it work.
Badger sucked in a huge breath and gusted it out. He put up a finger and made a circle, indicating the four men around him. “My office. Let’s go.”
Without waiting for agreement or demurral, he spun on his bootheel and stalked down the hallway. Double A tipped his head in that direction, indicating that they should follow, and did so himself.
Rhett and Gravy hesitated, conferring in a look.
Mel waited, too. Though he was a mere soldier in the club, had no standing to be summoned to a top-tier meeting, and though he absolutely would not be taking any blame for whatever mess had happened, he absolutely meant to be the back of the line, to make sure Montana’s officers complied.
After a good minute, finally Rhett stepped toward the hallway. Gravy glared hard at Mel, waiting for him to move. Mel glared back, also waiting.
Gravy blinked first—actually, he rolled his eyes, but he turned toward the hallway—and Mel followed him to Badger’s office.
––––––––
~oOo~
––––––––
F ive men hardly constituted a crowd, but Badger’s office was small and packed with sixty-some years of Horde shit.
For seating, there was a sagging old couch along one wall, an old wheeled chair at the desk, and an ancient vinyl kitchen chair sitting beside the desk, buried under a shaggy, two-foot tower of papers that looked like the first jostle would send them scattering.
Badger took his desk chair. Rhett and Gravy took the sides of the couch.
With a shared look, Double A and Mel agreed that neither would be taking up the narrow space between those sons of bitches, so they’d both stand.
Dub stood before the rickety, rusted file cabinet, and Mel stationed himself against the closed door.
Badger spoke first. “Rhett, you and yours are guests in our house. For guests, and family, too, we make allowances, in the name of hospitality and friendship. But fucking Christ, man. Y’all are taking liberties.”
Rhett’s frown went so deep, Mel expected him to surge forward, maybe even get to his feet.
Instead, he settled in, stretching his arm across the back of the couch, spanning the empty space between him and Gravy.
“You think we’re takin’ liberties?” he rasped.
“You think you’re bein’ hospitable? Your man cut mine open.
If Gravy here didn’t pull him off, he might’ve done more’n that. How exactly is that hospitable ?”
Gravy’s crazy-quilt face was inscrutable. “It ain’t.”
Mel had some gaps that needed filling. “What started the shit between Cox and Maniac?”
“You did, asshole,” Gravy snarled.
Mel turned to Badger and asked with his eyebrows what the fuck that meant.
The Missouri president released one of his long-suffering sighs. “When you went after Abigail, Maniac called her fat.”
“No,” Double A challenged. “You weren’t in earshot.
I was. What he said was, ‘Come on now, that bitch is a cow. He likes plowing lard, that’s his business, and if he’s got a complex about it, it’s his problem.
’” Outrage rolled Mel’s fists up tight, but Double A was smiling as he continued, “Cox was standing in reach, and his blade was sunk before Maniac finished talkin’.
Far as I saw, he didn’t react any other way, just popped his switch, pushed it in, and gave a twist.”
“Wipe that fuckin’ grin off your face before I do it for ya,” Gravy threatened. Double A stopped smiling, but not in a way that could be mistaken for compliance.
Gravy went on, “Coulda killed Manie, all over some petty little chick shit. Y’all are some real pussies—lettin’ women run your show, runnin’ into the middle of their bickerin’, takin’ true brothers down over chick shit that don’t fuckin’ matter.
It’s embarrassin’ enough to have a mother charter sittin’ around throwin’ fuckin’ cheeseball town fairs and buildin’ fuckin’ shoppin’ malls when the rest of us are doin’ real work, but goddamn.
Y’all straight-up handed your balls over to the bitches.
I can’t believe y’all was ever anything worth a damn.
That fuckin’ movie they made back in the day was a real make-believe fairy tale, wasn’t it?
Don’t deserve the cred that comes with this patch. ”
Mel’s lungs froze solid. He shifted his attention to Badger, who sat like a statue, motionless and expressionless.