28. Hollywood
28
HOLLYWOOD
“W hew,” Leo said, shaking his head as I came to visit him for the first time since everything went down. “I must tell you, my friend. I was happy to hear you’d made it out alive.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Don’t fuck with me. You’d be happy if she put a bullet in all our heads.”
Leo shrugged and fiddled with a cuff link on his collared shirt. “Perhaps most of your brothers, but not you. You’re one of the ones worth saving.”
“Don’t flatter me,” I said, and he grinned in that friendly, charismatic way that made me want to forget the bad history between our families. The jury was still out on whether we could actually trust him.
In the days since Gabriella had attacked, Julia had been by to catch up with her brother and bring him some of his own amenities. Their interactions were still monitored by Bear just in case they decided to swing back to supporting their dear ole auntie. But I’d seen what Gabriella had done to Julia, what she had allowed to happen to her own niece. If I were Leo, I’d want Gabriella’s head on a spike, so I was inclined to think he was on our side. Julia hadn’t been back to her family’s estate, but if our plan was going to work, she’d have to be even more clandestine than she was before. She couldn’t stage a successful coup from the outside.
Clad in expensive trousers and designer shoes, Leo looked every bit the Caputi mobster he’d been raised to be. If I hadn’t spent the better part of the last three months with him, I wouldn’t believe he’d come around. But I’d seen him at his most vulnerable, and if there were one Caputi I could tolerate, it would be him.
“I never thanked you for this,” Leo said, turning to face me while he shucked his jacket over his shoulders. “For helping me, for healing me.”
“It wasn’t like I had much of a choice.” I crossed my arms, hiding a wince when my abused cock rubbed against my boxers. V had taken it out on me last night, making me come over and over again until I sobbed and begged for mercy. I could barely walk this morning.
“Doesn’t matter why you did it.” Leo let out a low, sardonic laugh and cupped my cheek, the cool metal of his rings brushing against my jawline. “You have me in your debt.”
“Just don’t fuck us over, okay?” I straightened and nodded toward the back door. “Bear is going to agree to marry Julia, and once we’re family, that changes things, but ...” I cleared my throat and shook my head. “Most of the MC is waiting for you to betray us.”
Leo pursed his lips and narrowed his dark eyes. “Most of the support my sister has managed to secure has similar concerns about the Roses.”
“Well, I guess we both need to be vulnerable and trust each other, don’t we?” I held out my hand for him to shake, and he grinned before taking it in his own.
“My aunt has overstepped for the last time,” Leo said. “I won’t have her treat my sister like this any longer, and as you said, I am tired of this war. It was started by people who aren’t even players on the chessboard any longer.”
“The Roses feel the same way.” I clapped him on the shoulder and brushed my hand over his Tom Ford, smoothing away a piece of lint. “Including Bear.”
“Answer me this, Hollywood,” Leo said, dropping his voice an octave lower. “Will he be good to my sister? Will he treat her with the respect she deserves?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. I didn’t even have to think about it. “He doesn’t date very much, but when he does, he’s serious ... and he’s serious about ending this war.”
Leo nodded, seemingly appeased by this answer. “Well, then. I suppose we ought to get going.”
A few brothers had come with me to escort Leo to church today, and if all went well, we’d arrange for a bigger meeting with the underbosses Julia had managed to sway to her side.
Of all the people in this mess with us, she walked the tightest rope. But Saint and Leo both assured us Julia had been playing this game for a long time. She’d be able to do it for a little while longer. Leo walked with a cane these days, but that added to his reformed mobster enigma.
I helped him into the back of the SUV before going around to the other side and hopping in so a prospect could drive us the few minutes to our clubhouse.
When I’d first gotten out of the hospital, the SRMC’s home away from home had been wrecked by the Feds. We weren’t morons, so we didn’t keep anything valuable lying around there, but they had smashed everything to shit. Now all these weeks later, we’d set most of it right, but the place still didn’t feel back to normal without all the brothers it had once housed.
Crow’s and Aris’s absence sat like a heavy weight on our chests, not to mention the people we’d buried only a few weeks ago. We’d lost five brothers in one day, and Hollister still had a shaved head, showing off the scar he would carry around for the rest of his life. He’d gotten lucky that Gabriella’s hand had jerked from the recoil. Any lower, and he would have died, too.
We’d gathered for our first church since the change in leadership. And words could not describe the mix of excitement and pressure in my heart that this group of motley motherfuckers had elected me as their road captain. I’d never be able to replace Slip, but I was damn sure going to try. I sneaked Leo in through the back door, keeping him hidden in one of the back rooms until the time was right to bring him in.
Some of the Roses still had mixed feelings about the Caputi kingpin, so I didn’t want him wandering around just in case anyone got a wild hair up their ass and decided to ruin this whole thing before it started.
“Is he secure?” Thor asked when I walked into the meeting room. As sarge, it was his duty to keep the Roses in line, and between the two of us, we needed to get Leo back to the safe house in one piece.
“He’s secure, and he’s ready,” I said, walking to my spot at the SRMC table to the right of Bear. I nodded to KC across from me, who sat in the VP spot while Aris was in the pen, and looked at our enforcer, Doc, to my right, smoking a cigarette while he talked to Wheels, who had taken the treasurer position as Coins’s replacement.
“Everything okay?” KC asked while the other brothers filled in around us.
“Peachy keen,” I said with a smile, and once the rest of the MC had taken their place, our new veep stood to bang his rings on the table and bring church to order.
“Brothers,” KC said, silencing the chatter around us. “We have a quick meeting today, so everyone shut the fuck up and listen in.”
“Thank you, KC,” Bear said, standing in the spot at the head of the table where his father had once led these meetings. “You know why we’re here and what we have to do next. After what happened, we need to be more careful than ever. The pigs are breathing down our necks, just waiting for us to make our next move. The Hell’s Knights have refused our offer of a truce. And there’s a Caputi bitch that needs to be repaid for what she took from us.”
Hollers of approval came from around us, and I caught bits of “Kill that bitch,” and “Hang her head from the fucking rafters.”
“The last time we met, we talked about an alliance with Leo Caputi,” Bear continued, and a hush fell over the group, the tension increasing with each passing second. “I agreed to marry Julia Caputi if it would bring an end to this blood feud.”
“You don’t have to do that,” someone shouted.
“I agree,” Doc said. “We should kill the entire family and be done with it.”
“A war cannot be brought to peace with more blood,” Bear said, glaring at Doc in a challenge for him to say more. “They own DC, and we’ll never be able to take over the territory without their help.”
Doc pursed his lips and inhaled deeper on his cigarette.
“So, I’ve invited our houseguest here so you can hear it from him,” Bear said, giving the prospects at the back of the room a nod to bring Leo in. Leather rustled as the door opened to reveal the Caputi heir, looking every bit his namesake in his suit and diamond-encrusted jewelry. He leaned on his cane while he walked closer, but other than that one sign of weakness, he kept his head held high, exuding the confidence he’d need in order to stand tall in this room of killers who all wanted to bathe in his blood.
“Roses, this is Leo Caputi,” Bear said, gesturing Leo to come stand next to him. “My future brother-in-law, our only hope to end this war.”
My heart pounded, arguably the loudest sound in the room, when everyone went quiet and stared at him.
“Are you sure we can trust him?” another brother asked. “How do we know he won’t kill us all the moment he gets a chance?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Leo said. “Of everyone in your club, how many of you have killed my family?”
“No more than your family has killed ours,” Doc sneered, returning his gaze to Bear. “C’mon, Prez. This is fucking batshit cr?—”
Bear slammed his hands down on the wood, interrupting whatever Doc would have said after that, and leaned closer to the dissenting brother.
“Gabriella Caputi sold my sister to the Hell’s Knights for information. She made our women watch while she shot our brothers in cold blood. Do you want your sister to share that same fate?” Bear raised his eyebrows, waiting for Doc to respond. When he didn’t, the acting president straightened and glanced around to the rest of the room. “I have spent my entire life in this war. I’ve killed for it. I’ve bled for it. I’ve lost family for it.” He cleared his throat when he got choked up at the mention of his mother and our fallen brothers. “I’m tired.”
“You’ve had time to speak your mind,” Thor said, glancing around at our brothers. “This isn’t a dictatorship, but it’s also not a fucking democracy. This is what we’re doing. If you can’t live with it, see me about removing the patch from your cut.”
At that, the tension in the club eased. They wouldn’t risk being cast out over this, and even if they were wary, they trusted Bear’s opinion. They trusted my opinion and Thor’s.
“All right then,” Bear said, turning to Leo.
“Thank you, Bear,” Leo said, putting both hands on top of his cane as he rested it in front of him and looked out over the group of gathered bikers, his former enemies turned unwilling allies. “Gentlemen, let’s get to work.”