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Ghost puts his hand on my shoulder. “Bonnie, meet Jessica and Anne. Anne is Kane’s daughter. They’re our leverage to get Cooper back.”
She looks me straight in the eyes, assessing, then shifts her gaze to Anne. Her face softens a little and she sighs. "So what? You just assume that since I'm a woman, I'm the one that's supposed to babysit? What's next? Need me to go into the kitchen and make you a sandwich?"
Scattered laughs sound through the church.
Hellfire stands and flings his bottle straight into the wall where it shatters. The place goes silent. "Take them back with you. Keep them safe and secure while we figure this dumpster fire out. That’s a fucking order. Unless you want to be responsible for putting a damn twelve-year-old in one of the cells."
Bonnie’s back straightens and she nods. "Understood.” She waves to us. "Come on. You two look like you’re about to fall over. Let’s get away from all this testosterone." When we don't move right away, Ghost gives me a shove.
This time, Anne and I hurry after her.
8
TEX
I settleto the side next to Riot, and watch Jessica and Anne follow Bonnie out the side entrance. Jessica casts a glance over her shoulder at us, looking lost. I nod, and her lips twitch in just the barest hint of a smile.
This whole situation is fucked up. I’m not her man, but we were the ones that found them hiding during the raid, and I can’t shake the feeling of responsibility. This is no place for an innocent girl and a kid.
Ghost and Savage step up onto the altar, sitting opposite Hellfire.
"Alright boys, get fucking comfortable, because this is a fucking story and a half." Hellfire sweeps his hand at the crowd.
He starts at the beginning, outlining what went right—most if it—and what went wrong—Terrence fucking Cooper. That jackass let his thirst for revenge stand in the way of actually getting it. The mood is grim as Hellfire details how Kane got away, taking our client with him. More than one guy looks fit to kill when they hear how Kane sacrificed both his daughter and his woman.
“He just let her fall? That’s fucking cold, man.”
There’s a lot of nods. The boys don’t even know the names of half the girls they screw, but that’s just fun and games. If they claim a woman, they take responsibility for her. You don’t turn your back on the people who rely on you.
"And he left his fucking kid behind without a fight," growls Riot. "Ratshit coward."
Crank raises a hand. “So we’re in the hostage business now? What’s the plan?”
“Looks like it.” Hellfire nods. “I’m not fucking happy about it, but on top of not getting paid, it’s not going to be good for business if it gets out that we lost our fucking client.”
“If it’s not his woman, then who’s the other chick?” Junker asks.
I look his way. “The nanny. Just some poor girl who got dragged into our shit. Should we let her go?”
It would be a shame. She's cute in a mousy kind of way. Reminds me of the smart girls in high school who used to check me out during practice when they thought I wouldn’t notice. The ones who would blush and get all shy, but were usually the freakiest if you managed to get them alone. Damn, I wouldn’t mind seeing Jessica’s hair out of that braid, and those pretty lips wrapped around my cock.
“Not yet. We keep both of them until we know more and figure out what the fuck the next step is,” Hellfire adds. “Shitty for her, but having her around might help keep Kane’s daughter calm.”
I put my hand up. “Question. The whole mission was to give Cooper a clear shot at Kane. We did everything but put that fish in a fucking barrel, and he still fucked it up. Let’s say we arrangea clean exchange. Do we just turn the girls over, collect our guy and go on our merry fucking way? You think Kane isn’t going to turn around and take a shot at us as soon as it’s over? No matter what happens, we just put a target on our heads.”
Savage crosses his arms in front of his chest, nodding. "You’re not wrong, but good options are fucking scarce. For now, we should play dumb and focus on getting Cooper back in one piece. Rich assholes like Kane are always happy to think we’re too stupid to think ahead. It makes it easier to get the jump on them later.”
"We could cut our losses," Ghost says with a careless shrug. “Sacrificing Cooper would be a small hit to our reputation, but we’ve built back from worse. Kane’s a professional. He understands the difference between a personal hit and a job. Besides, as long as we have his kid, he’s the one at a disadvantage.”
"Just keep her around as insurance? I don’t like it." Hellfire frowns.
"Neither do I, but it’s an option. She's worth more to him than Cooper is to us. Cooper goes down, we're out some money. His little girl gets hurt, it makes him look weak." Ghost leans back like the cold mother fucker he is.
Everyone looks to Hellfire, who weighs Ghost’s words before shaking his head. “Even if that’s true, we’re not doing it. That’s not who I am, and that’s not who we are. We took the job, we see it through.”
Heads nod all around the room.
Outside these walls, where people like black and white answers that help them sleep at night, they call us the bad guys. But theydon’t know shit. We live in the gray zone between their white picket fences and the real evil. Clubs like the Outlaw Sons are a fucking life raft for men who fall through the cracks and might otherwise keep falling until they hit rock bottom.
