If Domino can’t find his girl in the next twenty-four hours, Jumper and I are headed up north to Michigan to help look. A few of the other brothers from OHH will join us. We don’t react without thought, and Domino said he wanted more details before we all just start burning down buildings in the search for her.
We know how fast someone can get transported out of state, or out of the country, once they go missing. We just shut down several sex trafficking transports abroad thanks to the work with OHH.
Sending Domino up north was just to close out the chapter there. To get all the bad seeds who infected the Hounds of the Reaper MC out for good. Learning we had some of our own involved in that shit put a foul taste in my mouth. In all our mouths.
I voted on just demolishing everyone in that club on sight. Especially with Domino being the one who went up there. The guy’s crazy awesome with his explosions. But Casper had other thoughts. He didn’t see the need to destroy everything and everyone unless there was proof.
It’s bullshit. But it’s political bullshit. I get it. Well, now I do. I’ve had time to think it over when I was first told about Domino heading up north a few months back. Despite what so many think, running the mother chapter, or anychapter of a biker club, isn’t about just doing what you want. Sure, we’ve got a fair share of that, but the rest is just like it is everywhere else—political.
If Casper sanctions wiping out an entire chapter, others might pull away or just go silent on us. Or try to take us out. We all have a creed, but pushing the Hound laws only goes so far. By doing an investigation on the club, and disbanding it if that’s what’s needed, it’s a move that the other chapters can get behind. But it has Casper pushing more and more for a national presidency and chapter.
The mother chapter has a good head on most things, but this Michigan shit, with the former VP selling people for sex trafficking? It showed us we need more vigilance. More eyes on a wider scale to make sure all Hounds are represented in a way the mother chapter and most of the others agree to.
“Think it’s going to be an issue?”
My spoon is halfway to my mouth before I stop it and turn my head to look at Casper. He’s not looking at the bar top like a coward, but at me.
“You asking about Domino getting an old lady or something else?” My voice is just barely hiding a bit of an edge to it.
Guy’s ballsy, as he doesn’t blink when he speaks again. “Something else.”
I shake my head and put the spoonful in my mouth. “I ought to bust you just for asking,” I mumble around my food.
Ain’t a secret, no matter that I don’t talk about it. It’s my business, so I don’t see how it’s anyone else’s. But apparently everyone else thinks differently.
Once Ruby found out about Law, you could say that our little weekly ritual of playing doctor and patient ended. Abruptly.
No more stretches, no more physical therapy. No more accidental touches. And no more kissing.
Hell, she hardly looks at me these days. And when she does, she looks away so quickly that I almost miss the color of her eyes. Lucky for me, I already know what they are, and my memory is the best. I can get any details I want from my memory bank. Like the way she looked after I kissed her soft lips. Or how she tasted like peaches and cream. Or the small, soft groan that left her lips when I had her in my arms.
That one gets played on a loop in my head every night. I would say I can’t help it, but it’s a lie. I know it, and I do it. I’m a grown-ass man. I can do whatever I want in my head. Fuck anyone else.
Despite the loss of what we had, or at least could have, I refuse to go to another physical therapist. General bitches about it all the time. Whatever. That’s his issue. I still do the stretches she taught me and the other things I found online. I’m not letting my past injuries keep me down. They won’t affect how I do my Hound job.
Or how I keep protecting Ruby.
Duke is still out there. No idea if he’s hunting her or not, but if I were him, I’d still have unfinished business with the Hounds. And I won’t let Ruby be that for him.
I tried talking to her about it. Once.
I cornered her after she came out of her father’s room. She’d just finished her shift. She learned quickly that despite what she wanted, Mad Max wasn’t going to let her dad sit without a brother. If he isn’t there, he has another brother on the door. Most of the brothers, out of respect for Ruby, sit outside the room. Mad Max doesn’t give a fuck what she wants. He has his own personal issues for being there, and he isn’t about to let her change his mind. He was the boss’s personal security. He wasn’t there to take the bullet for Law like he had planned to all his life. So he sits by his side and waits. If Law never wakes up, I’ve got a feeling that Mad Max will sit there till one or both take their last breath.
Once she learned the brothers were taking watch over her dad, she kept her mouth shut like we asked, never once telling anyone that her dad is actually alive. I checked several times. She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even the old ladies. Everyone’s at arm’s length and then some. I know they all try, but she doesn’t respond.
Except when she said who she doesn’t want on the door. Told everyone she’d stop throwing a fit every time she sees a brother at the hospital as long as I’m never there.
The boys think it’s because it was me who told her he died. That she’s taking the bulk of her anger at the club out on me. But I know it’s more. It’s because of what I started. What we shared just hours before she found out the truth.
But, just like eating a kid cereal and not giving a rat’s ass what people say, I did the same to Ruby. I had Atom take a walk when it was his turn one day, and when she came out of the room, I was there.
She took one look at me and started heading for the exit. Fast. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into an empty room before she could do anything. I knew Atom was only waiting long enough for me to get Ruby, and then he was on guard duty for our former president.
“Get your hands off me.” She wiggled out of my grasp, and I let her go. The room was empty—I checked before I planned this out—and she walked to the farthest spot away from me. There were no windows in this room, just fluorescent lighting.
“We need to talk.” I crossed my arms and planted myself in front of the door. I wouldn’t put it past her to run at me to get out of this room.
“Like hell we do. You lied to me. You all lied to me. You can go walk off a fucking bridge and drown for all I care.”
