Reapers were streaming in by the second, guns pointed, but Lane had them hold their fire. We all knew we could kill Lucius in the snap of a finger. But we had him. We’d let him say his bit.
And then, Lane and I both knew without saying a word to each other, we would have the satisfaction of killing him ourselves.
“But you’ve killed all of my men,” he growled. “At least I got one of yours.”
He turned around, spat on the ground, and then dropped the shotgun to the floor. He was, as far as we could see, unarmed. And I didn’t just mean in his hands—I could see his pants did not have any weaponry on them. He was coming to us with only his cut, his jeans, and his fists. He was a dead man, but he wasn’t a silent man.
“You could cut me down right now, kill me on the spot, and be on your merry little way,” he said. “But then, you wouldn’t have closure, would you?”
He snickered, staring at Lane.
“You wouldn’t have closure in knowing what it was like for me to kill your woman, knowing how that would tear you two apart,” he said.
We finally know the truth. As if we didn’t know it already.
“You wouldn’t have the closure of hurting me, torturing me, killing me as you would want me killed, would you, Lane Carter?”
“You’re a dead man either way, Lucius,” he said. “You’re not getting out of this night alive.”
“No, no, I suppose not,” Lucius said with a laugh as he turned to me. “But how are you, Cole, going to explain to my daughter that I came in here unarmed and your men killed me? Hmm? Tell me, Cole. My daughter has taken a liking to you. The very thought sickens me. But it is something I have no choice but to accept. She thinks you’re, gasp, a good person.”
At that, Lucius laughed. But there was something almost delirious about the laugh, like the laughter of a man who knew he was down to his last few words and truly afraid of the end.
“But here’s what you fail to appreciate,” he said. “My daughter loves me. She may like you, but she loves me. And it’s not going to be a great look for you when you have to explain my dead body to her. Hmm?”
He chuckled.
“Of course, that doesn’t even begin to account for what happens after my death in the MC world.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Lane said.
Lucius just shrugged.
“Would you rather have the devil you know, or take your chances with the one you don’t?”
Lane and I exchanged a look. Neither of us had the fucking slightest idea what he was speaking about. There were other clubs, yeah, but it wasn’t like Lucius was known to be in a network with others. Here, in Springsville at least, the world was very small, and even extending into Los Angeles, the Saints were like a lone island, a bunch of outlaws among outlaws, the bad boys who were too bad to be good of any kind.
“In any case, let us just say that it would behoove all of us if I lived,” he said. “But I recognize that you are all too shortsighted to recognize that you will not take the rational way out. So, instead, I have a simple proposal for you two. You Carters.”
He said the name with such venom, it might as well have been a slur. It was just as well. Our feeling for the name “Lucius” was equally contemptuous.
“I will fight you both to the death,” Lucius said. “If you two live, you can do whatever you want. The Saints are gone. I am not so fucking stupid as to hope otherwise. But if I live, I get to take Lilly far away from here. I get to escape from the devil I know. And she gets to live her life in peace.”
“And what makes you think we would agree to that?” Lane said. “We’ve got over a dozen men here who will shoot you dead in a heartbeat. You have no weapon, and even if you have one hidden from us, you’ll only get one or two wild shots off before you drop dead.”
Lucius shrugged.
“I have seen how you two operate,” Lucius said. “I know how much vengeance drives you. It’s what drives all MC feuds. Revenge. Envy. Contempt. You might be able to put a pretty face on for the cops and the DA’s office, but we are the only ones who are fully honest in who we are. You would not be content with one of your prospects shooting me.”
He smirked.
“And besides,” he said. “Would you like to know what it was like to see Shannon’s face lined up in my sniper scope? What it was like to witness her final expression as she thought you would rescue her?”
Lane was beginning to lose control. I would have held him back, but there was just one problem. I was losing my shit too.
“I know you want to kill me with your bare fists,” Lucius said. “It would be so satisfying, wouldn’t it? Just like how I knew the sacrifice of one girl would prove so satisfying in seeing you two explode into a civil war.”
My fists tensed. I sized up Lucius. He was an old man, but he was not elderly. He was probably in his mid-to-late fifties, with muscles of a man twenty years younger and with the scars of a veteran. He was a man who might have only had a few fights left in him, but they were not going to be lopsided fights.
