It had to be.
This was going to be a fucking problem.
“I’ll go inform Satan,” I said, refusing to show any concern to Butch. “In the meantime, prepare. We want this meeting as small as possible, so Satan will not allow you or Connor in the room.”
“So be it.”
Without so much as looking at the bartender, Butch left the bar, followed by the sound of his motorcycle roaring to life, cutting through the cliché music. I drew in a breath, grabbed my beer, and drank as much of it as I could in one gulp—which was all of it.
I grabbed a ten, threw it on the counter, and told the bartender to keep the change. I’d only had the one drink, but I sure as fuck wished I’d had a lot more. If Brock Noelle was coming…
Maybe he wouldn’t recognize me.
But if he did, we were going to have some problems.
I hurried back to our clubhouse, guarded at the moment by Sonny, two members, and two prospects. We had plans for a club party that night, though these days, nothing could ever be guaranteed to happen. For one, Satan had now settled down with that hot reporter—who seemed to hate my fucking guts for reasons I couldn’t quite figure out—and for another, with the King’s Men now seemingly set on declaring war on us, we could never let the entire club get plastered at once.
I parked my bike, walked quickly inside, nodded to Sonny, and found a private, unused room. I called Satan.
“Spawn.”
He did not sound thrilled with my call. Probably because he was with Hailey. Who the fuck could blame him? Pussy had a hell of a way of capturing a man’s attention.
“Satan,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and normal. “The two Black Reaper presidents are on their way.”
“Good. I will be there in an hour.”
“Sir?”
Fuck. Why did I have to bring this up to him? Why the fuck did I have to put pressure on Satan?
But to act like nothing was wrong was the only thing worse than bringing it up in the first place.
“You didn’t tell me that one of them was Brock Noelle.”
There was a pause.
“Is that going to be a fucking problem?”
That was pretty measured by Satan’s standards. I suppose being with a woman had tamed him some, but the old Satan was certainly more than capable of popping up and making life hell on a lot of us. I sighed.
“It’s a bit of a long story.”
“Well, make it a fucking short story and get to the point.”
“All right,” I said, laying it all out there for my president. “You know how for the Black Reapers in New Mexico, their rivals were the Bandits?”
“Not really, but sure.”
I had to remind myself that Satan really didn’t give a shit what happened outside Phoenix unless it affected him. Even now, with the Black Reapers coming to our door, he probably didn’t give a shit about who had fought whom.
“OK, fine, well, they weren’t just rivals the last couple years; these guys went back for over a decade. I used to live in New Mexico, in the same area. And as a teenager, I was once a Bandit.”
I honestly had never given it a second fucking thought when I moved away until I saw that the Black Reapers had wiped them out in a battle recently. And even then, it was more just a curiosity than any concern of mine. Brock and I had not crossed paths in well over ten years; though I wasn’t hopeful enough to think he’d forget me, I also now fully considered myself a Devil’s Patriot, not a Bandit.
“And the reason Brock hates the Bandits is because when I was there, they talked about gang-raping his girlfriend as revenge for some shit he did. I refused and moved away anyway, but Brock fully well knows I was a Bandit. I could—”
“OK, just, shut the fuck up.”
