Asher
The desire to rescue Callie was great.
But knowing where the fuck to go and what the fuck to do was no easy matter.
Based on the note, we all roared back to Phoenix in record time. But even before we came across the mangled corpse of Owen and his bike, I had a feeling that King had sent us in the wrong direction and had kept her in Vegas.
It was very like King to play mind games and to trick someone for the sake of getting what he wanted. Owen was painfully clear evidence he was not opposed to violence, but in the time that I knew him, he almost seemed to get off from the idea of tricking someone. The most gleeful I saw him was when someone had fallen into a trap that he had laid, not when he annihilated an enemy with pure bloodshed.
And besides that, it would have felt poetic, somehow, for me to have to go back to Vegas to rescue her. That wasn’t a commentary on life being some beautiful full circle, but an acknowledgment that King knew this as well and would therefore want to make things feel symbolic.
But the one time at a gas station I piped up and suggested we head back, Sonny made a good point. We could go back to Vegas with the few numbers we had, or we could reconvene as a full army—or whatever we called ourselves—and then make a decision. Be struck down weak or make a stand of it in full numbers.
Didn’t make the prospect of making Callie suffer longer any better, but it at least made some level of sense.
When we got back to Satan’s house back in Phoenix, we had a full house. So much so that there were people standing behind people standing. There were a lot of bikers that I didn’t recognize from before, but the message was clear.
This wasn’t just about rescuing Callie.
This was about sending a message to the King’s Men. The full crew was in town. They were ready to go to war.
Wewere ready to go to war.
“Hope you like the crowd,” Satan said. “I brought ‘em all here to get the point across to you, Asher. We’re all here to rescue the girl. Great, we’ve been there. But you had better not fuck us over in any way, or else we will kill you in front of her. You will wish that you were on the King’s Men—”
“I’m going to cut you off right there.”
I could feel the tension sharpen in the room. Even in a room full of the toughest, meanest motherfuckers that I ever knew, no one dared speak back to Satan as I just had. But it was needed to emphasize what I was about to say.
“In some respects, I don’t have much of a choice. I care about my wife. I know I’ve been distant, but let’s not pretend no one in this room has had an easy time with relationships and shit. But in another sense, I do have a choice. I can play it both ways. And I’m here to let you know that I am playing it your way.
“I’m taking a risk by doing whatever the fuck you want. I trust that you won’t kill me when it’s all said and done. And maybe that’s a really fucking stupid assumption. But at least by joining forces with you guys, I do what’s best to ensure Callie’s safety.”
Satan took a deep breath. No one was moving a muscle. All lies lay between the standoff between the two of us.
“Big talk,” Satan finally said.
“Talk I believe, father,” Sonny said.
Satan looked at his son with the kind of annoyance that a weaker person would call patronizing. I preferred the term ruthless.
“He said the same thing in Vegas. He’s had plenty of time to try and sound political or whatever.”
“This isn’t a man playing games,” Cole interjected. “I’ve seen what it’s like when people play games. We all have. This is not a man who is here to play games. Maybe before, he was.”
Damn, always did hear Cole was the smartest of the pack.
“But I hear in his words the care for Callie that we all have for our wives. For me, my wife and son. For others, for their families. Satan, I know I hear it from you when you speak to Hailey. As much as we are a brotherhood, we are also men who have women we love. We fight for more than one reason.”
We love.
I hadn’t said “love” to Callie in ages. Even before I ran off to Phoenix and all but vanished from the Earth, I hadn’t said “love” to her in months. Call it boredom, call it not thinking about it, call it whatever the hell you wanted, but we weren’t the lovey-dovey couple. We certainly weren’t now, even last night’s romp factored in.
But fuck.
Cole’s words hit. They really fucking hit. And while I was good at not showing emotion—like I said, I got good at hiding in the last year—that didn’t mean they didn’t hit me in the gut harder than anything I’ve felt in some time.
And it was only made worse by the current situation.
