But everyone else was a sea of faces I’d never seen before. There was the tall, lanky one with stubble and brown hair up top; there was the shorter guy with muscles that made him look like a bodybuilder; there was a skinny blond guy who looked like he belonged more in Malibu than in an MC; there was a bald man, a very tall one, who looked at me like he wanted to drive a knife in my heart just for being here; and there was a black-haired, young-looking kid.
“You’re looking at the Black Reapers, almost every officer of importance,” Satan said. “If they’re not here, it’s only because we’re not stupid enough to pack the most important people alive in one room.”
I nodded. There was an open seat at the end of the table. Although Spawn didn’t force me there with his gun, the gun never left between my shoulder blades either. It was only when I actually sat down that he removed the gun, but I never heard his feet moving far away.
“Let’s make one thing fucking clear very fast,” Satan said. “We do not trust you. The only reason we have not killed you yet is because you may yet prove useful to us. But I assure you that you will not be given a second chance. Fuck, you’re barely getting one as it is. So if we catch you lying, you are dead. If we catch you stealing, you are dead. If you give us wrong information, you’d better be on your knees and praying God speaks to us before we pull the trigger, because otherwise, you are dead. Understood?”
I nodded.
“You’ll learn names as you prove your worth,” he continued, “for now, though. I want you to tell us in more detail what you told me and Sonny last night. I want to know everything you know. If I found out later there was something you could have said but didn’t, I will kill you.”
“I think I get it,” I said, but I quickly cut myself off, mindful not to inflame tensions more than they were. “As I said yesterday, you will not win a bloody battle. The forces you see in Phoenix right now are one division, at most. Think of it as the equivalent of fighting a brigade in the U.S. Army. Not only is that not even the entire Army, it’s not even the entire military of the United States. Meanwhile, you already brought everything here. So they can afford to lose ten men for every one of yours.”
No one liked what I was saying. Not one part of me cared. This was true—and a major reason why to serve my own ass meant to tell the Black Reapers the truth. Lying and making them think they had a chance would just mean they’d eventually get shot through before reaching me.
“However, the internal ranks are weaker than you think, and a huge part of that has to do with a fatal assumption King has made: that those who have been with him longest are his most loyal members. Nothing could be further from the truth—and your best bets are Crush and Prince.”
“How the fuck would this fool know this?” the jet-black-haired kid said. “You said this was some bum that just wandered in and delivered a message?”
“Steele, give him a moment,” the shorter guy said.
“I’m just saying—”
“I was once on the inside, you know,” I growled. “Not just on the inside. I was a messenger for the King’s Men. I was the one that would go to town, warn other clubs, mafias, gangs, whoever ran the underground part of town, that King wanted to talk business. And if not, he would ‘do business.’ I may not have been an officer, but I most assuredly promise you I saw things. I heard things. Things I shouldn’t have seen or heard, but here we fucking are.”
Steele sat back in his chair, though he didn’t look satisfied. I got the sense, however, he wasn’t a major player in this conversation, like he was the VP’s VP or some shit like that.
“Now, if you want me to tell you exactly what to say to Crush or Prince, you might as well shoot me now, because only King knows that. But what I can tell you is that those two chafe under King. Crush? There are rumors, but as best as I can tell, his parents were murdered when he was young, and King saw a child he could control. Crush is a savage fucking monster, but that monster doesn’t like being held captive, even if he is being given the best food, housing, and women. A man like Crush can’t be contained by luxuries and material shit; he only feels free if he does whatever the fuck he wants.”
“And the son?” Satan asked.
“Prince,” I said.
I drew a breath. Crush was obvious. Crush never hid his disdain from King, but King knew full well Crush wasn’t dumb enough to lash back out at him. Crush was like the meathead that would tell the boss to fuck off but preferred to live over getting shot from five different angles from the other bodyguards.
Prince wasn’t like that.
“Prince is more guessing, but it’s guessing I’m fully confident in. Prince has never been anything but the heir to everything King does. King treats him well on the surface, but I can tell it’s not enough for Prince. For fuck’s sake, even his club name, Prince, feels insulting. Prince also yearns to be his own man. I don’t know if he’s willing to kill his father like Crush is, but I can tell you that Prince would like nothing more than to walk away from everything.”
I drew in a breath.
“Maybe King would just shrug these defections off. Or maybe they would finally be the thing that makes him break. But it’s better than trying to win a bloody fucking war.”
A silence filled the room as everyone processed what I’d said. I didn’t have anything more to add, at least not that I could think of at the moment.
“None of this explains how we could kill King,” the blond-haired surfer-looking guy said. “Unless we somehow get Crush to willingly turn on him.”
“But his own son, he’ll probably more easily get an audience with King,” the shorter, stockier one said.
“Exactly, Cole,” Satan said.
I tried to make a note of names. Cole was easy. The black-haired kid? Stan, I think? It didn’t fucking matter. I was here for a job, and when I fulfilled that job, I was settling the fuck into normal life. No more clubs. No more shootouts.
Once the King’s Men were gone and the Black Reapers had abandoned town, I could finally be free again. Free to chase ass. Free to walk with my head held high.Free to see her.
The fuck, Asher?
“What the hell do you think the chances are that he’d kill his own father?” Cole said. “That seems like an awfully tall ask of anyone.”
