She smiles her beautiful fucking smile. “Because it’s my love for him that will keep him safe. Because there is a club, you included, that will surround him all his life. There’s no doubt my son will know violence and heartache as he grows up in this world, but it’s us who will show him how it can make him stronger.” She leans over and strokes River’s cheek. “Your mom must’ve thought the same as me because she raised you. You’ve seen violence, but you sit here today, more aware of the world, and you’re stronger. I see it, Ford. You’ll change after your experience, it's only natural, but it doesn’t mean your changes will be a bad thing.”
Sighing, he says, “You’re too nice for this world.”
Her smile turns to smirk. “That’s why the Lord made Luca my soulmate. We’ve always gotta maintain an equal balance in nature.”
I hold down my laugh and clear my throat.
“I’m meeting with Darius today. I’ll be leaving soon…”
“I need to see my mom before I’m seen in public. If anyone were to see me and it gets back to her, I’d…”
I cut him off. “That’s fine. Do what you need to do.”
He passes River back to Tor and stands. “I’ll go see my mom, fuck knows what I’m going to tell her, then we’ll deal with Effie and then we can move on.”
A bar called Eights is where Darious and I usually meet and it’s a dive. It’s dodgy as fuck but strangely comforting. We could meet at the clubhouse or at Darius’s, but I want to be seen in all the wrong places. We’ve been in the city for a while, but I want to be seen as a normal fixture.
“Good news about Ford. I can’t say I saw that coming.”
Meeting with Darius isn’t a chore for me. I wouldn’t go out of my way to call him a friend, but out of everyone I’m acquainted with, I don’t mind him the most.
I snort. “Neither did I. And when Effie’s gone, it won’t happen again.”
“How will the club explain it? Him coming back from the dead, I mean.”
“His mom is the only one he cares about, anyone else can fuck off.”
“He was declared dead, Luca. It’s hard in this day to live as a dead man.”
Pope had been legally dead for a long while before his real death and he did fine. If you count him not leaving the clubhouse.
“He’ll sort it out when he has to.”
“So what’s next for the club?” he asks, and I narrow my eyes.
“Why’d you want to know?”
His laughter fills the smoky air. “I’m just asking, Luc. Shit, paranoid much?”
“With Effie soon to be out of the picture, the city is mine and through me, yours. And I want to talk to you about the Dog’s Blood Crew.”
He pins his stare on me. “Yeah, what about us?”
“What would you think about your crew patching into the club?”
His brow arches and he blows out a long breath. “The crew goes back three generations, there’s a lot of history. I’m not so sure it would go down well.”
“The thing with history is that it entails looking back and I’m not looking anywhere but forward. I’m focused on the future and the future only. Us united under the patch, we’d be fuckin’ untouchable.”
“We’re already untouchable as allies,” he argues.
“True, but it will never be as strong as sharing the patch.”
He lights a cigarette. “And if it’s a no, will that be a problem for us in your future?”
“Fuck no. But you know as well as I do, I can’t allow your crew to grow any larger. I can’t have your crew growing stronger than my club.”
“I’m not sure I’d see that day.” He nods, his thoughts a million miles away. “There are sons…”
