“I’m not like you bikers, acting out of impulse. I prefer strategy.”
“No, you don’t prefer strategy—you’re limited to it. You have no physical leverage to win, old man.”
Conrad bypasses my comment and sticks his nose through the door again. “This is your last chance to hand over Carmen.”
“Or what, we should prepare for World War Three?” I fold my arms over my chest. “Carmen isn’t here.”
“You’re lying to me. I saw you last night with her in the bedroom.”
“That’s a bit invasive, don’t you think?” I take my hands away from my chest to make myself look bigger, closing the gap between myself and the sixty-year-old. For creeping in on our business, he deserves to feel smaller than he already feels. “Do you want me to spell it out for you word for word? Carmen is no longer here. She left.”
A disgusting smile crawls onto his face, one grim enough to unnerve even dead bodies. “Then you just made my life ten times easier.”
I refuse to let this grandpa’s words get underneath my skin.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I spit, shutting the door in his face.
When I turn around, I find Carter, Vex, and a bunch of other bikers staring at me.
“Thanks for the helping hand, gents.”
“He was here for Carmen?” Carter asks.
I nod uneasily. “I’m afraid so. I told him she’s no longer here. Apparently that makes his life so much easier.”
“He’s playing games, trying to mess with us.”
I hope Vex is right.
“Fuck.” Carter seems to be spacing out. Maybe he’ll follow Carmen and be the next one to faint. “We shouldn’t have let her go.”
“He’s stitching us up,” Vex says. “Carmen is much safer away from here.”
“Much safer? Are you fucking sure about that?” Carter has chosen a bad time to bash Vex up against the wall. “Safer for her, or more convenient for you?”
Vex responds with a brutal shove, sending Carter across the room.
He catches himself before crashing into a table. “Everything was simpler before the auction, but I’m not about to let Conrad kidnap her. She has akid.A full life ahead of her.”
“Someone is going down,” Vex retaliates. “We know not to take the O’Neills lightly. If we choose to save Carmen, what happens to us? I don’t know about you, but I prospected here in the first place because the good guys always finished last and I was tired of losing.”
But this isn’t about victory.
It’s about justice.
Vex can be an intolerable son of a bitch sometimes, but he’s right. If the O’Neills win this, what happens to the club?
What happens to my life, since I threw it all away in the pursuit of revenge?
Revenge I’m not done chasing yet.
Carter steps back and shakes his head infuriatingly. “Unbelievable. You don’t care about Carmen one bit. You care about winning.”
“All due respect,” counters Vex. “We never intended to see Carmen for this long.”
I watch Vex carefully, noting the tightness in his jaw. Even though Carter has backed off and finished being accusatory, Vex is still on guard. Like he’s still losing, even though he joined the club years ago to do something more enjoyable than working as an officer.
“The visa has been taken care of,” says Vex. He stands on the other side of the door, hands shoved into his work pants.
