Gracie and her mom, though, were nowhere to be seen. I figured they were doing girl shit—getting cleaned up, talking about feelings—so the club could talk business.
“Perish,” Fallon said, offering a hand and pulling me in for another hug.
Three hugs in one night.
I was pretty sure that was more hugs than I’d gotten in my whole damn life.
“Matteo Grassi is sending one of his guys over with Gracie’s car and the shit from her party,” I said before he could stay stuck on all that gratitude stuff again.
He gave me a nod and released me.
Fallon was a pretty cut-and-dry kind of president. It was what I appreciated about him. Shit didn’t get all emotional around here. He seemed to sense my need to keep things moving and didn’t start in on the whole saving Gracie thing.
“Luca says he will be sharing the security camera footage,” he said, addressing the club as they fell silent. “But I think we need to hear from Perish himself about what happened, in case he clocked something the cameras might not have.”
“Not a lot to tell. I was about to head out after talking to Matteo.” I went ahead and left out the part about how I stopped to eye-fuck Gracie as she stood next to the barn. “Heard the squeal of the tires. Didn’t think. Just ran. Didn’t even really see the car myself. I was focused on getting to Gracie before a bullet did.”
Behind me, someone clapped me on the shoulder. One of Gracie’s cousins or uncles, I was sure.
Everyone was going to be looking at me differently—and closer—after this. I tried not to squirm at the thought.
“Question,” a voice called out.
Several of us turned toward the sound of the voice, finding one of the two new prospects standing there.
Spike was tall and a slim kind of fit, with black hair, black eyes, and cheekbone hollows that kind of gave him a skeletal look.
“Yeah?” Fallon asked.
“Are we assuming this is mob shit? If so, why are we having church about it?”
A couple of men grumbled at the wording. But I got what he was saying. As a previous outsider, I would have wondered the same thing. Over time, he and Cain would come to learn that this wasn’t just a club but a family. And anything that put one of the princesses or wives in danger would warrant church like this.
“One of our own almost died tonight,” Fallon said. Then, with a glance at me. “Two of our own,” he clarified. “That is always going to warrant church, whether it is our enemy who did it or not.”
Spike nodded at that.
“I am working under the assumption that this is connected to the mob, though,” Fallon went on. “No one would have suspected that Perish would have been there tonight. And I didn’t even know Gracie had an event there. Besides, if this was one of our enemies, they would have done a drive-by at the clubhouse where they could inflict maximum damage.”
There was a murmur of agreement to that.
“That said, we’re going to have our guards up until the mob figures out who this was and handles it. Because the cops got involved so fast, we need to keep in mind that these guys might be desperate to silence witnesses before they can spill anything that might identify them.”
“Penny and I will be taking Gracie home with us tonight,” Duke said.
Good. That was good. She needed someone to keep an eye on her. Someone who wasn’t me. Because it wasn’t my damn place.
“Good. And Perish, I’d prefer it if you stayed inside the clubhouse for a few days. You’re a hard target to miss,” he added with a smirk. “Let’s just let the dust settle for a bit before you are out in the street again.”
“Alright.”
“Are we on lockdown?” Cain, the other new prospect, asked.
The two men stood next to each other, which only made their differences more apparent. Where Spike was thin and dark-haired, Cain was gym-fit with a square face, light blue eyes, and dirty blond hair.
Also, where Spike had basically been on the wrong side of the law since he was a kid, Cain had been on the other side of law enforcement for a good chunk of his life, working for a SWAT unit until he tried to report corruption and was fired for whistleblowing. He took a hard left turn and became an outlaw biker as a middle finger to the institution he no longer believed in.
“I don’t want to use the word lockdown,” Fallon said. “But I want us to all have our heads on a swivel. Suspicious people watching you, cars sitting around that feel off, any of that, I want reported. And we are going to add another guard to each shift temporarily. But I’m not gonna tell you to lock your sisters and wives up or not have parties here. Just be smart.”
