Then I finished my cold coffee, because I wasn’t about to waste a perfectly good latte.
Chapter 8
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— Dutch —
The gavel felt heavier than usual in my hand as I banged it against the wooden table. “Church is in session,” I announced, my voice hoarse from another sleepless night. I looked around the table at my brothers—Holden, Colt, Glitch, Handful, and a handful of patched members who’d earned their seat at this table through blood and loyalty.
Holden cleared his throat and shifted in his chair, but didn’t speak.
“You called this meeting,” I said, gesturing to him with the gavel. “You got something to say, say it.”
Holden’s voice was steady when he finally spoke, but I could see the reluctance in his eyes. “This isn’t easy, Dutch, but we need to talk about what’s been happening with the club.”
The room went dead silent. Every brother around the table was staring at me, and none of them looked happy.
“The Atlanta deal,” Holden continued when I didn’t respond. “Fifty thousand dollars down the drain because you were too busy tracking your ex-girlfriend to show up for the meet.”
“She’s not my ex—”
“You sent Handful in your place,” Holden cut me off. “Handful, who’s never handled a gun deal bigger than small-time local sales. Our contacts thought it was disrespectful. They walked away.”
Heat flooded my face. “Handful’s capable—”
“Handful’s a good brother, but he’s not the club president,” Colt said, his voice steady and matter-of-fact. “They wanted to deal with you, not a substitute.”
“And that’s not the only problem,” Glitch added, opening his laptop. “The territorial dispute with the Wolves is escalating because you haven’t returned their president’s calls. We missed the vote on the new gun supplier because you didn’t show up to the regional meeting. And the feds have been sniffing around our money laundering operation because you haven’t been coordinating with our contact at the bank.”
The words landed like hammer blows. I’d been so focused on finding Indira, on understanding why she’d left, that I’d let everything else slide. But hearing it laid out like this, seeing the disappointment in my brothers’ faces...
“It’s temporary,” I said, my voice sounding weak even to my own ears. “I just need to—”
“You need to get your head out of your ass,” Colt said bluntly. “Brother, I get it. She was special to you. But she’s gone, and the club is still here.”
“You don’t understand—”
“We understand perfectly,” Holden said. “You’re destroying everything our fathers built, everything you’ve worked for, over some pussy who made it clear she wants nothing to do with you.”
The way he dismissed her made something snap inside me. “Don’t talk about Indira like that.”
“Like what? Like she’s just another woman?” Colt leaned forward. “Dutch, that’s exactly what she is. You’ve had plenty of women before her, and you’ll have plenty after her. But there’s only one Venom Riders MC.”
“She wasn’t just another woman.” The words came out louder than I’d intended, and I saw several brothers exchange glances.
“Then what was she?” Glitch asked quietly. “Because you never made her your old lady, never gave her a cut. So what was she, Dutch?”
My head reared back in shock. What had Indira been to me? How could they even ask that question? “She was...” I started, then stopped, staring at my brothers in disbelief. How could they not see it? I’d never spent more than a few weeks with a woman before Indira. Never took one back to my house, never added a woman to the clubhouse approved visitors list, never spent nights away from the clubhouse just to be with someone.
“She’s the one,” I said finally, my voice rough. “I’d already ordered a cut for her. I was planning to claim her at the next party. I thought that was fucking obvious. I fucking love her.”
The silence around the table told me it hadn’t been obvious at all. Not to them, and apparently not to Indira either.
“Then why didn’t you treat her better?” Handful asked, and there was genuine confusion in his voice. “If you loved her, why did you keep fucking Crystal and all the other club girls?”
“Because that’s what we do.” But even as I said it, the words felt hollow. “That’s what my father did. That’s what presidents do.”
“Your father’s marriage is a fucking disaster,” Colt said bluntly, and the irony of those words coming from him wasn’t lost on me. Here was a man whose own marriage had imploded so spectacularly that he’d sworn off relationships entirely, lecturing me about what didn’t work. “Everyone knows it. From what I’ve heard, your mother has been miserable for years.”
