My phone buzzed. The skip in my pulse had me reaching for it on autopilot, craving a hit of Cam. But it wasn’t Cam. It was something else and my eyes stung, burning with a fury I couldn’t contain.
I threw the phone into the footwell of the passenger seat and started the engine, backing out of the concealed lay-by I’d parked in without checking the road in either direction. A lorry whizzed past my window. No longer capable of flinching, I didn’t blink. Just pointed my car back the way I’d come and drove away.
10
Cam
I waslivid. My brothers knew it, and so did I, but I was struggling to find the words to explain that our would-be accountant had broken into the compound and gifted me the handjob of my dreams while they’d been doing whatever the fuck they’d been doing at the time. Explaining myself stuck in my throat, and I found myself empathising with Saint more than I ever had.
Cracker eyed my balled fists, lips twisted in the closest to a sneer that he had the bollocks for. He was an old-timer and a friend of my dad’s, but he’d voted against me taking the presidency, advocating instead for a brother that no longer rode with us.Drummer. A brother that now called himself a Crow. His disloyalty had vindicated my appointment, but I knew Cracker still thought me a wild card. A volatile upstart that was destroying the club from the inside out.
Some days, at least.
Others I knew he looked in his bank account and silenced the narrow-minded gobshite in his brain. I wondered what kind of day he was having today, then decided he could die in a fire regardless. I pitied the fool who came at me right now. I’d kill them with my bare fucking hands.
“You are okay, Cam.”
I blinked. Was I?
“Cam.” I turned left. Nash stared back at me, the beginnings of a frown creasing his handsome face. “If you don’t tell us what the breach was, we can’t fix it.”
“If you don’t know, then the problem is fucking obvious.”
Nash’s expression flattened to the patented blankness that usually drew a laugh from around the table.
No one laughed now. They knew me well enough to shut the fuck up unless they had something useful to say, and none of them did. How could they when they had no clue what I was yelling at them for?
Come clean.
I started with the basics. “The accounts for the yard came back this morning.”
More frowns greeted me, confused this time by the apparent change of subject—I was hardly known for letting shit go.
“Our accountant brought them by in person. The good news is the business is solvent enough to carry us through the next year if everything else turns to shit. There’ll be no golden goose eggs, but we’ll all eat. The bad news is this dude left the premises, then decided to return and walk straight into my fucking bedroom without being detected. Does someone want to explain to me how thefuckthat happens to a clubhouse that’s supposed to be protected twenty-four seven?”
The ripple spread around the table. Nash stood, already going for the tablet that allowed him to view every security camera on the compound.
I yanked him back into his seat. “Don’t bother. I already checked and there’s no sign of him re-entering or leaving.”
Mateo banged his fist on the table. “You let him leave?”
I snorted. “What would you have me do? Take him hostage and pull his teeth out?”
It was a stupid question to put to my friendly enforcer. I swung my gaze away from him and got caught in Embry’s headlights instead. His gaze was puzzled but warm. He already understood that this was something we hadn’t faced before.
“Talk to us,” he said. “Make us understand.”
I fought the rebellion in my heart, the one that wanted to keep Alexei all for myself. To guard him, protect him—as if he needed it—from the black hole my world became for anyone who strayed too close to the edge. “He’s a hook-up from a few weeks back. Russian dude who sounds English if you’re not paying attention. I figured we may as well put his financial expertise to good use and have him look at the books for the yard. At the time, I thought he was straight enough that we’d come out of it knowing if we could make a living from the yard if everything else went to shit, but I’m coming to realise that maybe I was wrong.”
“He’s dangerous?” A flicker of something I didn’t catch passed through Embry’s gaze. Disappointment? Sadness? He was an odd dude sometimes. Aside from the obvious, what did he care if Alexei turned out to be someone we could use rather than a shiny new toy for me to fuck?
Shiny new toy?Nausea rolled in my belly. Christ, even my subconscious thought I was a cunt today. “He’s dangerous,” I confirmed to the whole table. “But not to me, that I’m aware of, at least. Hell, anyone who can walk up on me in the fucking shower is something to worry about, but he doesn’t want to hurt me.”
“What does he want then?”
I glanced at Rubi. “For now, just me, and I ain’t complaining.”
I let the influx of information sink in and rocked back in my seat. Some MCs had huge ornate chairs for their president, but my dad had never believed in wasting resources on his own ego, and I was the same. Our table was as old as the club, carved and beautiful, but my brothers and me occupied battered office chairs, dented plastic and metal, upholstered with torn fabric. With a hundred members and their families to take care of, we had better things to spend our money on.
