Embry left. For long, blissful minutes I was alone.
Then Cracker came back and pissed on my bonfire. “We need a treasurer.”
“I’m aware,” I drawled, reaching for the smokes Saint had kindly donated to the cause. My consumption right now was horrendous, but it kept me sane when bandits like this dickhead came at me with the fucking obvious. “Got any contenders in mind?”
“Not my job.”
“It’s everyone’s job. That’s how we ended up with Magda fucking everything up—no one else had any better ideas.”
“You think letting a Russian whore look at our financial records is a solution?”
The hair at the back of my neck stood up, prickling my skin. “Whore?”
“I saw him this morning chatting up Orla. Maybe he has a thing for incest.”
I sat up in my seat, staying low but ready to spring. “It would only be incest if I fucked my sister. Is that what’s on your mind right now, old man?”
To his credit, Cracker didn’t blink, but the old dude was pushing sixty and his beer belly was his most impressive feature. His days of holding his own in a fight without a weapon doing the work for him were well and truly over. “I’m saying you were a damn fool to show someone without ties to the club our private accounts.”
“We’re a limited company. You can access our records online.”
“Why him, though?”
“Why not him? He found the money we needed and plugged the holes Magda left behind. Far as I can see, you got nothing to complain about.”
“I still think it’s fucking stupid and I ain’t the only one. We don’t trust outsiders.”
“We were all outsiders once. You want to tell Saint and Mateo they’re not welcome because they weren’t born into whatever backwards universe you’re stuck in?”
Cracker grimaced. It was subtle, but I saw it like the cowardly beacon it was and deepened my scowl as I leaned closer to him.
He backed off, running a hand through his mousy beard. “Fuck’s sake, you’ll have bitches on hogs next.”
“I’ll give your daughter my Bobber the next time I see her if you don’t get out of my face with this bullshit right now.” Hell, I’d give any woman attached to this club a bike if they wanted to ride one, and this fucker knew it. “Be somewhere else, old man, before I lose my fucking shit.”
Cracker disappeared. I sank back in my seat with a heavy sigh and scrubbed my hands over my face. Embry had been right when he’d warned we were facing hostility on multiple fronts, but I doubted he’d taken Cracker and his band of discontented old timers into consideration. Mutiny was sacrilege in our world. If we didn’t have loyalty, we had nothing.
Still, it wasn’t like I didn’t understand their concern. To them, and even to me, Alexei had come out of nowhere. I’d approached him, if an eye-fuck across a crowded bar was that tangible, but what if he’d been there all along? Watching and waiting. The spark I shared with Saint aside, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have a type when it came to the men I brought into my bed. What if he’d tracked me, noting my habits, and had followed me to Bristol? What if—
My phone rang.
Frowning, I answered it without looking at the screen. “Yeah?”
A warm chuckle greeted me. “You are a rude man, Cam.”
The elastic band around my chest loosened. “Are your ears burning?”
“Is that a literal question or a colloquial saying that makes no sense?”
“The second one.” I absorbed the smooth Russian voice like a drowning man desperate for air. “I had to tell my brothers it was you who breached our security. They think you’re a honey trap.”
“Ah, now this phrase I know.”
“Are they right?”
“Your brothers are fools.”
“Not all of them.”
