Alexei
The Rebel Kings’ compound was deserted. Dozens of bikes were parked outside, but the bar was closed, and aside from a couple of unpatched prospects and old men too past it to ride, there wasn’t a brother in sight.
I disabled their cameras remotely and slipped inside, enabling them again only when I was upstairs where the bedrooms were.
The door to Cam’s room was closed. Instinct led me there to wait for him, but terminal curiosity drew me past it and to the other rooms on the landing.
I found the enforcer’s den first. A dart board embedded with hunting knives gave it away, though I appreciated the fact that it was clean and smelled of the abandoned mug of lemon tea on the bedside table.
A stray hooded sweatshirt was out of place on the floor. I crouched and hooked it with one finger. It was too small for the burly enforcer, but too large to belong to a woman.A lover or a brother?
Maybe both. I wondered if Cam had deliberately assembled a council of sexually fluid brothers or if it had happened by chance. I wasn’t an expert on motorcycle clubs, but I knew criminal gangs better than I knew myself and the diversity in Cam’s was... unusual.
I like it.
Of course I did. I was coming to learn I liked most things about Cam.
I retreated from the enforcer’s room and examined the next. It was bland and belonged to no one in particular—a fuck den for the masses, though again, it was clean.
The rest of the rooms were much the same, save one that seemed best suited for Cam’s vice president, the pretty man with the wavy blond hair. A guitar graced the corner of that room and a collection of family photographs that were absent from anywhere else.
There was no room I believed belonged to Saint. He did not live here, and I couldn’t say why that mattered to me.
But it did.
I retreated to Cam’s room, slipping inside and locking the door behind me out of habit rather than the fear that anyone but him would venture in. This was Cam’s lair, I could tell. He didn’t fuck people here—not even me.
Especially not me. But then, why would he when we had nicer beds elsewhere?
Stop thinking about fucking.
I sat on the edge of Cam’s bed and retrieved my phone from my pocket. I’d called Saint from the same handset only Cam and my mother’s nursing home possessed the number for. It had happened with little thought, but it puzzled me now. I could’ve called him from one of the burners I still kept with my weapons. Or the encrypted work phone that lay dormant on my desk at home. There’d been no logical reason to open myself to Saint like that, but I’d done it as if I’d felt the same primitive trust for him that I had Cam.Something has happened to you since you met these men. It is making you weak.
Undeniable. But while Cam was out there facing down a sex-trafficking ring, I didn’t care to do anything about it. I’d told Cam I would be there for him when he was done, and I’d told Saint I would wait here for Cam to return.
And so I would, for however long it took.
Or not, as it turned out. Patience and I were old friends, but how I felt about Cam had altered my DNA. Barely an hour passed before his cool, dark bedroom closed in on me and I abandoned lounging on his bed in favour of pacing the floorboards, scowling at my blank phone screen.
I opened the window, listening out for the sound of approaching bikes. For hours, none came. The night remained quiet and still, and as the minutes ticked by, my agitation grew to the point where I could no longer stand it.
It was another engrained habit to delete my call records, but Saint Malone’s phone number had embedded in my brain the moment he’d given it to me.
I typed a message to him. Deleted it and typed it again verbatim.
Alexei:Where are you?
I didn’t expect a reply anytime soon, if at all. The answering buzz of my phone a few moments later caught me off guard.
Saint:the intel was right. Waiting to hit the transport vehicle.
I swallowed, my throat constricted as if blocked by tar. It didn’t surprise me that the intel from the listening device had proved accurate—it would be stupid even for the Crows to invent the scenario they’d described at their table for no purpose but their own amusement. It was no surprise either that Cam had chosen to act so decisively and so fast.
But I didn’t like it. The missing pieces in his complex war should’ve scared him more than they did.You cannot win against a face you cannot see.
A man I hated and respected in equal measure had once said those words to me and they’d never made more sense than they did now.
I resent my original message.
