Embry had a kind face, but he wasn’t beyond frowning at me as if I was the world’s biggest twat, and perhaps hospital life had eviscerated his patience. “Think about it. Alexei can go back to wherever he came from any time he wants, and your position in your life is secure. The club revolves around you as much as it did your dad. But Saint? Fuck, Cam. The club is the only family he’s ever had. The only security. The only home. He loves you, man. He always has, but he needs the rest of us too.”
“You’d turn on him if I kicked him out of my bed?”
“Don’t be flippant, dude. It doesn’t suit you.”
Another gusty sigh escaped me and made my injured shoulder throb like a bitch. “Forgive me, Father. You want anything else to eat?”
“Gimme the soup.”
I passed him a spoon and the tub Saint had dug out of my freezer and heated on the stove while I’d lost my mind over how normal it felt to watch him do something so domesticated.
“Fucking-A.” Embry opened the tub and took a mouthful. “Now I feel better.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “You have no idea how bad the slop is in here. It’s worse than prison food.”
“You’d know.” True facts. The good chaplain was the only brother on the council who’d served a bird, a fact that, despite knowing the grisly reason, still made me smile after all this time.
I gave Embry space to eat and sat back in my chair. Saint was outside in the SUV I kept in my garage and never used. He hated it. So did I, but even without a mashed-up arm, I wasn’t gonna ride bitch on his hog.
“How’s business at the yard?”
“Hmm?” I came back to the present to find Embry was done eating after just a few bites and had gone back to picking me apart with his keen gaze. “The yard?”
“We’re going to need it now more than ever, aren’t we? Mateo’s gardening enterprise isn’t going to cover everything we’ve lost from withdrawing from the bridge contracts.”
The conversation felt outdated, but it was one we’d never truly reached the end of. “Like I said before all this bullshit, the accounts are good. And we still have crews on the motorway sites—it was part of the deal we pencilled in with Lorenzo Sambini.”
“You’re relying on something you negotiated while bleeding out from a GSW?”
“It wasn’t a negotiation.” I couldn’t hide my smirk. Those blurry hours between getting shot and waking up to find Alexei had saved every one of us were undefined in my memories, but I remembered enough to be certain of that. “Alexei told them they had to give us anything we wanted.”
“You should’ve asked for reparations.”
“Nah. I don’t want their dirty trafficking cash. I want—” A hand squeezed around my heart, sudden and strong, cutting me off. “Fuck.”
Embry tried to sit up, reaching for me. “What is it, brother? What do you want?”
“To blow all these fuckers out of the South West. Sambinis. Crows. I don’t give a fuck. Is that wrong?”
Embry curled his lip, the fierceness most folk didn’t see blazing hot in his eyes. “They facilitated trafficking through our territory and were complicit in the multiple attempts on your life. No one wants more war, Cam, but it’s not reasonable to expect us to play nice with them.”
“Agreed.”
“What position would that leave Alexei in, though? Mateo explained it to me, but I was high as a motherfucker at the time.”
“I’d pay money to see that.”
Embry snorted. “It wasn’t pretty.”
I didn’t believe him. Embry was from an ancient showman family. Romani horse traders and fire dancers. With his black hair and storm-hued eyes, he was the prettiest biker there ever was, and I had a church full of pretty brothers. “I need to talk to Alexei. I want what I want, but not if it blows back on him. He stepped back into this life to protect me, and it hurt him more than he’s ever going to admit.”
“Is it true? That he was an assassin for the Russian mob?”
“Aw shucks, Father. When you say it like that, it sounds like a shitty film plot.”
“That’s not an answer.”
