Titan would roll over in his grave if he knew what Steele had turned the club into. I’d tried to stick it out after his death. Tried to guide the son of a bitch back to what his father had created.
Easy money and easy pussy—that was what Steele wanted.
I could admit it was what I’d wanted too. In the beginning. But after Chasm died, I no longer had the stomach for that shit. Getting out became my priority, and at the time, there was only one way out.
Until I made another.
Little Rock, Arkansas, 2019,
Sitting in my president’s office, I faced the man I once admired most aside from my brother Declan, as I struggled to say the words that had been burning in my chest.
“I want my own club.”
It was hard to say the words out loud. I’d expected a weight to lift when I said them. Only, the weight seemed to bear down harder, threatening to flatten me.
Steele leaned back in his chair, his gaze piercing.
His silence was deafening. Steele wasn’t the type of man to be quiet. He had a volatile nature and often kicked off like a powder keg in the back of a buckboard wagon on the Oregon Trail.
None of us ever knew when or why he would explode. There was no rhyme or reason to the man’s temper.
I struggled hard not to fidget in my seat like a kid sent to the principal’s office. Waiting for his punishment to be doled out.
“Why?” he asked, and I knew it was a trap.
The last six months in the club had been tough. Brothers were getting locked up left and right. Wars were brewing with rival clubs. The money we were making no longer felt like a reward. It felt like compensation for death.
“I can’t do this shit anymore. I won’t do this shit anymore.”
“What makes you think having your own chapter will get you any less shit?”
“Plan on being legit,” I answered honestly.
Leaning back, I crossed my arms over my chest in a half-hearted attempt to protect myself as I waited for the explosion.
Steele rose from his chair without a word and walked to the window. His silence freaked me out. It wasn’t natural. Not for him.
I’d met Steele when I was a stupid eighteen-year-old kid. My older brother Declan, who raised me after a drunk driver killed our parents when I was ten years old, was a cop. He was twelve when I was born, so he often acted more like my father than my brother. So, of course, I rebelled against him any chance I had.
Steele was everything my brother wasn’t. He was rough and gritty. He lived life by his own rules and no one else’s. Where Declan was all about law and order, Steele was death and destruction.
Heavy on the death.
Now at thirty-three, I no longer wanted to do stupid shit that risked my life. I had managed to stay out of jail thanks to my older brother. But many of my brothers weren’t so lucky.
I’d buried too many men over the last fifteen years. Men who were closer to me than even my own blood brother.
“How do you plan to make money?”
“Christ, you sound like Dec. We’ve got money put away and plan on pooling it together so...” My words fell off when Steele turned around and glared at me.
“We?” he asked, his voice a low hiss.
Shit, this was where he’d lose it.
“Yea, uh, there are a few of us who’ve talked about doing something different. We love the club, man. We just need a break.”
“How many?” he growled.
