I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. My eyes focused on my boots because I couldn’t look him in the eye.
“There’s ten of us,” I admitted.
“Where the fuck are the rest of them? Are they too chickenshit to stand up with you? You want brothers you can’t fucking count on?” he snarled at me.
I expected him to be pissed. I didn’t expect him to shit on men who had been nothing but loyal to him.
Pinning him with a glare of my own, I said, “There isn’t a brother in this club that is chickenshit and you fucking know it.” Standing from my chair and looking him in the eye, I stated, “I wasn’t asking for your fucking permission. I was telling you, I’m out. You can give me my own fucking chapter or I take my men and walk.”
Keeping his desk between us, he slammed his hands on the top and leaned toward me.
“Leaving isn’t a fucking option and you damn well know it.”
“I’m the goddamn road captain. I know where the fucking bodies are buried. Literally.”
“You cocksucking son of a bitch!” he snarled.
“It doesn’t have to be like this. You have almost sixty fucking men here. You don’t need me.”
“Why the fuck are you doing this?” he asked.
I looked him in the eye. With a low growl in my voice, one I had learned from him, I said, “You fucking know why.”
Back then, I’d only had suspicions.
Now I had facts.
I had proof.
I might not have the proof that Steele set Chasm up to die in that warehouse explosion, but I had the proof he’d killed his parents. He and Stone both. Power-hungry assholes who took out the two people who loved them the most. The two people who gave them the life they’d wanted so badly.
I knew why they did it. Titan had seen what his sons had become. He knew that if Steele were president, the club would become something it was never meant to be.
Titan had morals. He had honor. I was proud to serve under him. Titan knew how to stay under the law’s radar, how to protect his men, and how to make us rich while he did it. In a fewshort years, Steele had taken a lucrative club, one people feared, and turned it into a noose around our necks.
No longer was the Mother Chapter living out a dream. A dream where the Silver Shadows made their own rules and said to hell with the law. Now they were hiding from the law, constantly at war with other clubs. Other organizations in the underworld.
And they’d pulled my club into their shit.
Steele had aligned himself with Skinner. He’d drawn a line in the sand. One he thought I didn’t know about. His day was coming, though. Reaper was right. I needed to make a stand.
When I left, I’d had the votes. I could have stayed in Arkansas and taken over. It was how it was meant to be. Titan had wanted to step down, but his plan was for me to be president.
Chasm would have been my VP.
Steele made sure that would never happen.
He hadn’t counted on my standing up to him. He hadn’t counted on my breaking away. Steele thought he had me in his back pocket, and I’d spent too many years letting him think he’d won.
This war had been a long time coming; a war between brothers. He might think he had the upper hand, but he didn’t know who I had in my back pocket. He had too many men in his club who were loyal to me.
Steele had only one in mine.
One who was dumb as shit and frequently fed information with the specific purpose of getting it back to Steele. Steele thought he was a master at checkers, but the fucker never bothered to learn chess.
War was about strategy. And Steele had none. He’d always believed his brawn would get him where he needed to go. I was his brain. I was the one who held him back from making the wrong decisions.
What Steele didn’t know was that I was still making his decisions for him. Until now. Now he was on his own, and God help him.
