No emotion.
Just a promise that it will get better. I hope he’s right. It has to get better. Because if it doesn’t, I’ll have to leave. I deserve to feel the love of the person I’m spending my life with. I deserve to not be alone. My self-worth always wars with my guilt over asking for more of him when I know how stressed he is, when I see how hard he works.
I move to the couch, wrapping myself in my favorite blanket and allowing the waves of sadness to crash over me. The last thing I see before I fall asleep is a pair of soft green eyes that hold so much warmth behind them, I can’t help but feel the heat.
Chapter Seven
RHYS
Ican’t get her out of my head. I have to see her again. It’s been four torturous days, and if I don’t get my eyes on her soon, I’m going to combust. She meets me in my dreams every night, her curvy body curled up against mine while I hold her as she rests. Waking up and finding her spot next to me cool and empty is cruel, and I need to do everything I can to change it.
I know it’s creepy as fucking hell, but instead of volunteering in Amberwood like I typically do on Wednesdays, I found out where she works and am going there instead. I was prepared to call every shelter in the entire state of Washington, but I got lucky on the third one. Dr. Bristol Owens works just a few towns over in Bloomfield. The town is much too high-class for my liking, but if she’s there, it means I want to be too.
Dressing in a pair of jeans, a long-sleeve plain black T-shirt, and my leather jacket instead of my cut, I grab my truck keys and head into town. On trips where I’m riding solo, I try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Being the vice president of amotorcycle club already puts a bullseye on the back of my head; I don’t need to flaunt that I’m traveling on my own for other clubs to see and attempt to take me out.
Just as I open the door to my room, I come face-to-face with Malice, his fist lifted as if he were about to knock, but when I look at him, I get a bit of a jump scare.
“What the fuck did you do to your hair?”
Malice self-consciously runs his hands through it, even though it pops right back up, standing up wild and doing whatever it wants. “You don’t like it? Wanted to try something new.”
“And you thought near-white blond was the way to go? Why didn’t you do the roots?”
“Yeah, I think the ladies and gentlemen will like it. Don’t you, Sin?” I study his new hair color, the roots still his natural dark brown, the rest a fresh blond that he had to have done himself. It doesn’t look bad and actually kind of suits him with all his piercings and scattered tattoos. Wild fucker. No one could pull this off successfully except Malice.
“Yeah, Mal, it works. They’re gonna love it. What did you need? I’m about to head out.”
“Oh!” he squeals as he smacks the palm of his hand against his temple. “I almost forgot! Otto made some progress! Go Otto, right? Prez wants us in church.”
My shoulders instantly deflate. Club business comes above all else, and up until four days ago, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But now that Bristol is in the picture? I feel torn. That’s not a good thing when people’s lives are at stake, and it’s my responsibility to help keep them safe, but something I’ll have to deal with, nonetheless.
“Bad news?” I ask.
“Not sure. Wrath and Rolo went straight to Prez. We’ll find out when we get there.”
Knowing there isn’t any other option, I lock my bedroom door and follow Malice into the center of our clubhouse. Behind two large wooden doors is the most sacred place here: church. It’s where we hold all of our meetings, votes, and private conversations. Only ranked members are allowed in, and only with an invite from the president. Even me.
I take my seat next to Chaos, Malice taking his on the other side as our sergeant at arms. Wrath is already seated as our secretary, Noose sitting where Rogue would be if he weren’t living in Aspen Ridge full-time, and then Rolo.
All eyes are on Malice, and it takes me a second to remember why. His fucking hair. Not wanting to waste any more time, I cut to the chase. “Mal wanted to try a new look; he thinks it’ll bring in some new playthings.”
“I’m 99 percent sure it’s gonna bring in at least two,” Malice adds, running a chipped, black-painted nail over his bottom lip. “Yeah, at least two.”
“You think dying your hair blond is going to somehow make you more fuckable?” Chaos asks.
“Oh, it’s going to. Everyone else is finding their queen. I want one.”
“So, you’re looking for a woman?” Rolo asks for clarification. None of us has ever been able to peg Malice’s sexual orientation. He seems to have an appetite for everyone with zero rhyme or reason.
“I didn’t specify gender, good sir. But whoever ends up with me will be my queen regardless,” he declares with a flourish of his arms and a terrible attempt at a British accent.
“Alright, are we all here to talk about Malice’s love life, or is there news?” I ask, wanting to know the update, and also wanting to get on the road toward Bloomfield. Chaos looks down at the Hell’s Heathens crest in the center of the table. A large, detailed skull with a dagger slicing from skull to jaw and coming out the bottom, a slanted crown falling off the top. His eyes trace over the edges before he finally looks up to address us.
“Otto is still working on getting through the mess. Whoever was running these accounts was purposeful in making tracing the money difficult on the off chance it fell into someone else’s hands. However, he did find one clue that keeps coming up. Evercrest Holdings. We’re thinking this is the funnel. Money goes in and out through here. It traces right from Obsidian Financial Group, the bank accounts that little shit gave Malice and me when we were torturing him. The amounts are obscene, way more than we ever thought possible. I’m leaning more and more toward what we already thought. Whatever this is, they are trafficking humans. There’s no way this is arms or drugs.”
Disgust and anger are palpable in the room. We may be a motorcycle club that skirts the law, we all may have murder on our hands, but we don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it, we don’t hurt women, or children. We live by a code, we protect those who can’t protect themselves, and we work hard to keep our community safe. We don’t go looking for trouble, but we have no problem eliminating it once it finds us.
“Why were they living in squalor?” Rolo asks, and it’s a good question. I was on the ground at their compound with him, and they lived in a crumbling, desolate wasteland of an area when we went in to take them out. The Widowmakers tried a pass at a territory takeover of Amberwood, but we didn’t let it happen. Instead, we moved in on them and took them down. That’s when everything went to shit. Turns out, the Widowmakers were involved in something much darker than some club territory shit.
