No one wanted Armageddon.
But it was worse knowing it might be out there, waiting, andthey had no choice but to wait for it to hit, a sneak attack.
That huddle could indicate sides were being taken even ifthe thing they most didn’t need in the Club right then were lines being drawn.Snap felt a line had been drawn when Rosie had been pulled in then torn apart,it was just that after that had happened, in Snapper’s estimation all the menhad stepped to the right side of that line.
In its history, Chaos had splintered once.It got ugly.Right now, it could not splinter again.And even though every brother knew thatto be true, with the shit going down, it seemed an inevitability.
On the fucking verge.
Tab and Shy were not there.Nor was Rush, Tabby’s brother byblood, Snapper’s brother of the cut.Tack and Tyra either.
Tab had recently sustained a loss.The night of the picnictable.She hadn’t been back to the Compound since and was finding recoverydifficult.So Shy, Rush, Tack, Tyra, and Tab and Rush’s little half-brothers,Rider and Cutter, were seeing to their girl.
Another shot across the bow.
Yeah, on the goddamned verge.
Roscoe and Hopper were playing pool with Lanie and Carissa.Joke was in the garage across the forecourt, keeping his shit tight by lettinghis head fall deep in a build.
Lanie and Carissa were losing in a big way.Lanie andCarissa also did not care, their frequent laughter and bright personalities,along with Rosie’s quiet serenity, were the only things that was keeping thedoom hanging over the Chaos Compound from enveloping them, choking out the air,strangling them standing.
Snap saw it in Roscoe and Hop.The brothers shot smiles atthe women but their bodies were tight.Of late, Roscoe had taken to habituallycracking his knuckles, and right then was no different.Hop had wound his headaround to loosen the neck muscles twice that Snap had caught.
On the verge.
Big Petey moved from the huddle toward Renae, who wasshooting the shit with Arlo on stools at the other end of the bar, close to thedouble doors that led to the Compound.This happened as Dog headed to the backhall, where he’d left his old lady, Sheila, in his room.His woman wasundoubtedly passed out or simply physically immobile after the hard-core sexsounds they’d all heard drifting into the common room, prompting Snap to turnup the music.Brick’s route was to the pool table.
Snap watched Pete’s movements closely.
Arlo had a woman who he’d claimed as his for a long time,and Snap didn’t know a lot about that, he just knew he stepped out on her.Frequently.After Boz (who also liked variable pussy even when his cock wasowned by just one) left Bev, Arlo was the last brother with a Chaos patch whodid that shit.And Snap had not left attention to Renae to that brother alone.He’d kept an eye.
He didn’t like it.
Pete, it was coming clear, liked it less.
Then again, the look on Pete’s face, the reason why Snapwasn’t a big fan of Arlo setting up to make a move on Rosalie’s mother was notwhy Pete didn’t like it.Pete had around ten years on Arlo, but he wore it onhis face more like it was fifteen.Or thirty.
But the man was the most loyal, solid human being Snap hadever met.More than Tack, who could be volatile, even if he had a fierce checkon that shit.Even more than High, who’d learned the hard way to keep his shitcool.More even than Brick, who was mellow and smooth almost all the time, evenif he hadn’t just finished a blunt.
As Pete instigated a cockblock, Snap again scanned thespace.
High and Millie had High’s daughters that he’d had with hisex, so they were up in that crazy-ass mansion the man had bought his girls innorth Denver.
Yeah, Logan “High” Judd was a biker who lived in a gothicVictorian manor that dripped class from every square centimeter, the same ashis old lady.All of it, except the basement man-cave that was such a starkcontrast to all that was around it, Snap couldn’t walk into the fucking placewithout feeling an instant sense of culture shock, then fast on the heels ofthat busting a gut laughing.
Whatever they were doing up there, Snap had no doubt Highoften found times to reflect on current times, and when he did, he’d wind hisneck around just like Hop.
Notably absent was Hound.He used to be around a lot.Serious shit had gone down with him—him and his brothers, him and hisnow-woman.Snap was frankly shocked as shit Hound had nailed down any woman atall, much less the one he went balls to the wall for.Snap was under theimpression that the man had always been about brotherhood, blood, guts andattachment-less booty.
Then again, a lot had surfaced about Hound recently that wasshocking as shit.
So in a rare instance, when it came to Hound, Snap hadlearned he was wrong.
But in this instance, he was glad to be that.
His eyes lit on Rosalie, and not unusually, his dick had theresponse.
She was mellowed out, with her people, but the vibe hadpenetrated, she knew what it did to her man, and she was all in to do somethingabout that.
