This is where Misty’s proven she’s stronger than me. She still has nightmares, but she pushes through. I’m the one who gets stuck and spirals.
“He’s currently untouchable unless we want to fuck ourselves,” Pacino says.
“You know, it would be really fucking helpful to stop me from ripping all of your heads from your bodies and tossing them against the walls like basketballs if you just… you know… FUCKING EXPLAINED!”
It’s true. Right now, I’m envisioning ripping Jethro’s head off his body, leaving blood spurting from his neck as his body lies slack against the chair, and smashing his face into the wall.
I might have a slight anger problem. I’ve had the exact same dream with Butch, but he actually deserves the gore.
“He has more cops than just Vold in his pocket,” Penn says.
This is what counts as explaining? “So?”
“So, if anything happens to him, we all go down. But you will be the main target,” Pacino says.
“Fucking let them!”
“If that happens, there is no one to protect Misty or Bernie or Lainey, or your mom,” Jethro says. “Getting revenge will put them in danger. Butch will take whatever he wants, and no one will be able to stop him.”
“Except he’ll be fucking dead,” I remind them.
Putting his hands up, I know he’s placating me. Which pisses me off even more. Maybe recommending him to take that head seat wasn’t my best decision.
“Okay, so maybe Butch won’t. But you really think the rest of his club wouldn’t take their revenge out on your family?” heasks. “His club is so blindly loyal that they’ll still function as though he’s the one wearing that PRESIDENT patch.”
Looking around the room, I try to find someone—anyone, really—who backs me. But even Kannon looks resigned to this fact. But what did I really expect? No one here has a woman to defend the honor of. To take her pain personally like I do.
I’m the only one who feels the pain. For Mom. For Misty. For fucking Johnny.
“So that’s it?” I ask, my hands shaking as I seethe.
“We’re not letting it go,” Pacino says.
“Pacino—”
“Jethro, we’re not,” he says. “We just have to be smart about this. We can’t kill the club and put everyone in harm’s way because we want revenge.”
Capone leans forward and turns to look me in the eyes. “And we want revenge. No one should get away with what Butch did to Misty. But we don’t want to risk letting what you stopped actually happen because we’re either dead or behind bars.”
Leave it to Capone to be the voice of reason. There’s something in his gaze that calms me. He understands how this feels somehow. He’s just as pissed as I am.
“We’re going to do what we can to weaken the Venom. And when we do, we’re going to strike. We will cut their fucking heads off,” Pacino says. “But we can’t do it before we have our ducks in a row.”
I hate this. I really fucking hate this. All I want is revenge. “How do I go home and tell my girl that my club is doing fucking nothing about what happened to her?”
My question blankets the room in silence. Apparently in their thought process about how wecan’tkill the bastard, they neverthought about how to break the news to the woman who was attacked.
A new fear fills me. What if Misty no longer feels safe? If my club won’t take out the man who hurt her, what fucking good are we? Why expose herself or Bernie to us?
“How do I tell her that we’re not taking care of our own?” I ask again, but this time, I look right at Jethro. “You realize how that makes us look? Like a bunch of fucking pussies.”
“Zep—”
“I get it. You don’t have a woman who was directly hurt by the president of our rival club. You don’t have to explain anything to her. Why it happened. Why she was targeted. Why we’re not cutting off his balls, bronzing them, and hanging them from the fucking mantle like a prize. But I do. I have multiple people in my family hurt by the same motherfucker.”
Capone runs a hand over his face. “Maybe I can call in a favor. That way it’s not us directly.”
“No,” Jethro says. “It’ll still get us taken out.”
