I have to fight the urge to smack his fucking head, instead I growl, “Leah is off limits.”
Then Edge leans closer, his voice lower, just for me. “You talk to her yet?”
My gut tightens at her name. Even hearing it in this room makes it feel like someone has cracked a window in the middle of a storm.
“I’m working on it,” I say.
Edge’s eyes don’t leave mine. “Steel.”
I hate when he uses my name like that. Like he’s pulling me back to the present with it.
“What?” I snap, then force my tone down. I’m Prez. I don’t get to be sharp for no reason. “What do you want from me?”
Edge is steady. “Has she agreed to spy for the club?”
“She hasn’t agreed,” I say. “Not yet.” They don’t need to know that she did agree. Then I messed it up, and now I doubt she’d piss on me if I was on fire.
“You losin’ your charm?” Snake asks, with a smirk. “We need eyes inside Harris’ circle. You said she could be it.”
I’d said a lot of things. Mostly to convince myself I was in control.
“I’m working on it,” I mutter.
“Ginger said she saw her storming out the clubhouse last week,” Brick adds.
I meet Brick’s gaze. “The girl is… complicated.”
Shadow’s mouth curls slightly. “Complicated usually means trouble.”
“Trouble’s what we do,” Titan rumbles.
A few low chuckles move through the room. Not because it’s funny—because it’s true.
Edge doesn’t smile. He leans back and says, “You’re close to her.”
I don’t answer fast enough.
That’s answer enough.
Silence stretches again, heavier this time. The club can smell weakness the way dogs smell fear. It isn’t that they’d turn on you. It’s that they’d adjust. Protect the club from whatever had gotten under the Prez’s skin… And Leah is under mine.
I can still smell her scent on my pillow. Still taste her on my tongue. Sweet. God, she was sweet. And I’m the kind of man who ruins sweet things by touching them. I force my hands to unclench. “She’ll come around,” I say. “Harris ain’t stopping. Leah can help end it without blood.”
Snake mutters, “Or she can get us killed.”
“She won’t,” I answer, too sharp, too fast.
Inside, something claws.
Because the truth is, I don’t just want her help. I want her. I want the way she softens the edges of me without even trying. I want the way she looks at me like I could be more than the worst parts of my world.
That kind of want is dangerous. It makes you careless, and I’m not a careless man. Not when men’s lives depend on me.
I drag the meeting back on track, my voice firm. “Alright. Rita McKenna. We handle it clean. No unnecessary violence. We make it known that Alder Street is off-limits. Anybody whobought property there deals with the people already livin’ in it. Nobody gets pushed out.”
Shadow’s eyes gleam. “How known?”
“Known,” I say. “Brick, Shadow—you go talk to whoever served that notice. Find out what office, what name’s on it. Make the message clear.”
