“Good,” I said curtly, “I want that motherfucker looking at his failure for the rest of his time here.”
However, as I stood there with Viper, I knew something else was on his mind.
“Wanna talk about it?” I asked, nudging him softly.
He raked his hand through his hair. “If Wes succeeds in getting out of here, Lila’s in a hell of a lot of trouble. She’s immediately at risk.”
I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, all of us are gonna make sure he doesn’t get out. Why in the hell do you think Pride allowed himself to take such a beating?”
Viper shook his head. “I know, I know. But we don’t have enough information.”
I knew what he meant. “Oh, we’ve got plenty of information. What we don’t have is a lot of leverage. We need to get him talking.”
“Bingo.”
“But with Wes probably beat to high hell and back, Fangs probably won’t approve of us getting intel right this second.”
His face fell to stone, and I knew what that meant. “I don’t give a shit about what Fangs thinks. If Lila’s life is on the line, I can’t risk it. Club, or no club.”
I knew how that felt. I had just gone through the same fucking thing with Rose only minutes ago, and the two of us weren’t even in love. Viper and I were more than that, though. Viper was responsible for me pledging myself to this club. We were prospects together, and during some of those darkest moments as a beginner myself, he had been there to pull me out of the mire and remind me what the hell we were doing it all for in the first place.
So, I rolled my shoulders back and prepared myself for a long afternoon.
“Lead the way, then, my man. You know I’ve always got your back.”
8
ROSE
As I closed my condo door, I listened to Caleb’s feet backtrack. Well, Reaper.
“Why the hell do they call him ‘Reaper?’” I whispered to myself.
It was one of the many questions I logged away in my mind as I listened to the elevator carry him away from me. As I stood there, leaning heavily against my door, I stared out into the emptiness of my condo. No pictures on the walls. No decorations out on the tables. No flower arrangements to make the place smell nice. All it had was some hand-me-down furniture, my clothes, and my toiletries.
And yet, with Caleb’s presence, it felt more like home than the house Blake and I had purchased.
“He had a gun?” I whispered.
I closed my eyes and replayed the moment when Caleb had pulled that thing off his hip. I hadn’t even seen it, and it made me wonder if he was packing in other places on his body. I mean, sure, with his street cred and him running with a club, it made sense for him to have a gun on his person.
But it also made me wonder if he was into any sort of illegal things.
“Jesus Christ,” I said with a breathless giggle.
He had changed so much, especially from our high school days. Way back when, he had been nothing but a computer nerd. A lanky, glasses-wearing, braces-having, knee-high-socks kind of nerd. Sure, he had gone through a beef-up phase where we left for summer break and he came back towering over everyone else. But boys always went through those stages. He popped just like everyone else, and it didn’t once stop his obsession with technology. I mean, he was so good with that shit that by our senior year, he had already built several phone apps that were used for a plethora of reasons. And the second he needed background images and logos for all of them, he came to me. The graphic designer. The one who knew how to use Photoshop and Gimp and all of those things that boggled people’s minds.
We made decent money with them, too.
Some Saturdays, we spent hours together trying to get things just right. Testing, retesting, and replacing pictures when we realized that the designs wouldn’t work in actuality, only theory. Those days seemed so… easy. So kind, and forgiving, and happy.
I missed the easiness our friendship once had.
Hell, I missed the easiness of life as a kid.
“Why is everything so hard now?” I whispered to myself.
“And who’s this again?” Caleb asked.
