Because something in the pit of my gut told me that he’d fight me harder than my sister had ever attempted.
15
FANGS
“Fangs, you okay?”
“Hey, if you could take a look at this—”
“Hey, Fangs! Need ya over here for a second.”
I passed by the voices of all my men as I stormed toward my bedroom. If steam could have come out of my ears, I would’ve damn near flooded the clubhouse with it. How the hell did we keep doing this? How did yet another woman that had been trapped with those assholes come to the conclusion that they needed to take us down with them? It boggled my mind. Did people really assume we were just like Bullet?
Just… for fun?
“Fangs!”
I didn’t even know who the hell yelled my name. All I knew was the slamming of the bathroom door behind me before I practically lunged for the sink. I turned on the cold water and cupped my hands beneath the stream. I brought it to my face over and over, trying to splash my sins away and wake my ass up.
I had more important things to do than focus on what some stupid girl said about us.
But if her and Theresa were serious, then we had another issue at hand.
Jesus Christ, how did things get so out of control?
As I planted my cold, wet hands against the bathroom countertop, I stared at my dripping wet, pathetic-looking face. And then, everything crashed down at once. The reality of the situation. All of the clubs that had been burned to the ground. The money we were scraping up left and right out of the couch cushions in order to get by. My fingertips curled into the counter as the sounds of those screaming girls flooded my head. Fire licking up toward the heavens as people trapped in those buildings screamed for their lives. I tilted my head toward the sky and relished the sensation of the cold water dripping down my neck, trying to pull me out of the recesses of my mind.
But it was all too much.
I thought about the women we had dashed in to save. The girls that had put their lives in our hands while they perished in a pit of fiery flames. My lower lip quivered as I replayed the power to our last club being cut, shutting down what would have been a wallet-saving evening for me and my guys. Hell, for everyone, if we had played our cards differently. I even thought about those god damn insurance adjustors and how they were giving me the runaround in their phone calls, despite them saying I had claims galore that would go through just fine.
My men trapped like fucking rats.
That rich-ass motherfucker faking his death.
It filled me with so much rage that I picked up my fists and slammed them back down into the countertop.
And when I did, a crack ricocheted from one end of the linoleum top to the other.
“You’re fucking pathetic, Fangs,” I growled to myself.
I was their leader. Their President. Their lighthouse lookout. And I had failed them. Anger swelled in me so greatly that it blinded me. Everything fell to the wayside. Everything fell dark. And it wasn’t until a great, big crash resounded.
Sending mirrored glass soaring toward the ground.
“Fucking hell!” I bellowed.
“Fangs?” Julia asked.
I looked down at my hand, which dripped with blood.
“Fangs? What was that noise?”
Maybe if I didn’t answer, she’d go away.
Then again, I didn’t want her to go away.
“Oh, my God. Fangs!” Julia yelped.
