“Technically, she’s no longer engaged to him,” Dutch said coolly, his feet propped up on the wooden conference table upstairs that I made with my bare hands.
“Does he know that?” Lancer spat.
“Enough,” I said curtly. “Everyone, take a seat. This is church, not a cock fight.”
Coffin, who usually stayed silent during church meetings and took everything in, spoke up for once in his damn life.
“We got a plan as to how we’re gonna handle this fucked up situation? Or, is this another Alicia moment?”
The fact that he dared to even mention her name forced anger up the back of my throat. “Speak her name again and I will end you. Understood?”
Yet, Coffin remained unwavering. “Tell me you’re not falling in love with someone caught up in our bullshit that you feel weirdly protective over all of a sudden, and we’ll be fine.”
I pinned him with a glare that made his eye twitch. “Let’s not forget what happened to her on your watch.”
Coffin shot to his feet. “I had nothing to do with her jumping in front of you.Shewanted to save you from that bullet, and you put her in a situation where she felt she had to. That ain’t on me. That’s on y’all. So, what I’m asking is, are we gonna have to bury another woman because you can’t—?”
“You were supposed to hold her back, Coffin!” I said as I stuck my finger in his mousey little face. “You said you had a grip on her! She wasn’t even supposed to be in the fucking clubhouse! What the hell happened to that!?”
“Enough!” Trooper exclaimed. “Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up! All of you!”
Normally, I would have put his ass in the ground for that. We were in church, and that was my motherfucking domain. But, with the guys all bent out of shape, I got it.
We were in shit territory with that woman in our basement.
Still, they sat down. One by one, they turned their attention back to me, their President. The person they trusted to have all of the answers.
And I had none when it came to Naomi.
“Now that we’re all done pitching our weekly fits,” I said as I stared each of them down, “do you guys wanna hear about our new buyer? Or, do you want to keep playing chicken shit around some girl?”
Bury grinned. “That was quick.”
I shrugged. “The fuck did you expect? We’re businessmen, so we do business.”
“Who’s the buyer?” Lancer asked.
Coffin went back to keeping his mouth shut, and honestly, I preferred it that way. Most people who brought up my ex in any way, shape, or form found themselves attached to concrete and headed toward the bottom of the fucking ocean while screaming for mercy.
He’d be no different if he said her name again.
“Code name: Mercenary. Got a group of guys interested in some of the new stuff. Dutch and I are headed to a meet with them tonight to get a handle on what they’re looking for before officially place our order, but it should be a good haul for a typical trade-off.”
“How many?” Lancer asked.
“Seven.”
Bury whistled. “You sure only two of you should be going?”
“We’re not meeting all of them,” I said with a roll of my eyes, “we’re just meeting with their interface. They have a hierarchy, like we do. We’re respecting it with the assumption that they’ll respect ours.”
“And if they don’t?” Trooper asked.
I smirked. “We show them why they should have.”
“How much?” Coffin asked.
The only question he ever asked, and it was a damn good one. “Haul should be around three mil.”
