We were all feeling the jab of realizing a prospect had pulled one over on us. That he had slipped in under the radar. I had been distracted trying to win Morgan back, but Omen took it the hardest. It was his job to run backgrounds on the prospects. His job was to find whatever dirt they were trying to hide.
And everyone had shit they wanted to hide.
Halfway to Benton, Omen got a text with coordinates to meet at a different location outside Benton, Arkansas. He looked up the area, and it was an abandoned factory on the edge of town. The perfect place to kidnap a woman.
We stopped about three-quarters of a mile away from the meeting point and walked in. There were twelve of us, and we fanned out through the tree line to surround the building.
The old, abandoned factory sat on the edge of town. Once a booming alloy business, it now sat empty, falling apart from years of neglect.
“What now?” Venom asked.
“We need a distraction to draw out whoever is in there,” Ambush offered.
From across the lot, I saw smoke, and I shook my head. “The old bastard hasn’t changed,” I growled as I pointed to the back of the building where a pile of old pallets had been lit on fire.
There was a reason he was called Smokey and it wasn’t the three packs of cigarettes he smoked a day. Men started piling out of the building to see where the smoke was coming from.
“Move. Now!”
Everyone moved toward the building, some going around the front, others dropping behind the piles of junk and broken-down vehicles littered around the place.
I had just made it to the front door when I heard the gunshots. Venom was at my back, and we both crouched below a window just as the glass shattered and rained down on us.
Venom kicked open the door that hung on its hinges and went inside firing. A gun in each hand, as though he was walking into the fucking Alamo.
I entered behind him and moved to the edge of the room. I didn’t see Zephyr, not yet anyway, but the building had three floors. He had to be here somewhere.
I aimed my gun and crept up the stairway as silently as I could. The wooden steps creaked under my feet, the sound muffled by the gunfire below. I moved along the hallway, checking rooms on my left as I went. On my right was open space that looked down on my men as they fought the Satan’s Angels.
I didn’t look over the railing. I couldn’t worry about them; I had to find the man I had come here to kill. I had to end his life before he ended mine.
Still no sign of Zephyr.
Spider and Scorpion were behind me. The two of them covered my back, but would they protect me? Would they choose to let me die? Spider and I had history. Now Scorpion and I did too.
Not the same history.
One was a brother for years; someone I trusted to have my back. One was a kid I barely remembered. A kid who threatened my life to protect my old lady.
As we moved steadily down the hall, I tried to keep my thoughts on the task at hand, but the doubts swirled through my head. What would happen if they were given the choice to save my life or let me die and allow someone else to take over what they’d begged me to lead?
A noise at the end of the hall caught my attention, but I was distracted. Everything changed in a second. Zephyr stepped into the hall, his gun aimed at me.
Everything slowed as I took in his haggled face, the sinister smile he flashed in my direction. He thought he’d won. He believed he would take us out. Take my sister. My old lady.
Morgan’s face appeared before me. The life we wanted to live. The children we wanted to have. The baby she carried now. My men would protect her. They loved her.
“Where’s my son?” he snarled.
“Dead.”
“Pity,” was his only response. He didn’t care that his son had been found out. He didn’t care that his legacy had ended at the hands of my club. He’d sent him into the lion’s den knowing he wouldn’t make it out.
I saw his finger twitch on the trigger, and my own hand gripped the butt of the gun I held. My finger squeezed the trigger, but the shot went wide when Spider slammed into me from the side, knocking me to the floor.
Scorpion yelled as he emptied his gun into Zephyr’s body. His steps methodical until he stood before him. Dropping his gun to the floor, he grabbed Zephyr’s cut and tossed him over the railing.
He landed with a thud. A few more seconds and the gunfire ceased.
