Until I heard the whimpered, gargled cry of another female voice being forced my way from the opposite direction.
When Autumn’s tear-filled eyes found the moonlight, and her face shone with fear, my heart sank straight into the pits of my stomach. Two other men dragged her without any delicacy, pushing her toward us as she choked on a dirty rag that had been shoved in her mouth.
Ayda’s quiet gasp didn’t go amiss. Trigger’s smug smirk said he had the reaction he wanted, and when Slater had to nudge her back farther, Trigger snorted in derision, making it clear how he felt about women in general.
I took a moment to close my eyes and breathe.
“You don’t need to do this,” I told him quietly.
“No,” he agreed. “But I wanted to.”
“Women and children…” I shook my head at him. “You know we don’t go there. So far you’ve crossed both lines. Jacob with a minor. Now with my brother’s old lady.”
“Jacob is a law unto himself. Don’t associate him with my club because he’s my brother. Blood doesn’t always run thicker than MC loyalty.”
I scowled again, and so did Jacob, his frown deepening as he stared at the back of Travis’ head. He didn’t say anything, though. I was pretty sure he couldn’t even speak. The only satisfying thing about the whole situation was seeing the blood trickling down Jacob’s face.
Turning my attention to Autumn, I tilted my head to one side and gave her the deepest apology I could muster with my eyes.
She whimpered behind the rag, and it ended up with her coughing as she tried to push it out of her mouth.
“Trigger, I’ll talk,” I told him as I stared at Autumn. “Just take the rag out of her mouth.”
“This rag?” he asked, pointing to it and walking closer to Autumn. “With pleasure.” In one swift move, he’d reached into Autumn’s mouth and ripped it out. She inhaled sharply, her tears falling on the ground as she bent forward and collected some air. Her chest sounded tight, and the thought of what they’d done to her in the darkness made my blood boil even hotter.
“You—”
Trigger cut me off by waving the rag around in front of my face.
“We thought it would be some kind of poetic justice to let one of your own taste the very death your club caused.”
“What?” I asked, frowning hard. It was a tatty old piece of cloth, too covered in dirt to be recognizable.
Trigger held it, opening it up wider with the tips of his fingers until it all fell into place.
In the corner of the bandana was a small scripted H.O.B, and like a montage of bad memories, it all came flashing back to me at once.
“We found this on the dead body that was dumped on our land not too many months ago.” Trigger waved it around before he began to circle me like a vulture. “Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy, Tucker. If you’re going to bury an Emperor on our turf, be sure not to leave any obvious traces on his body when you leave. Although, I have to admit, you fucked him up good. He was hard to recognize or track when he was dug up. But we found this under his T-shirt, wrapped around a wound on the top of his arm.”
“Sounds like a setup to me.” I swallowed while he was behind me, showing no emotion.
“Maybe.”
Those maybes were starting to get on my last fucking nerve, but I stood strong, unmoving as I stared ahead at the two guys who were holding Jacob up.
“I’ve made mistakes in my time, Trigger, but I’m just not that fucking stupid.”
“I must admit,” he said through a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t sound like a mistake you’d make. Or at least I thought not. But then I sat back and thought about all the mistakes you’ve made over the years, Tucker. The drug runs you used to do. The underground fighting. The underhand deals with guns and money, all for a quick fix to try and make your club richer and your legacy shine brighter. All that led to the death of your most loved brother.”
The thought of Pete had my jaw tensing again as Trigger continued to circle me.
“Then you spent five long, stubborn, lonely years onthe inside, cut off from your club and taking beatings for fun because it stopped you from feeling the grief and the guilt that had taken over your life because ofall… your… mistakes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Then you got out and, instead of laying low for a while, you got an innocent woman and her kid brother involved in MC life so you could mess their lives up, too. Big mistake.”
Ayda snorted and looked around the group as every eye fell to her.
