She looked between me and Shooter anxiously, not sure who to listen to. She didn’t understand the rules of club life. All she knew was that Shooter paid her wages and I made her suffer. Both of us could hurt her in different ways if we wanted to, and she knew it.
But she was dumber than the prospect if she thought she could get away with everything she’d said to me the night before and then just come back in the morning with her just-fucked hair like nothing had happened.
“I said get the fuck out!” I yelled at her again, but this time she glared back at me like I’d kicked her kitten or something. “Now, bitch.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gauge mumbled. “I need to get back to the clubhouse anyway. I’ll be by tomorrow, brother.”
“I’ll come with you,” Dom said standing up. “I need to speak to you about Jolie.”
“Ain’t that your little sister?” Casa laughed. “Better watch this old man near her fine ass or she’ll be in his bed and on her back before you know it.”
Dom shot Casa an angry glare and Casa laughed even more. “Watch your mouth.”
“That bitch is crazy. Ain’t no one—and especially not me—going near her,” Gauge said as he stalked out of the room with Dom following. “Besides, she’s jailbait and I don’t need that kind of shit in my life.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Dom said as the door closed behind him.
“Give us a minute,” Shooter said to Belle, and she nodded and left the room.
“She’s a fuckin’ snack, brother,” Casa said with a smirk after she’d left. “I’d take a bite of that if it wasn’t for the fine piece I have at home.”
“She’s not my type,” I replied. I looked at Shooter, my eyebrows pulled into a scowl, though it was hindered by the bandage I still wore covering my left eye.
“Since when do you have a type?” Casa grinned. “She’s got holes, right?”
“Brother,” Shooter said with a heavy sigh, “can you shut the fuck up so I can speak?”
“Sorry, Prez.”
Shooter looked back to me. “Look, brother, I hate to say it but I agree with what Casa said. At least, what he’s saying has some merit to it.”
“Fuck yeah, it does,” Casa interrupted again.
Shooter sighed once more. “But we’ve got no leads. Nothing was left behind to point the finger at anyone else but these fucks. No clues. Nothing. Cops have scoured that place and handed everything they found over to us. Other than the car filled with evidence pointing to these crackheads, there’s nothing. If it wasn’t them, then whoever it was is in the wind, brother.”
My teeth ground together, my jaw ticking as my anger grew like a balloon in my chest. They had nothing. Echo was dead, I was as good as, and they’d gotten nothing but a couple of crackheads.
“Get the fuck out,” I snarled at him, looking toward the window. I was crossing a line speaking to him like that, but I didn’t give a fuck right then.
“Brother,” Shooter started, but I turned my glare on him, shutting him down.
“Get the fuck out, Prez, and don’t come back until you’ve got someone’s head I can take. If it’s the two crackheads then it’s them. If it’s not, I’ll find them when I’m back on my feet.” I was trying to stay calm, but the storm raging inside me was becoming dangerously hard to control. “Tell Doctor Collins we start physio tomorrow. I need to get my life back so I can kill the fuckers that did this to me. Echo needs his revenge.”
Shooter nodded, though I had no doubt he had a hundred things he wanted to say to me right then.
“You want me to bring a sweetbutt in to chill you out, brother? I heard Lola had a real good time the other night,” Casa asked. Guns and pussy, that was all he ever thought about. “Got a girl at the clubhouse who has a mouth like a fucking vacuum. Not that I’ve sampled it for a good while now, but a man don’t forget a thing like that, ya know.”
“Your old lady would cut your dick off if she caught you anywhere near another woman.” Shooter smiled, happy for the change in conversation. “You’re under her thumb, brother.”
“Because Laney is such an understanding old lady, huh?” Casa mocked. “She let you ride a fucking wave of free pussy whenever you want, huh? Nah, I didn’t think so. If I’m under my old lady’s thumb, then you’re under an entire fucking hand, Prez.” Casa laughed loudly and Shooter shook his head with a grin.
“Watch your mouth,” Shooter said with a smirk, and punched Casa in the arm.
It was all too much for me. Too much talk of pussy. Too much laughing. Too much normality when my life was hardly a life at all.
“Get the fuck out, both of you!” I said, not wanting to hear about their old ladies or their sex lives. Not while I was stuck in here with no chance of any woman sharing my bed ever again. Not with a face and body torn apart like mine.
Shooter gripped my shoulder and nodded, and he and Casa left. The room was quiet, barring the hospital noises out in the corridor. I hated the silence. I needed the noise and the mania of life to keep me going, because that was all I had. This life was all I’d ever had. And now all I had was silence, broken up by the beeping of machines.
