Casa and Parker grabbed me and began to drag me off of Dom, but not before I managed to get in another hit to his face and make a large cut right above his eye. Blood began to ooze out of the cut and trickle down his face, and the sight somehow brought me to my senses.
I pointed at Dom, aiming my rage at him because Hardy wasn’t there, my nostrils flaring and my teeth bared to him. “You’re dead to me.”
Dom slowly got up to his knees, wiping the blood away from his with his sleeve. “I hear ya, brother.”
“You’re no brother of mine,” I gritted out.
He nodded and swallowed, reminding me so much of Butch in that moment with his broken expression. I shrugged out of Casa and Parker’s grip and glared at Dom.
I paced the room like a tiger in a cage, my body trembling with untampered rage. “How could you continue to let that piece of shit fuckin’ breathe after what he’s done!?”
“I had to be sure, Jesse.” He spoke in a broken whisper, his words coming out choked and starved of life. The oxygen sucked from his very lungs. “I had to be sure before I made my move or I’d get us both killed, and I couldn’t let that happen. He’d get away with it, and I promised Butch I’d always look out for you, and him. I was trying to keep that promise to him.” He dragged a hand across his face. “I thought it was all my fault. We’d argued and he’d walked out, taken your place on the ride, and then he was gone—and it was my fault.”
“He had him killed!” I roared in anger. “And you did nothing, Dom, nothing! You self-pitying motherfucker!”
“I just wanted to do right by him and keep his little brother alive. Never thought it would come to this—to you and me and this whole fucking explosion of shit. Hardy fucked us all. He fucked Butch over, and despite how much you hate me right now for not telling you, we have to take him out and make him pay now. You can hate on me later. I’ll leave the club, walk away from fucking everything, but right now we need to work together to end Hardy!”
Casa and I glared at Dom. I had lost the inability to form words so Casa took over.
“How can we still trust you, motherfucker? You kept this shit from all of us. How many times have you put another brother in danger by not saying something?” Casa yelled, his fury matching my own, because he had seen the toll that Butch’s death had taken on me—hell, he’d been there trying to help me through it every step of the way. But nothing had tempered it because my rage and anger were built on guilt and poisoned lies—but it was all bullshit. Not one single thing was true.
I hadn’t done it, Hardy had.
Hardy—my father—had tried to have me killed, but instead he’d killed my brother.
I swallowed and took a long breath, Casa’s anger somehow caging mine as it simultaneously set me free. “What makes you so certain now?” I asked.
Dom looked up, his gaze straying to Casa’s gun before moving to me. “I heard him talking about another deal.” He dragged his hands down his face. “I didn’t know who I could trust—how deep the fucking poison seeped. I didn’t want to risk anyone else before I could figure it out. I was going to go myself, alone, finally find out exactly what the fuck was going on before I came to you, but now…” He looked at me and I nodded, agreeing with him
Butch had tried to do it on his own, and look where it had gotten him. No, this time we were doing it together. We’d kill Hardy together or we’d die together trying to honor Butch.
“What about Rider?” Casa asked. “Do you think he’s in on it too?”
“Good question,” I replied. “Real good fuckin’ question. I guess we’ll find out when we turn up and surprise the traitorous motherfuckers. He’s the one who sent me over to the warehouse that night, so he must be a part of it, right?”
My thoughts strayed to Laney who was staying with Charlie and Rider and I had a fleeting moment of worry for her safety. But Old ladies and family were untouchables, and Charlie was best friends with Laney. Unless that was bullshit too? The hate Charlie had directed at me in the gas station had been real though; the pain and anger she felt for Laney—her friend, that was real too. No way was that bitch that good of an actress. At least that’s what I hoped.
I looked down at Dom and finally felt some pity for him. I hated the fact that he hadn’t said anything to me about any of it, that he’d continued to be Hardy’s bitch and errand boy for the past few months despite suspecting that he’d had a hand in Butch’s death. But Butch had always trusted him, and I knew I had to too. Dom didn’t know my final words to Butch, so he didn’t know my guilt. He only knew that I had lost my brother and best friend. He only saw the misery I had been in—the same misery he had been in himself. More so because of their relationship.
It dawned on me then that he had been holding a guilt of his own inside for all that time, but worse still was the fact that he’d known Hardy was involved somehow but had had no one to talk to about it.
Butch was in my head, begging that I listen to him and trust Dom, and I knew I had to. Because somehow I had to get past the betrayal so we could move forward. If I didn’t, we’d never get our revenge. And that was the most important thing of all now. The Reverend was going to pay for it, and so were the Razorbacks. But more important to me was that Hardy pay, too—and I couldn’t do that without brothers at my back.
Dom was right about one thing: there was no way to know how deep Hardy’s reach in our club was, or how many brothers—if any—he had on the inside. And until we knew that, the only people we could trust were there in that room.
I reached a hand down to Dom, and he stared at it for a long second before taking it firmly and letting me pull him up. The blood was still oozing from the cut above his now swollen eye, and his lip was split. He spat the blood on the ground, his eyes holding me and begging me to forgive him.
I couldn’t though, at least not yet. But we could move past it until there was a time to clear the air more. I pulled him to me and held him, both of us sharing our guilt and misery with one another without saying a damn word.
We had both loved Butch, and it was our love for him that fueled our hate for everyone that had a hand in his death.
They would all fucking pay.
