Snorting, I drop my feet to the floor. “Not really my style.”
He hums. “Heard the board’s been throwing your name around for the new top dog.”
It’s a joke, really. And not a funny one.
Anembarrassment, they called it. The chief of police brought in provincial muscle to take down the Sinners, then wiped his hands clean of thebiker problemplaguing South Bay. Now there are a bunch of bodies in the morgue and the media is throwing around words like “incompetence” and “corruption” and “police brutality.” There’s no scenario where Wells comes out looking like anything less than a complete fucking idiot.
He was done the second the story hit the news.
Somehow, I managed to get out of all this without so much as a smear to my name. And now it’s being tossed into the hat of contenders for Wells’s job. All while the dirt from this whole mess still sullies my hands.
Allen went off the rails. He planted evidence, used unnecessary force, performed illegal traffic stops. He hired a rival outlaw biker gang to take out the Sinners because of a personal vendetta.
He’sthe dirty one.
And me? I’m the cop who reined him in, who stood up for what was right despite the target it painted on my back. I put my life on the line to protect my town, to protect the integrity of the badge.
I’m the fucking hero in all this.
Like I said. A joke.
Can’t say I’m not happy with the outcome, given the alternative. But I don’t feel completely off the hook. I got a hold of Allen’s cell phone before every cop in the district swooped in on that junkyard, so all that video evidence he was threatening me with has long been destroyed. But I still have no idea if he had anything else on me. I may never know. Or maybe one day in the near future the law will come banging at my door, and I’ll end up like Allen. Bleeding out on the ground at the hands of my brothers in blue.
I give Axe a tight smile. “Don’t get too excited. I pulled my name well before they had a chance to seriously consider me.”
He grunts. “Heard that too.”
His focus shifts behind him to the bullpen, where a small cluster of patrol cops shuffle around paperwork. Then he steps inside my office and closes the door. No. Notmyoffice. This will never be my office.
“Wish you hadn’t done that,” he says.
“Oh, I bet.”
He plops down in the leather chair across from me, legs spread wide. “We’re square. I’ll keep my word on that. Your business with the Sinners is done if you want it to be. But, uh”—he angles forward and rubs the back of his neck, tension winding in his shoulders—“it’s going to be…difficultfor me, explaining that to my old man. You’re putting me in a spot. Especially since you were a shoo-in for the new chief of police.”
I cock my head. “Jimmy’s back in town, what? A month? And he’s already running the show?”
Axe slips on that scowl of his, his jaw tightening. “Only one running things around here isme,” he says. “Don’t fucking forget that.”
The ex–Sinner prez and his old lady rolled into South Bay shortly after we were almost taken out by Allen and his band of Raider fucks. I’m hoping to hell he doesn’t stick around too long. But that’s no longer my problem.
I grin at the obvious nerve I hit. “I know the pecking order. But does Jimmy?”
He drags his hands down his face as he sags in his seat. The sigh that he expels is long and deep and laced with irritation. “My father has…insertedhimself into my business. And it seems he’s here to stay. At least for the time being. I’m trying to be… amenable.”
A chuckle rolls out of me.
His scowl deepens. “Think that’s funny?”
Shoulders bouncing, I bite down on another laugh. “It’s kind of like when you move back in with your parents after being on your own for a while. And you’ve suddenly got someone asking you where you been and where you’re going.”
“Yeah, except his questions are more along the lines of why I don’t have anyone in this shithole of a department in my pocket, and how the fuck you managed to slither your way out of it.” Another sigh, and he angles forward, elbows on his knees. “I pay well. You know I do. And South Bay will need you. We might have sent the Raiders packing, but you and I both know this is far from over. We can protect the town together. We don’t…” He closes his eyes as if he’s trying desperately to force the next words from his mouth. “We don’t have to be enemies. Take the job, take my money, and stay.”
Stay.
South Bay is my home. At the end of the day, at the end of the ride, I’ll always find myself back here.
But when I was faced with the choice, I had to ask myself, what’s left here for me? What am I living for? Who the fuck am I without this place?
