Hell, there had been too many in the last few months.
This was just the latest in a long line.
A very long line.
I was tired of it. The blood and the screaming. And with each man, we interrogated my soul grew a little bit darker. Soon there would be nothing left at all.
“He's not going to tell us anything more.”
The deep timbre of The Judge’s voice snapped me back to reality, my eyes lifted from the blood that had snaked past my wrist. He was right of course. The man in the chair in front of us was beyond speaking now. He had probably been too far gone for the last hour at least.
And we had found out nothing.
Just like with all the rest of them. Every single person I had asked had told me absolutely nothing. Not because they didn't know. I was sure they did. But because they were more afraid of The Family than they were of me.
It would have made me homicidal if I wasn’t so damn exhausted,
I was tired of being a dead man walking. Of looking over my shoulder and keeping to the shadows. It wasn't that my life before I had faked my death had been all sunshine and roses, but I had expected things to at least get a little better when I returned.
I'd expected something other than this empty gnawing feeling in my gut. And the guilt that kept me up at night.. Not over the men who had lost their lives at our hands but over her..
Corinne. My long-dead wife haunted my dreams with her accusing eyes.
And Gypsy. My little sunflower. It wasn't fair what I was doing to her either. Leading her on only to pull away the next minute. And then there was the danger I was in. Gypsy was a sweet girl, could I with good conscience ask her to get involved knowing it would put a target on her back?
The Family wanted me dead, which was nothing new plenty of people did. But I wanted to know why. Yes, one of my men had taken out one of the heads of The Family, but this had started long before Havoc had gone all knight in shining leather over Darcie. A fucking real long time before.
And I wanted to know why.
Before I went back to my club I needed to know, so we could prepare for the war we all knew was coming. And it would come. The moment it became general knowledge that I was still alive it had started. The Family were just biding their time.
Hell, for all I knew they had their next hit planned.
“He didn't tell us shit to begin with.” Sighing, I stepped away from the almost unconscious man. My hand closed into a fist. My knuckles were split and fresh blood seeped from them.
“I really thought he would break” The Judge wiped his hands down his perfectly pressed trousers. I was a cold son of a bitch but I was nothing compared to him.
The ex-hitman for The Family had switched sides. I didn't know why. It wasn't my business to ask. It gave him new enemies but it gave us a powerful ally.
And the Sons needed allies.
“Maybe he would have if you two hadn’t gone so hard at him.”
Turning my head, I scowled at my oldest friend. Hansel had been with me from the beginning. We had been scrawny teens when we became prospects. Life might have dealt us very similar hands, but we had gone about handling the troubles in our lives in very different ways.
When my wife had died alone at the side of the road, it had been Hansel who had propped me up and made sure I kept going. When his wife had left him, he had blown. Nothing I did seemed capable of bringing him back from that edge.
He was still there now.
Hansel was as solid as they come, a true brother, but the guy lived life on a knife's edge.
To hear him say we had maybe gone too far was unsettling.
Glancing back at the man, who hung limply from the ropes around him. His face like so much bloody meat. I had to agree with him.
We had gone too far,
I had let my rage get the better of my head and lost control.
