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“You should go,” he said again.
It was Kate who made it work, taking Becca by the arm and gently pulling her away. “Come on, Becks. Let’s go home. It’s time to go home.”
He could hear Becca talking softly as she and her sister left, saying, “I can’t see any more people getting shot,” just before turning a corner and disappearing from sight.
A distant part of him understood how Becca felt. It was too much for her to handle. Becca’s life was one hundred and eighty degrees from any of this, and she couldn’t be expected to react any other way. Another part of him was worried that this tragedy, and what was about to come, would snuff out any small flame that might have been kindled between the two of them.
But all of that was washed away with the thoughts of his father, lying in an ICU bed in a coma, with a Death’s Head bullet stuck in his spine.
“Paralysis,” he said once Kate and Becca had left. His fists were clenching and unclenching involuntarily. “Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers.”
“I know, man,” Wyatt said. “But try to keep it under control. We can’t just go out there, randomly, guns blazing.”
“They shot my dad, Wyatt.”
“Hey, he’s my dad, too,” Wyatt said. “And we need to find this fucker Mal and tear his fucking head off, without a doubt. All I’m saying is, if Boomer were sitting here in the room with us, he’d be worried about more drive-bys and more innocent bystanders getting hurt.”
“He’s not here,” Griz said, trying to keep his voice down. “He’s in a fucking coma, because of those bastards. So you’re either with me, or you’re against me.”
Wyatt held out his arms. “I’m with you, brother. One hundred percent. Always. I just felt like that needed to be said.”
“Well, you’ve said it,” Griz said. “Now help me win, Wyatt.”
“All right, man. First we have to get the brothers together, fill them in on what happened.”
“Devil?” Griz said.
“Yeah, man,” Devil said, nodding quickly. “I’m with you guys, no doubt. Just point the way.”
Griz gave the corridor that Becca had disappeared down one last look before turning on his heel and walking out of the hospital, followed closely by his brothers. It was time to go to war.
16
There was a lot of murmuring, buzzing talk floating around the clubhouse meeting room, matching the murmuring, buzzing thoughts going on in Griz’s head.
He wasn’t used to being spun around like this. He made it a point to keep his life simple, uncomplicated, so that his choices and his thoughts could stay uncomplicated.
But now, everything was moving and shifting and getting more complex by the second. A few months ago, there would have been no question, no thought on Griz’s mind other than revenge if his dad had been shot.
And it did have him in a fury, one that kept his brain feeling like it was inflamed, hot, boiling inside of his skull. He felt like he wanted to flip the heavy wooden meeting table over and scream at the top of his lungs, like he wanted to find that bastard Mal and beat him until the bones in the bodybuilder’s face caved in and became nothing but a bloody mush.
But now, now there was a complication. A giant complication. Becca.
Their brief hook-up had taken him completely by surprise. He’d made his desires pretty clear, he knew that, but she had also made it clear that she wasn’t interested. Over and over, she’d given him the cold shoulder, pushed him away, kept him at a distance.
And then, everything changed. Griz wasn’t sure how or why; at the time, he’d been so surprised, all he could do was go along for the ride and hope to figure it all out later.
But later never came. They’d never had a chance to sit and talk it out, sort out exactly what was happening between them. He’d figured that once the trial was over, it would be a lot easier to find the time to sort things out with Becca, but then, his dad had been shot and the world was on fire.
Now, now he couldn’t afford any of those thoughts. He couldn’t afford any of those distractions. He had to go to war, to crush as many Death’s Head sons of bitches under his boot as he could, and he couldn’t do that while thinking about what might or might not be with Becca.
She was everything he wanted, but this was his dad, lying in a coma in a hospital bed, and the piece of shit who did it was still out there. They had to pay. They had to suffer.
And he had to be the one to make them suffer.
If that meant sacrificing any chance he might have with Becca… well, then that would have to be the price he paid. A part of him thought that he was being reckless, thinking like that when he’d wanted to get with Becca for so long, but that part was mostly drowned out with his anger and fury over his father being shot.
He was shaken out of the swirling, wild thoughts in his head by someone banging loudly on the meeting room table to get everyone’s attention. Normally, it was his dad who brought the meetings to order, but in his absence, it was Ripper who banged on the wood until the murmuring voices got quiet.
