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"What?" she asked, looking confused.
"You alright?"
"Am I... oh," she said, snorting. "Right. Because I am a delicate fucking flower," she said, rolling her eyes at me.
"Reading it and doing it are two different things," I insisted even as I heard the rumble of bikes coming from a few streets over.
"I'm fine," she said, convincingly. So either she truly believed it, or she had become a really good liar. "Ah, the cavalry," she said as the bikes got louder, coming to a stop in a line just a few feet away from us.
"The fuck is this?" Reign asked, pissed, clearly. "You alright?" he asked almost in the same breath, looking at Peyton.
I couldn't tell if it was genuinely just him being a good man, or fear of the hell that would rain down on him if something involving us hurt one of the Mallicks. Honestly, it was likely a mix of both.
"Figure we can talk about that when someone ain't painting the street red," Adler added, moving in toward my old president, reaching down, snagging him under the arms, and dragging him up. "Pagan," he called, struggling to hold the much larger man up as they led him toward the SUV.
I moved over toward Peyton, reaching down to try to take the gun.
And I shit you not, even surrounded by a ton of bikers who were looking pissed as fuck, she didn't give in that easy.
"No. It's mine," she objected, pulling it away. "I shot him with it. I get to keep it. Those are the rules."
"Christ, Peyt, those aren't the rules. And you can't keep that," I insisted, fully aware that Reign was moving in closer.
"Babe," he said, getting her attention. "Not saying you can't have it. Saying you can't have it now. If we check it, and it comes back that it's a ghost, I will personally bring it back to you," he said, holding out his hand.
"See?" Peyton asked as she handed it over. "You could have just explained it that way, Mr. Bossypants.
Oh, fucking hell.
Fuck Baby Bash.
Mr. Bossypants was going to haunt me until I died judging from the smirks the guys were sending in my direction.
"I need to take your man for a while," Reign explained as he tucked the gun in his waistband. "I'll bring him back, but until I do, I need you to stay at the compound."
"And if I don't want to?" she asked, lifting her chin.
"You're staying anyway," he told her bluntly.
"So, essentially, I am being falsely imprisoned," she mused.
"Something like that," he agreed, not sugar coating it. For a short time, whether she liked it or not, she had no control over her life.
And how did this woman react?
She fucking clapped her goddamn hands.
"Who is going to be my jailor?" she asked, looking over at the men sitting on their bikes, waiting for instructions.
"Reeve," he decided instantly, knowing that of all the men, he was the least likely to be swayed by her charm. "Now go hop on with him. We need to get out of here. And you," he said, pinning me in place with his green eyes once Peyton was out of earshot. "You have a lot of fucking explaining to do. Don't mind cleaning up bodies, Sugar. But this keeping things from me shit? This isn't going to fly. Now get the fuck in the SUV, so we can handle this."
There was a routine to this kind of thing, decades of trial and error, of learning new things, of finding the best spots.
We drove several miles outside of town, dragging a mostly unconscious man behind us into the woods on a private piece of property that belonged to some old alcoholic farmer who wouldn't know if an entire herd of buffalo came charging through his living room, let alone a gang of bikers quietly traipsing through his woods.
Pagan and Adler started digging.
"Why bother?" Reign asked when I reached to pull the spare gun out of my waistband.
"Because I don't want her living her life knowing she killed him," I explained simply before putting bullets through his heart and head.
"Alright. Now fucking explain while we're standing here," he demanded.
So I did.
What I knew, anyway.
Which wasn't much.
There were holes in the story, ones that made Reign tense, wondering if there was a chance for someone else to come out of the woodworks down the line.
I didn't think that was going to happen, though.
I think my old president lost his fucking mind.
There was no money.
Or if there was, clearly no one else knew about it, or had already been handled, or else he wouldn't have been coming after us of all people.
"Never fuckin' again," Reign added again as I kicked a layer of leaves and rolled a few fallen tree limbs over the freshly-packed dirt. "You got a problem, you come to me. I don't give a shit if I got ten other ones I'm dealing with. That shit is not going to fly here, got it?"
