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We had no fucking idea.
And neither did the police, it seemed.
So until we knew for sure there was another threat that warranted the women and kids staying at Hailstorm, I decided it was alright to let them come home for a bit, see their men, see their fathers. It was easy enough to ship them all back if we needed to.
"Sit your stubborn ass down," Summer's voice snapped, coming back in the room from the kitchen.
Okay.
Well, maybe some of them would be easier to ship back than others.
My woman was on a mission. And that was to nurse me back to health. No matter how much I tried to fight it.
To be honest, though, I wasn't trying that hard.
My shoulder was fucking throbbing. My ribs were screaming. Every inch of me was hurting in one way or another. And I hadn't gotten nearly enough sleep.
Planning and carrying out a mission like we had the night before was no easy task. To get out as unscathed as we had was a miracle.
Sure, there were some grazes. Renny had lost a tooth. Sugar took a knife to the upper arm.
But it was all—thankfully—superficial shit.
That said, I was feeling it.
The stringing up, the beatings, the stress, the uncertainty, the long nights planning, the worry as we sprang into action, the way I had needed to push my body to the limits to carry that night out.
So if my woman wanted to play nursemaid, I wasn't fucking objecting to it.
"I was just—"
"You were just sitting your stubborn ass back down," Summer finished for me, coming toward me with a tray, something steaming in a bowl. "I know you aren't sick, but soup fixes everything," she told me, eyes warm as she placed the tray on my lap, moving to sit next to me against the pillows.
"How's Fallon?"
"Bragging about his gunshot wound."
I snorted at that. "It was a graze."
"I think he is planning on going to get into a bar fight just to have more scars to brag about. That one," she said, shaking her head.
"Reminds you of someone?" I asked, smirking.
"I didn't know you when you were that young and that reckless, but, yeah, there is a lot of you in him."
"I hope so," I agreed, nodding.
"You're going to pass over Cash and Wolf, aren't you?" she asked, point-blank.
We'd always discussed the club, but Summer had always been more passive in the conversation, not demanding a lot of details, knowing it was always safer for her not to be privy to them.
"Cash and Wolf don't want it. They're not exactly much younger than me," I reminded her. "We all agree that if and when the club passes down, it should go to someone younger, someone who wants it more. Who wants it more than Fallon?"
"I don't like it," Summer said, sighing, resting her head on my good shoulder. It was the same thing she'd said when he'd first told us his intention to go through the motions to prospect for the club.
I bit my tongue in reminding her that her daughter was into much more dangerous shit than Fallon would likely ever be. It wasn't the time.
"He's not ready yet," I told her, reaching down to squeeze her knee. "But he will be. And he has what it takes. He just needs to grow up some first. Learn to control his anger a bit."
"I can't believe he pulled a gun on Colson."
While I didn't like that move, I appreciated that he was capable of doing what it took to get what he needed. No, he should never pull a gun on a club brother, but he'd been the only one willing to spring into action when he thought it was needed.
With a few more years, and maybe a little firmer guidance from me and his uncles, Fallon would be ready to take over the club.
And, I hoped, that club would be a bit more diversified than it currently was.
That was what else had been keeping me awake. Planning the future direction of the club.
This hiccup with the supply chain—one that seemed to only be getting worse somehow even with Third Street out of the picture—had made it clear that it was simply never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. Not when so many men, women, and children were dependent on a steady income.
Branching out to open sister clubs that would, in turn, give us a small cut of all their ventures, was a move in the right direction. It was a stream of income that didn't involve any extra work on our part. But there needed to be more than that.
That was what I was working on.
I was taking a page out of the Grassis and the Mallicks' books. I was going to make more of our operation legit.
We would always be a one-percent club. Who also happened to make a decent percentage of our income from other ventures. It was smart for many reasons. Not the least of which being it was a way to clean our money, something Chris had been on my ass about for a long while.
