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I closed my eyes and relived the moment.
“Dad was acting funny. Finicky. I mean, he wasn’t shuffling around or anything. But he had a very tight grip on the crystal glass he was holding. I watched that man sling back two massive drinks before he was even remotely ready to speak with us.”
Rupert drew in a deep breath. “So something must’ve happened before you two arrived?”
I opened my eyes. “Or he was that nervous to speak with us in the first place.”
“How do you figure?”
“My father has this tell. A tell he’s aware of. His pinky likes to twitch and exercise its free will to move whenever he’s lying. Or manipulating. I caught it early as a child. It’s how I was able to circumvent my father’s anger a lot as a kid. But as we grew up, he started finding ways to conceal it.”
“How so?”
I shrugged. “Keeping that hand in his pants pocket. Fiddling with a coin, or leaning his hand against the wall.”
“Or holding on to a drink.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Even though he slung back both of those drinks, not once did he put that glass down. He clung to it so tightly his knuckles were white. And the only time his hand ever relaxed around that glass was when he proclaimed that blood didn’t matter in affairs like this.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Back up. What did he say?”
“Like I said, things were getting tense. John was in the hallway, calling out for me to come on. That we needed to leave. Dad told me I needed to listen to my older brother and I said, and I quote, ‘I’m not walking away, John. And I’m not dropping this, Dad, until we get to the bottom of it. Blood doesn’t mean shit. Not if you’re the one coming for me.’”
He blinked. “You said that to your father?”
“Yep. And just after his hand relaxed against that crystal glass, he said, and I fucking quote, ‘You know what? Good for you, Max. That’s the first thing you’ve ever said that I respect. And that I agree with. Blood doesn’t mean anything when stakes like this are involved.’”
He paused. “Holy fuck, your father’s guilty.”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“What the hell does he get out of trying to kill you, though? That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“I know. And all I’ve got there are theories. Maybe he’s trying to dismantle the Red Thorns. Maybe he really does have it all-out for me like that. During the meeting, though, Dad mentioned something about us being small time.”
“Us, meaning…?”
“The crew. He said we were small-time, and that riding around town like we owned the place had probably pissed some people off.”
“And if he’s working with another crew, he might be talking about the fact that they’re pissed off.”
I nodded slowly. “My fear is that we’re about to get into a turf war with another gang, only my father’s going to be at the helm of it all.”
“And we all know how that ended the last time.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. “Yeah. We do.”
The last time there had been a turf war, John ended up in the hospital for weeks. In a coma for part of his stay. It ended with my own flesh and blood being permanently disfigured with the inability to ever get back on a bike. And that was with Dad on our side. Technically.
The havoc my father could wreak on our club if he was on the opposite side made me shiver.
Rupert poured himself another glass. “Okay, speaking of facts for a second, your father’s been content for years using us as anything from errand boys to security detail.”
I nodded. “This is true.”
“And we’ve never let him down. At all. We’re consistent.”
“And affordable.”
