Was clueless as to what her brother was really involved in.
“Only thing that matters is that this arrangement gets us what we need,” I insisted. “He’d never dish if he didn’t think he was getting something out of it.”
Incredulity heaved out of Trevan. “There are other ways to get information out of someone.”
“Can’t take the chance that he would remain tight-lipped before Phoenix killed him.”
Phoenix was the club’s sergeant at arms.
Amused agreement huffed from Trevan before he shook his head. “You’re breaking every fuckin’ one of your own rules, man. You know that, right?”
I scrubbed a palm over my face. “Yup.”
It didn’t matter, though. With one thought of my baby sister, Elena, I knew what I had to do.
Dereck Webber might have been a low-life scumbag piece of shit, but when he’d had the barrel of my gun shoved down his throat, his one concern had been his sister.
To me, that counted for something.
“As long as you don’t mind when I tell you ‘I told you so’,” Trevan goaded around another gulp of his beer.
“As long as you don’t mind when I kick your ass when you do it,” I tossed back.
“Would like to see you try.”
Fucker tried to hide his grin before he sobered. “Seriously, though. I get it. Just worried it’s gonna bring us trouble, and God knows we already have plenty of that.”
Nah, trouble wasn’t anything new to us.
Being a part of a brutal MC tended to do that to you, and you could be sure the Crimson Crows were no strangers to strife and turmoil.
Funny that motorcycle club acted as a front for what we really did. The minor crimes we let fly flagrant used as a distraction from the monsters we became under the shadows of the night.
But it was my one big fuckup that brought us here, and I’d do anything I had to in order to rectify it.
“We’ll handle it if it comes to that,” I told him. “We always do.”
I let my attention skate over our new compound.
It was ten acres surrounded by twelve-foot walls. Tucked at the edge of the woods on the outskirts of Crimson Creek, my motorcycle club was named after my hometown. A town I’d left at sixteen and had just returned to.
Drawn here, I guess.
By the history. The loss. The ghosts that remained.
The front building housed our main legal gig.
An autobody shop.
The skill was something I learned when I was nothing but a kid.
A semblance of peace found when I took the mangled and broken and made it whole again.
Figured it was a paradoxical sort of thing. A balance to the destruction I caused.
Forging metal into something beautiful while my hands were stained crimson red.
Make no mistake, I wore that truth as proudly as I wore the Crimson Crows patch on my back, but I craved the respite, too. When, for a few moments, the weight I carried didn’t feel like it would crush me.
