Page 9 of Hidden

“Not a co-owner? Why must you hurt me? We share everything else.”

“What else have we shared?”

“Oh, a challenge. I love one of these,” I said, throwing back my drink and twisting in my seat to face him. “One, we have shared a lifetime of memories. Two,” I brought my fingers up and began counting on them. “We have shared war and bloody battles. Three, we’ve shared Rachel. Four—”

“We have not fucking shared Rachel!” he snapped, and I pursed my lips to stop myself laughing.

Thank fuck for my magnificent beard, because it hid most of my lip work anyway.

“Didn’t we? I could have sworn I remembered her kisses and her—”

“Well, don’t fucking remember!”

“How could I remember something you claim never happened? Are you calling me an oracle, Dante? Because I’m not opposed to changing from Vienna to Oracle if you want to appoint me…”

“I give up. Get your cut on and get to Church. We’re late.”

I hopped off my seat and shot a small wink at Bee who was sitting in the corner watching the entire exchange behind her hands, giggling to herself.

She winked back at me—which was more of a blink—and I followed her dad into Church, grabbing my Vice President cut as I did so.

Chapter 5

Vienna

Now

Taking my seat to Dante’s left, we waited in silence as the rest of the members piled into Church.

Hacksaw—the secretary—walked in with a scowl on his face, which was nothing new. And behind him walked Chris, who deliberately chose to take a seat as far away from Hacksaw as possible.

Chris’s brother, Trent—our road captain—looked at them both with disgust, shaking his head before he took a seat at Hacksaw’s side.

Interesting.

Hacksaw and Chris had been in a private relationship for a few years, but now they were public, and we were witnesses to their many arguments. It was a massive source of entertainment for me.

Next followed our club doctor—aptly named Doc. Our peacekeeper, Riley, Sergeant-at-arms, Ant, and then the rest of our members: Monster, James, Liam, Greg, Rooster, Chicken, Tools, Sunshine, and the prospects Mike, Pivot, and Darwin.

As an honorary member of the club, Rachel’s father walked in afterwards, still looking around sheepishly. He was also called Chris, but in order to make things easier, he had been given the nickname Divorce, given his separation from the wench that is Rachel’s mother, Beige Becky. It was supposed to be temporary whilst he earned his cut and established a real name. But his cut was long since on his back, and we hadn’t stopped calling him it, so here we were… With a member called Divorce. And maybe once or twice I called him Dolly. But it’s about time someone else earned their road name based on a song.

Sometimes, I looked around at the club and really did worry about our sanity.

As we did at the beginning of every meeting, we took a moment to remember our fallen brothers, none of us speaking, none of us smoking. Just complete stillness. And then Dante banged the gavel, and the room erupted.

“Those hang-arounds are fucking pathetic,” Ant snapped, grabbing the smokes Dante had put in the middle of the table.

“They’re not that bad,” Tools scoffed.

“Oh, aye, are they not?” he said sarcastically. “I suppose it should come as no interest to you then that I’ve just seen one of them chatting up your old lady, eh?”

“Jade?” Tools asked with a frown.

“You got more than one old lady we should know about?” Monster said with a grin.

“Don’t you even fucking dare speak up about old ladies,” Dante snapped back, and I smothered a grin.

Steph—or Snow White as Dante liked to call her—had been Monster’s old lady for a while now, and she and Dante had never got along.