Page 35 of Ruin

Stabbing someone wasn’t easy to get over, especially when they died. She could just be coming to terms with what had happened there.

If that was the case, I really couldn’t blame her. The girl had been through hell and back, and we had more hell ahead of us. I couldn’t really say anything if she was just having trouble making sense of it all.

Because honestly, I was in that same boat, myself.

I was probably even more frustrated, as Tinker had been one of my very good friends and someone she’d only just met. The fact that we were just sitting here doing nothing while his body was in the morgue, probably ignored and forgotten about, was making me itch like I had a thousand ants crawling all over my body.

I was furious and frustrated and heartbroken and... itching for vengeance.

The thought had me sliding out of bed as well, though I didn’t go for the bathroom. I got the distinct impression that Saraya didn’t want company in there, and I could have a shower when she was done.

Right now, I wanted to talk to what was left of my men. We had a plan we were working on, and today was the day to get it finalized and start figuring out when we were going to kick it into action.

I LEANED OVER THE LARGE roll of paper on the table—wrapping paper that Brock had had in one of his closets—and continued writing. We’d commandeered the paper and were using the back to list out the steps of the plan we were working on so we could see everything in the same place, and I had to admit that I was pretty happy with how it was going.

Remy, Brock, and I had been working on this plan for a couple days now without anyone else knowing about it, and I thought we might be close to finishing it.

“So it all happens tomorrow,” I said, underlining the last line of text on the paper.

“Tomorrow,” Brock repeated, his voice hard and cold and very frightening.

I glanced over at him and took a sip of my coffee, taking in the grayish cast to his skin, the dark circles under his eyes. The man hadn’t been sleeping, and if I had to guess, he’d been spending all that time thinking instead. I wanted to think he was figuring out a way to get over Tink’s death, get past it, but I knew Brock too well for that.

No, he’d been thinking about how he was going to exact his revenge on Devil.

Just like I had.

This plan in front of us was what we’d come up with.

In the morning, we were going to ride to a clubhouse three towns over, where the Manticores kept their headquarters. They’d always been friendly to us, and Brock and I had decided that it was time to take advantage of the friendship. We were going to tell them about what had happened—which they probably already knew, honestly—and then tell them that we were declaring war on Devil. Tell them that we’d had enough and that it was time to bring him down for good.

Force them to take a side in the war.

I knew that if they made a choice, they’d choose us. Their leader, Don, and I went way back. But that was only if they chose a side. They could choose instead to stay neutral. That wouldn’t do us any good, though, and it wouldn’t actually protect them. If Devil heard that I’d been to their HQ, he’d go after them on principle.

Far better for them to be allied with us so they had better protection.

We were going to lean hard on them, pressure them to come over to our side. And then we were going to another clubhouse, and another, each of them carefully chosen, and tell our friends what we were doing. We’d gather the strongest and most upstanding of the MCs in this area and build a coalition.

And then we’d all declare war on Devil.

It had been Brock’s idea first, and I’d told him for the longest time that we couldn’t do it. Not with most of our men still in jail. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if we played it carefully, it could work. We might not have to go into battle at all. If we could build a large enough coalition of people declaring war on Devil, it would turn the tables on him. His crew would hear about it and start to worry about so many clubs turning against them. They’d see that Devil was the reason for it, and that he was going to lead to their compound being ambushed.

And I knew most of the guys in that club. They weren’t loyal to him. They were loyal to the MC. They’d choose the group’s safety over Devil’s. If we could get enough people to speak out against him and make his men believe that we were coming after them, they’d push Devil out just to protect themselves. His own men might turn him over to us if they’d decided that he was going to get them killed.

It was an idealistic thought and depended on his men having a rational view of the situation. But from what Saraya had told me about the Steed, Devil didn’t have any real commitment to his men, and that meant they didn’t have any real commitment to him. He seemed to kill them at the drop of a hat, and that was no way to guarantee that your men protected you. It kept them scared and in line, perhaps.

But if they saw a way to get out from under your thumb, they’d take it.

I was counting on that. And if they decided to turn Devil over, I was planning to let them know exactly where to send him.

BY THE TIME WE WENT to bed that night, we’d cemented our plans for the morning and gathered what we’d need. Brock, Remy, and I were going to ride together, leaving the other men here to protect Saraya, and by the end of the day tomorrow, I hoped we’d have exactly what we needed.

Hell, word around here traveled fast. There was a good chance that by the end of the day, we’d have Devil in our hands.

I walked into the bedroom with a smile on my lips at the thought and found Saraya just putting away some of the new clothes Remy had brought her.

“Thank goodness I have my own clothes now,” she said. “You know it’s been a week since I got to wear anything that actually fit?”