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I filed into church with my brothers. Hadley was standing behind Optimus, her arms wrapped around a man that wasn’t one of ours. Skins.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her face a lot brighter than a few minutes ago.
I took my seat at the table beside Op, observing their interaction.
“Judge thought it best I come down and help explain what’s been going on.”
“Didn’t trust me to give them all the info?” She smirked.
He held his hands up and laughed. “Not trust you to omit things and try and handle them yourself? Where would you get that idea?”
Optimus took his seat and banged his fist on the table, drawing everyone’s attention. He moved his chair to the side so that everyone could see Skins and Hadley standing up front.
“All right. Skins has come in from Arkansas to join us today. And Kit and Tally will be joining us too,” he explained gesturing to Skins and to the Troy prez and vice prez who were standing back against the wall. “We need more information about what’s going on since the problem seems to have followed Hadley to the clubhouse.”
He gestured to the package on the table that had been dropped off yesterday. It was still unopened.
“You want to open it first?” Skins asked.
Hadley looked nervous, shuffling her feet as Blizzard pulled out a pocket knife and sliced at the tape that covered the small box. He ripped it open and dumped the contents onto the wooden table. There wasn’t much inside. A white daisy dropped out followed by a fluttering piece of paper. Optimus held up the daisy, it was missing a few petals. He raised his eyebrows at Hadley, who cleared her throat before she began to explain.
“Simon proposed to me in a daisy field. Nothing extravagant but it was beautiful,” she murmured. “On the weeks leading up to our wedding, he would leave daisies lying around the house, each with a note. She loves me, she loves me not.”
We all listened intently as she talked.
“On our wedding day, was when the last petal came off. He made it part of our ceremony. A daisy with one single petal. He made me pull it off in front of all our guests and he yelled, ‘She loves me.’” Her hands reached out and plucked the note off the table. “She loves me not.” She read out loud.
Her body shuddered and I clenched my fists, annoyed that I couldn’t comfort her.
I cleared my throat. “Okay, so it’s safe to say he’s counting down to something, just like he did with your wedding.”
She nodded.
“But what?” Kev asked from down the table.
“Who is this guy?” Blizzard asked, reclining in his chair.
Skins looked to Hadley as if giving her the opportunity to explain. She shook her head so he took the lead. “Simon joined the club fresh out of training. He had skills. Judge was happy to have him on the team.”
“What kind of skills?” Kit interrupted.
Skins looked to him. “Reading people. You could be staring him dead in the eye, and he would catch the smallest twitch, the tiniest movement. Getting a lie past him was practically impossible.”
“That’s insane,” Tally commented, leaning forward curiously.
“Exactly, but that’s what made him so perfect,” Skins continued. “Taking him to meets with other clubs or gangs, he could tell us if there was something going down, or if they were going to screw us over. It kept us safe.”
“Okay, so fast forward. What the hell happened?” Optimus prompted.
“He was sent away for a while to make connections with a street gang in Las Vegas, The Shadow Syndicate. They were looking to trade with us and get us to back them. They had plans to take over the city,” Skins explained. “What was meant to be a week trip, turned into a month, then six months. He said they’d opened their arms to him, and every day they were allowing him further and further inside the gang as he earned their trust.”
“He wasn’t earning their trust,” Hadley cut in. “They were dealing cocaine and meth and dope and every day more and more money was coming in. It pulled him under.” She screwed up her nose in disgust.
Skins reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder, offering her silent support. “When he came back, he tried talking the club into taking profits from the deals they made, instead of handing it all over to the government. But none of us were in this for money. We fight every day to try and make some kind of dent in the bullshit here. People trafficking women, getting kids hooked on drugs, eradicating the gun trade in hopes that it will mean one less innocent person dead at the end of the day.”
I nodded. The club had strict beliefs on all these things. Members didn’t take hard drugs, we respected women and treated them right—even our club girls—and the guns we had were only used for protection, never to hurt innocent people.
“So he just walked away?” Blizzard asked.
