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She shook her head, but there was a smile on her lips, and I realized I would doanythingto keep it there.
“And fuck if it wasn’t the best party I’ve ever been to,” she played along, her thighs pressed together on the stool. I knew she was remembering it. It’d been almost thirty-six hours since the heist turned fuckfest, but it was still the number one thing on my mind. I’d had a rock solid hard-on off and on since I woke up the next morning.
A sharp whistle behind us had us all swiveling our seats.
Dies held the back door open across the mostly empty bar, his icy stare fixed on me. “Let’s see what you got, Grey.”
Hello to you, too, Pops.
He’d been easily irritable since what happened to the garden. It had been a shrine to his wife, and he’d tended it meticulously for as long as I could remember. I imagined it was like losing a part of her all over again.
“We’ll be right down.”
AJ slid off her stool, the pink flesh of her forearm looking better today than it did yesterday. Rook was walking with barely any trouble, and Corv’s nurse finally stopped coming around. They were all mostly whole again. And I was starting to think a missing eye wouldn’t be the thing that stopped me, after all. Target practice over the last few days had proved it. With some minor adjustments, I was just as good as I’d always been.
“What are you looking at?” AJ asked curiously, her brow lifting.
“You.”
She gave me a cheeky look, coming to loop her arm through mine. “Come on, Superman. Let’s go start a war.”
* * *
The underbelly ofSanctum was packed with faces, new and old. In the corner, a few seniors I recognized from Briar Hall stood with their arms crossed. They were the ones the guys and I identified as potentially strong enough to join our ranks. They stood tall, trying to appear unintimidated by the battle-hardened criminals surrounding them.
Then there were the other potential candidates. The ones brought in by the others. They consisted of cousins and friends. Brothers and sons. All men who wanted an in with the Saints, and now they’d get their chance to prove themselves worthy.
This feud with the Kings, and the eventual bloodbath it would come to, would be their only trial. Honestly, I counted them lucky. The trials could be far,farworse.
“Where’s Uncle Damien?” Corv asked, scanning the room. “Thought he’d come for the meet.”
My good mood turned rancid in an instant. “Dies said he left town after Becca woke up. Guess he got what he came for.”
“What’s with the hostility? You know he’s got his own fucking chapter to run down south. He couldn’t hang around here forever.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. Right. Just on edge.”
My disappointment rolled off my back. If Diesel was too fucking stubborn to ask for help, then why should I have expected Uncle Damien to force it on him?
This—what we learned today—was a win. And I wasn’t going to let anything ruin it. I’d worked too fucking hard.
Rook snapped at the guys from Briar Hall as we passed and when they jerked back from his shining teeth, he blew them a kiss, settling between two other new faces by the bar to ask Pinkie for another drink. The newbies gave him a wide berth, casting furtive glances his way as they cautiously sipped their beers.
I leaned into the side of the nearest one. “Just don’t make any sudden movements,” I warned with mock seriousness, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. When Rook turned, drink in hand, he couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, sloshing beer onto the floor.
“Hey,” Rook growled, glaring at the poor guy. “Clean that shit up. This isn’t your mama’s house.”
Diesel clapped his hands together at the head of the long table, getting everyone’s attention. “All right, listen up, if you’re a new implant, get the fuck out. The rest of you gather ‘round. Grey has something to show us.”
The new recruits filtered out as me and the others made our way to the table. I applauded Diesel’s caution, but the new recruits were hardcore vetted by both Pinkie and myself. They had no connection to Mav, the Kings, or Carson fucking Bates. And when it came to blood, they’d be with us anyway. Pumping up our numbers. Giving us a better chance.
Human fucking meat shields with something to prove.
I waited until the last of them were gone before starting.
“This has got to be it.”
I leaned over the table in Sanctum’s underbelly, pushing the tablet into the middle so everyone crowded around could see it, too. The aerial view of the factory was pixelated. A snapshot courtesy of google maps. If it had been on a major road, we’d have better images, but the old metal manufacturing plant was set away from the hustle of Lennox, hovering far onto its outskirts, backing onto the national park.
