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“Thank you, Jessie,” she launches her arms around my neck and squeezes me tight. “You're doing a real good job so far.” I like that she’s smiling as she pulls away. It makes me believe her.
“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Troj swings through the door and immediately snatches Shaniya out of my arms. “You ready to go home?” His nose presses up against hers.
“Yeah, I was just gonna run up and check Marilyn doesn’t need anything done before we leave.” She kisses her husband before making her way up the stairs toward the kitchen on the second floor. Troj waits until she’s out of earshot before he drops the dreamy look off his face and turns his attention on me.
“You spoke to Prez about the Mel situation yet? All the Hawker shit threw me off. I haven’t had a chance to catch him up,” he reminds me of what happened back at the apartment in Colorado Springs. I haven’t thought much about it either. Not since I gave Mads the passport we found, Mel’s fucked off, and there have been no traces of Chop since. But Troj is right, we need to clue Prez in, especially about the USB Mel stole from his lodge.
I decided not to share it with Mads until after I’d found out from Prez what the content of it was. The fact he kept it from me is unnerving. And I wanted to get a chance to speak to him alone about it.
“Now that all this shit’s come out with Hawker, we don’t know how honest she was with us. She could have known more.” Troj makes a valid point.
The club has concluded that when Chop was looking into Danny, it led him to Hawker, and he uncovered the whole enterprise he was running with Cooper and Alteo. Knowing Chop, he cut Barnes out and set his target higher, knowing Hawker would’ve been more of an asset to him.
Danny must have somehow managed to get hold of the file Chop was putting together, and we predict he dropped Abby here and left town because he was running scared. That, and the reason Danny wanted to go straight, would be the reason Hawker had to silence him when he returned a few months later.
The fact Hawker and Chop were seen coming out of the same apartment suggests they were working together, which is bad fucking news.
Maybe I should have let Rogue give Mel the basement treatment after all.
“We’ll speak to him in the morning,” I tell Troj before I give myself a fuckin’ headache over it.
“She’d flip a tit to think no one’s even noticed she’s gone.” Troj laughs to himself, slapping my back and heading up the stairs to find Shaniya.
I feel inside my cut for the USB I took from Mel. It’s still in my top left pocket. I don’t know how I could have left it there for so long. Sure, the club’s been busy, but I could have made the time to speak to Prez. Maybe subconsciously, I don’t want to know what’s on it.
All that shit about loyalty and secrets Mel spouted before she left the apartment has been lurking in the back of my mind.
Prez never keeps anything from me. So whatever’s going on here is either insignificant or fuckin’ huge.
A bad feeling in my gut has me storming back through the doors to the bar and heading straight for the stage where Maddy’s laptop is. I pull it from the wires it’s attached to and take it into the members-only bar where I know I’ll be alone.
I have no idea how to drive this thing, I’ve never been techno-savvy, but I find a hole where the device fits and stick it in, then grab myself a bottle and a glass from the other side of the bar while I wait for something to pop up on the screen.
I take a stool when a plain black window pops up, a play symbol in its center.
I’m becoming more convinced now that this is the something Chop was prepared to kill to get his hands on. So why the fuck has Prez been keeping this from me and the others?
I pour myself a large measure and knock it back before hitting play and finding out.
“Whatcha here for, Chop?” I haven’t heard the voice in years, but I recognize it straight away. It belongs to my Pa, and I feel the sound of it fucking tug at my chest.
“I needed to know everything’s cool between us,” the voice that responds is unmistakably Chop’s.
“It will be, soon as you’ve told Jimmer you been fucking his old lady,” my father tells him sternly, and my hands shake as I pour myself another drink and continue to listen. Hearing that Chop had something going on with Mary-Ann don’t come as a surprise. That little bomb got dropped in the video we have of him killing Carly, not that anyone's had the balls to say anything to Prez about it.
“You know it ain't that easy. I got a kid to think about. You know how it is, if anything happened to me, he has no one.”
“Your brother seems a good kid, he’d step up if he needed to,” my father responds coldly. Prez and him were best friends before he died, it ain’t no surprise that he’s pissed at a fellow brother for betraying him.
“Yeah, well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Every day you don’t tell him puts me in danger too. Just knowing about this shit could get me buried right alongside you… You know club rules, Chop. What the fuck were you thinking?”
I listen more intensely.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t thinkin’ with my head, was I?” Chop responds and imagining the sly smile on his face as he says it makes me want to put my fist through the screen.
“I’m giving you a week, one week, to tell him yourself, or I’m gonna have to. I’m heading up to your Charter on business next Friday. I ain’t gonna lie to his face. Jimmer’s the closest thing I got to a real brother, and it’s only ‘cause I know how much you mean to him that I’m giving you a chance to tell him this shit yourself.” My Pa lays it on the line, giving him the ultimatum.
