Page 37

I pressed my palms to my heart, staring down the dark road, willing him to come back.

Chapter nine

Kingpin

It killed me to tear myself away from Hattie like that. I wanted to stay there and hold her until she stopped trembling. I wanted to be by her side until she calmed down enough to fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that I would protect her.

Instead, I had to leave her standing there in the dark.

The memory of her nestling deeper into my arms shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. That’s where she belonged. Not fucking Seattle. Not with another man.

I headed to Hot Shot’s garage, turning into the empty parking lot sometime after three in the morning. Guiding my bike around to the back, I found three motorcycles stowed away in the shadows. If a cop happened to pass on patrol, he wouldn’t be able to see any of us from the street.

The office was dark, but a faint glow emanated from the garage windows. The side door opened and a familiar silhouette appeared. Blackbeard let out a low whistle to let me know the coast was clear.

Under normal circumstances, I preferred to keep business relegated to the clubhouse. It served as a base of operations and a sanctuary, rolled into one. When my brothers crossed the threshold of our clubhouse, they knew they were in territory they could trust. It was our turf, and we would defend it to our dying day.

On select occasions though, a secondary location was the wiser choice, especially when the cops might come sniffing around, asking questions. In this case, it would only complicate matters if the boys in blue knocked on our door, accusing us of playing vigilante. I’d rather handle this without interruption.

When I stepped into the garage, toolboxes, spare auto parts, and workbenches had been pushed aside to clear a space at the center of the room. Gatling, Blackbeard, and Big G surrounded a kneeling man, cuffed on the cement floor. A ghostly mask covered his face. My palms itched to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze for scaring Hattie like that.

“Did she get a look at him?” I asked, gesturing at the intruder.

Gatling shook his head.

“Saved the unveiling for you, Prez. Figured Hattie had enough surprises for one night already.”

“You can’t keep me here,” the intruder declared, with more confidence than he had any right to, given the position he was in. “You have to turn me over to the cops—”

He broke off when Gatling gripped the back of his neck and leaned in close.

“Does it look like we give a shit about playing by the rules?”

The intruder gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Gatling glanced in my direction, silently seeking permission. I crossed my arms and nodded.

He stripped the intruder’s mask off, tossing it aside. The flimsy plastic scraped against the cement. Ted Cooley staredback at me, a perfect match to the mugshot Credence had sent to our phones earlier—white-blond lanky hair, yellow teeth, and sallow skin.

“I was told you laid hands on my wife,” I said.

Cooley scoffed.

“Ex-wife, isn’t she?”

A muscle twitched in my jaw. He smirked, pleased at his own jibe. But he was too stupid to quit while he was ahead.

“I read up about her—your divorce years ago, how she’s been living in Seattle for the last ten years or so. I called a buddy of mine over there and he's been trying to get into her pants—"

Cooley broke off with a gasp as Blackbeard stepped up behind him and wrapped his tattooed fingers around Cooley’s throat. Then Blackbeard plucked a knife from his belt and dug the tip into Cooley’s back, right where his kidney would be.

“Keep running your mouth,” Blackbeard said, quiet and controlled. “And I’ll start carving out body parts until you learn to show some respect.”

“I–I just paid her a visit to scare her,” Cooley babbled. “Didn’t mean any harm.”

Gatling clucked his tongue and shook his head.

“I smell a big fat lying rat.”

From the pocket of his cut, he withdrew a battered switchblade with a cracked bone handle. When he passed it to me, I tested the weight of it in my grip, thinking about that sharp metal edge biting into my wife’s delicate skin.