Page 49 of Caution to the Wind

Rooster sat at the head of the long metal table smokin’ a cigar with Hazard at his side. He was a thick man, built like a minotaur with colossal shoulders and no neck. His face had that sandblasted, cracked quality of a biker who’d spent many years on the road, so he looked even older than his fifty years. I knew he struggled with arthritis in his knees, and they popped like bubble wrap every time he swung on and off his bike. He rubbed at the left one now, a nervous tell.

Somethin’ was wrong.

Then again, in this life, somethin’ was always goin’ wrong.

And there was the very likely notion that I was projectin’ my restless worry onto my president. If he so much as suspected I’d done anythin’ like negotiate a truce with the Seven Song without him, he’d have my neck in a noose swingin’ from the rafters in the back of the warehouse.

Not an exaggeration.

We’d seen it done before.

“Took you long enough,” he grumbled without lookin’ at me, a tactic he took up to show how beneath him we were. “Sit your ass down. We got news.”

I took the free seat on his right side, ignorin’ the way the cigar smoke stung my eyes.

Only then did Rooster look at me as if he was waitin’ for me to start a conversation I had zero context for. He waited a long fuckin’ time ’cause I didn’t speak unless I had somethin’ important to say.

“Seems those motherfuckers are targetin’ us for a reason,” Rooster began. “You know your wife was fuckin’ a member of the Seven Song ’fore she died?”

The words hit me like a bullet between the eyes. I rocked back in my seat, mind blanked with white noise and pain.

Of course, I’d always known there was a possibility one of Kate’s old johns had been a 49er, one of the triad foot soldiers, maybe someone even higher up in the ranks. She’d had a passable workin’ knowledge of Cantonese before I’d even started teachin’ her, and she was always drawn to Mei and Lin’s culture, integratin’ little culture nods and traditions into our family dynamic. I figured it was ’cause Lin was important to me, those traditions a part of my life ’cause of the woman who wasn’t my mother in blood only, but a little part of me had always wondered.

Not much else made sense about her murder.

It was just so fuckin’ personal. So gruesome and deliberate.

You didn’t kill someone like that without a motive like…love.

Only there’d been nothin’ in her personal effects after her death to link her to anyone specific and the Seven Song triad was notorious for hatin’ white people.

Not for the first time, I cursed the fact I’d let sleepin’ dogs lie after I pulled Kate outta that life. Yeah, it made it easier for her to move on, but it made it impossible for her daughter and me to move on without her or any of the answers to the fuckin’ question her death left behind.

“No,” I said finally. “She had a life before me. We didn’t discuss it much.”

Rooster’s fist was the size of a small boiled ham, pink and fleshy as it contracted on the table. “Well, she fucked one of ’em, and then she fucked one of ’em right over. That’s why these motherfuckers are comin’ aftermyclub now. ’Cause’ayouand your whore ex-wife.”

Rage exploded behind my eyes, ringin’ between my ears. I braced every muscle against the urge to slam his smug mug to the table, feelin’ the satisfaction of his nose crackin’ like an egg against the metal. Hazard would get involved, his fuckin’ brown-nosin’ lackey, but I could handle him. I didn’t even have my gun on me ’cause I didn’t want to get caught carryin’ at Mei and Cleo’s school, but I didn’t need it to take Rooster and Hazard out.

The military had made me into enough of a weapon on my own.

But no.

I wasn’t gonna take on an entire motorcycle club and a Chinese gang at the same time. I had a daughter at home who needed me. And I had no goddamn doubt that Rooster was speakin’ shit to incite me to violence.

I just didn’t know why.

“I highly fuckin’ doubt my dead wife’s ex-lover from over a decade ago would be targetin’ the club––the most notorious, deadly outlaw motorcycle club in the fuckin’ country––’cause he’s still nursin’ a broken heart,” I drawled, but my mind was racin’.

Why was Rooster tryin’ to pin this on me? I’d been tellin’ him for weeks to lay off Seven Song’s turf and focus on what we did best. We raked in a ton of cake and only fucked with people who tried to fuck with us. Startin’ a goddamn gang war was suicidal.

Rooster glowered at me, but Hazard shifted uneasily in his chair like he was nervous.

“I’m thinkin’ the triad doesn’t take kindly to the fact we raided their warehouse and decided to jump ashes and deal heroin,” I continued. “If you’re worried, Prez, I say we start there and dial that shit backhardbefore they retaliate for the warehouse attack.”

To be fuckin’ honest, I was shocked they hadn’t come at us already. They weren’t the type of organization to fuck around with revenge.

“Goes to show you don’t know shit, as per usual, Axe,” Rooster crowed. “My son and Hazard caught wind of a man at a bar near Chinatown who was talkin’ about this ‘White Snake’ fella who fell in love with a hooker and almost destroyed the whole fuckin’ triad.”