Page 66 of Caution to the Wind

Zeus shrugged. “You can do whatever the fuck you want, man. You get out, and it suits ya to hang around the club, get a feel for the kinda brotherhood we got on offer, then yeah, that’d be cool. I’m thinkin’ we’d be fuckin’ lucky to have a man like you in the fold. Every brother in the club’s gotta choose what kinda role he wants to play and how it plays to his strengths. You don’t wanna be the axe, fuck, we already got a blade for an enforcer. You could do whatever the fuck. But you get out and want shit all to do with the club, then yeah, sure. I get it. One chapter fucked you, maybe you’re too burned. There are no strings here, honest to fuck. I’m here ’cause the kinda man I am, I couldn’t know there was a good man who’d been fucked over wastin’ away in a cell worryin’ about his daughter without protection.”

We locked eyes, takin’ each other’s measure. After six months in prison, I’d learned more than I ever fuckin’ wanted to about readin’ people, and I saw nothin’ but sincerity in that man’s face.

“I’ll leave ya to think on it,” he said, knockin’ his knuckles against the glass like a goodbye.

He got up, clapped Bat on the shoulder, and then went to the door to get the guard to let him out.

Bat took his place, pickin’ up the receiver to say, “You remember those nights lyin’ on top’a buildings in the cold lookin’ up at the stars while we waited for daybreak? We wondered what the fuck we were fightin’ for? Just eighteen-year-old kids without a fuckin’ clue.”

He leaned closer, nose almost to the plexiglass. His face was one I’d seen at so many dangerous moments of my life, a touchstone amid the chaos. I trusted him the way only military men can trust each other, a bond forged in dirt and violence, in blood and tears and sweat and fear so blindin’ it threatened to blot out all the rest. He’d aged and changed over the years, but those black eyes in that face were the same ones I’d trusted to have my back since I was eighteen.

“I got more than one thing to fight for now,” he continued. “My boys, Steele and Shaw, just like you got Cleo. But I also got a brotherhood, the kind we lost after we were discharged; the kind that seems so foreign to you sittin’ there behind bars ’cause a brotherhood of bastards put you there. The Fallen gave me a home when I was homeless, lost somewhere back in the Afghani forests, my spirit thin as a fuckin’ ghost. You saw him give that snot-nosed teenager, Jonathon Booth, a chance at a different kinda life, and that man’s a brother now, good as they fuckin’ come and thrivin’ wearin’ our cut. They can give that to you, too, brother. To you and Lin and Cleo. You just gotta take that first fuckin’ terrifyin’ step and trust someone again after bein’ betrayed.”

He’d left me then without gettin’ an answer.

But three weeks later, Lin and Cleo moved to Entrance, BC.

And two and a half years after that, I followed them when I got out early for good behaviour.

It was the best decision I ever fuckin’ made, second only to marryin’ Kate and adoptin’ my Cleo.

That was only reinforced now after my worst fuckin’ nightmare had come true and my daughter, my fuckin’ Glory, was raped and left for dead by a fuckin’ serial-killing psychopath.

Seth Linley, “The Prophet,” was dead. Killed by our club enforcer, Priest McKenna. It shoulda made me feel somethin’ good, relieved, or vindicated, but instead, I felt my anger calcify like somethin’ undernourished. My fury wanted to fuckin’feed,and what the fuck could I feed it if not the blood of the man responsible for almost murderin’ my kid?

It was two weeks after the assault. After Kodiak and Priest found her in a fuckin’ field beside Bat’s dead wife, Amelia. Over a week since Priest saved Bea from that lunatic and took him down.

But I could not get a handle on this fuckin’ anger.

Without my brothers, I would’ve been out on a violent tear through Entrance, lookin’ up old enemies just for a chance to get some blood on my hands to feed the beast ravenin’ at my soul.

As it was, Wrath’s blood would have to do.

My fist connected with the hard edge of his chin, slammin’ his head back with asnap. Wrath Marsden was a big man, nearly as big as Zeus, who was a fuckin’ giant, and he was a mean sonovabitch who’d been workin’ as a thug on the streets since he was a teen. Landin’ a hit on him was a fuckin’ miracle, one he’d probably allowed me ’cause I needed it so bad.

Curtains and Boner hooted and hollered from outside the ring, urgin’ us on.

Box n’ Burn was Wrath’s gym, backed by the club. King had suggested it when Wrath was fully patched in, sayin’ it was a good business idea but also a great idea for the club. A place for us hotheads to let off steam when needed.

Mostly, it was to give Wrath, whose own woman had been murdered years ago, somethin’ to do with his life now that she was gone.

Wrath swiped his forearm over his bloody mouth and grinned at me with red-painted teeth. “Not bad for an old man.”

I bared my teeth at him and launched a combination at his head––jab, jab, right cross, upper cut. He dodged or blocked them all, then immediately countered with his own flurry of powerful strikes. One hit me in the side just over my kidneys, pushin’ the air from my body in an explosive exhale.

“Feelin’ good now?” Wrath taunted.

I wiped his blood from my knuckles across my cheek like war paint and grinned ferally at him. There was too much anger and horror in my chest to purge in a mock fight, even against a tough opponent like Wrath, but it was better than nothin’.

“Hey, Axe-Man,” Heckler called from the office doorway. “You got a call.”

“Next hit wins,” I told Wrath a second before I lunged for him.

He took an instinctive step back, which I’d counted on because my lungin’ foot was placed just behind his heel. He tripped backward, fallin’ into the rope and bouncin’ lightly back up with perfect timin’ to meet the hammer of my fist against his cheek.

I loomed over him, pantin’ viciously, sweat pourin’ from me like salted rain. When he stood back up, workin’ his jaw, I tore off the gloves with my teeth and offered him my hand.

“Dirty play,” Wrath praised, takin’ off his own gloves to clasp hands with me. “You’ve come a long fuckin’ way from the rule abider you were when you first stepped into this ring.”