Page 37

Dante

It took twenty minutes to try and calm Rachel down. In the end, we had to call Doc and get him to sedate her. We brought her to church with us and placed her in one of the beds in the next room whilst we discussed what the fuck we were going to do.

Crash had called the emergency meeting, and for once, I didn’t take my place at the table. I remained stood resting against the wall, and each brother that walked in grew silent as they looked at the blood coating my clothes and the grim faces of myself, Doc, Vienna and Crash.

“Right,” Crash said, his head in his hands as he rubbed them over his eyes. “I’ll cut to the fucking chase, because I know a lot has gone on here over the past few days. Macbeth is dead.” He was still looking down at the table.

I gritted my jaw, forcing myself to remain silent.

“How?” Zach asked.

Crash looked up at his Sargeant at Arms. “Seems Rachel had some fun whilst we were all distracted.”

“I stand corrected on that girl. She’s not fucking quiet,” Doc said with a grumble, looking down at the mess his clothes were in.

“I did try to tell you all,” I muttered back.

“Yo,” Monster laughed as he came crashing in last, late as always. “What’s Rachel doing in one of the bunks? I tried waking her to tell her to get the fuck outta here whilst church was on, but… what?” He went wide eyed as we all glared at him. “What did I say? Shit, is that blood? ”

“Sit down, Monster, for fuck's sake,” Crash said with a shake of his head. “And try to be on time in the future. I’m sick of fucking warning you.”

“I was with Rachel!” He said, looking around with worried eyes. “Alright, what did I miss?”

“Macbeth is dead,” I barked.

“And Rachel was the one to do it,” Vienna finished for me.

“Shit,” Monster breathed.

“So, we need to decide what the fuck we’re going to do about it,” Crash said, looking around at everyone.

“There’s nothing to do,” I said, taking my seat next to Crash.

“He’s dead. Simple as. And none of you suggest talking to her.

There's no fucking point. She's either going to go silent, and I've worked for weeks to get that fucking blank habit out of her.

Or she's going to run her mouth and piss me off, and then we'll have two dead bodies on our hands.”

“I'm not apologising, Dante,” Vienna said, mimicking Rachel. “If I felt sorry, I would. But I don't, so I won't.”

I smirked at him. “As concerning as that little performance was, Vienna has absolutely nailed it.”

“I'm not after a fucking apology,” Crash hissed. “What's done is done, and an apology isn't going to bring Macbeth back. But Kitty is going to want blood for this.”

“Macbeth was going to die, regardless of who killed him,” Shark said.

“To be fair, I think we should be thanking Rachel for saving us the job,” Ant agreed.

“Rachel and Mama don't exactly see eye to eye. I can't see that improving now that she's murdered her eldest son,” Rooster said. “We need to prepare for that.”

“I'll deal with Kitty,” Crash said, his voice weary and tired.

“You're all right. Macbeth was on borrowed time.

If he hadn't been on the club grounds, he wouldn't have put himself in the position to be murdered.

There's no telling what he had planned. Rachel may have put a stop to something far more dangerous.”

“So, what’s the point in this meeting? Rachel did us all a favour,” I said, trying my hardest not to snap at them all.

I didn’t like the fact that we were all here discussing my woman, as if anything she did was any of their business.

It’s the club’s business .

And for once, I was struggling to understand why that was an acceptable answer.

“We’re here because we need to know why she did it, for one.

Why did she put herself in danger when there were plenty of club members here who could have helped her?

And we would have dealt with it efficiently.

Why did she hide it from you? She was sneaky, Dante, and she knew exactly what she was doing.

And two, we need to find out if he said anything to her.

Had she let us do the killing, we could have found all this out and prepared the club accordingly.

We don’t know the full extent of the arrangement Macbeth had with the Riders, and this could lead to something much bigger. ”

“Yeah, and like we’ve just said, Macbeth was going to die, regardless.”

“But he could have died with us having extracted all we needed to know. Right now, Rachel is the only one who knows what his confessions were – if he even confessed anything to her to begin with.”

“I guess the only way to find out is to ask her,” I said, sighing heavily.

“We also need to figure out what to do with the body,” Vienna said. “Does he get a funeral?”

“No,” Crash barked.

“Crash…” Zach began.

“No,” he snapped, interrupting him. “I’m not giving him a fucking funeral.

He made his fucking decisions. He's no son of mine and I won't bury him as such.

I say we send his body to the Riders. Let them see we mean business.

If we can murder one of our own, then they'll know we have no problem dealing with any of them.”

“Mama—”

“I don't give a fuck about Mama,” Crash slammed his fist on the table, interrupting Zach once more.

Zach looked around with worried eyes, but he kept his silence.

“She knows the rules,” Crash said with a heavy sigh, his jaw gritting.

“Because of Macbeth, she was always going to be a son down.

Luckily for the club, it wasn't Dante. Mac could have put a stop to this plan at any time.

He could have come to us and told us he fucked up before it was too late.

He chose to go through with it, he chose to betray us, so he gets fuck all.

No resting place, nothing. It's what he deserves. ”

“This is going to cause a Chernobyl level meltdown, but if that’s the decision you’re making…”

“Would you rather I put it to a vote? All those in favour of giving Macbeth a funeral, say, aye.”

Rooster, Sunshine, and Zach all said “aye”.

“Overruled,” Crash barked, slamming the gavel down. “Club majority, Mac gets fuck all.”

“So… Are we addressing the elephant in the room? If no one else is going to mention it, I will. What do we do about Rachel?” Rooster asked.

“What about her?” I snapped, locking eyes with him.

“It's just… well… she did technically kill a member of the club. She went against—” I didn't wait to hear any more.

I was up and lunging before he even had a chance to finish his sentence.

Vienna was out of his chair in an instant, sending it crashing backwards to the floor, predicting my movements like he always did.

He restrained me as I lunged at Rooster.

Trent, Doc and Sunshine each got up to shield him.

“You keep her fucking name out of your mouth!” I shouted, straining against Vienna's grip around my chest.

“Fucking let him go! I just said what everyone was thinking!” Rooster yelled back, pointing his finger in my direction.“Come on VP, let’s see you throw the rule book out the window for your murderous piece of ass.”

That's when everything blew up. I was yelling at Rooster; he was straining against Doc and Sunshine, yelling back at me about my psycho missus. Shark and Hacksaw came around to help Vienna hold me back, earning Hacksaw a punch to the jaw, one he took like a champion. Which set my anger off further, because it wasn’t him I wanted to punch.

“Cool it, brother, cool it!” Vienna yelled into my face, attempting to push me backwards. “Do you want to get yourself put on probation?”

“Enough!” Crash barked, standing up himself and slamming both hands on the table. “We don't fucking turn on each other! You!” He hissed at Rooster. “Have you got a fucking death wish?”' Doc slapped him around the back of the head.

“And you!” He barked at me. “Need to sit the fuck down and listen. Now!” We both took our seats.

An awkward silence fell over the room until Vienna decided to stand up and shout “keep my wife's name out yo fucking mouth!” In his best Will Smith impression.

That set me off with a scoffed laugh. Which made Crash smirk and chuckle.

That sent Zach off, who infected his sons with his laughs, and before we knew it, we were all laughing at Vienna.

“Right,” Crash said, calming us all down.

“I'm sorry, brother,” Rooster said, standing up and reaching over the table to extend his hand to me.

“Likewise, brother,” I replied, accepting his hand and shaking it firmly.

“Now that we’ve kissed and made up, we need to discuss this without tempers flaring.

You might not like what's being said, Dante, but it needs saying all the same.

Rooster is indeed an idiot, but for once, he's right.

We do need to discuss Rachel. She had no business killing Macbeth.

She knew it was club business. But we also don't know the circumstances behind it.

She didn't invite him here. She didn't drag him into the house herself.

Macbeth was here for a reason, and I wouldn't be surprised if he knew Rachel was on her own.”

“If anyone else had killed a club member, would they get this sort of free pass?” Chicken asked, defending his brother like he always did.

“No, they wouldn’t.” Crash agreed.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my smokes as a way to distract myself.

This wasn’t fucking right. I had never had any sort of input over any of the old ladies here.

None of the other old ladies had ever killed a club member.

That much was true. But Macbeth was on borrowed fucking time. It was ridiculous that we were applying club protocol to him.