Dev clawed at Keyes to get back to Ray, ready to beat the shit out of the guy. Luckily, Chain and Hound were there, helping Keyes keep Dev off Ray.
“Stop,” Fox bellowed, clearly getting a hold of himself. “Calm the fuck down. Everybody, calm the fuck down!” With help, Keyes pulled Dev back to his seat, shoving him down. Hound stayed on one side of Dev, Keyes on the other. The blame could happen later. They had to figure out a way around this.
Fox gripped the table, lowering his head, digging his fingers into the hard wood as he took a deep cleansing breath. Ray was the last one to take his seat, pushing it against the wall to keep an eye on everyone from a distance. Ray’s nose and lip were bleeding, and he winced when he lifted an arm to wipe at the blood. No one else did shit to help the guy.
“We now fuckin’ know what that bitch’s problem is, but so do other people. There’s a lot here, and I don’t fuckin’ know what to do with it,” Fox said.
When Ray started to reach for a picture, Fox barked out, “Keep your fuckin’ bloody hands off them.”
Ray pulled back and finally Ace took the bar towel from his back pocket and threw it at Ray.
“After I got this in the mail today, I went to our attorney’s office. She says we have Twiford, but we gotta wait. The club needs to keep a unified front, keep our shit clean for a minute fuckin’ more, because we don’t know who else got this information or what the motivation was in sendin’ it. Hell, this could have been some fuckin’ message from that bitch. We don’t fucking know nothin’. If we aren’t the only ones that got this shit, that means the media’s gonna be all up our asses. If we release this ourselves, that means the news media’s gonna crawl up our asses. If nobody else has this, then we release it on our terms, when we’re ready.”
“I swear to fuckin’ God I didn’t know,” Ray repeated again, his voice distorted by the wadded up towel at his nose.
“Dammit, Ray. It took me a fuckin’ minute, but I decided I didn’t think you did,” Fox said, but his jaw clamped shut as he stared daggers at Ray, and Dev released another string of profanity. Keyes held tight to the back of Dev’s shirt, and Fox looked over at his son. “Calm the fuck down, Dev.”
Oh man, that tone sent them back to schoolboy days, getting their asses handed to them for doing something wrong.
“So, do we all agree to keep this under wraps and see what happens?” Fox asked.
“This means we’re layin’ low a-fucking-gain,” Dev yelled the words, bending in toward Ray.
“Pretty much, and no one lays a hand on Ray,” Fox declared, giving another disapproving glance Ray’s direction.
“How the fuck was I supposed to know that crazy stalker whore would wind up in this position?” Ray snapped, looking at the guys.
“Because we fuck club whores. Ain’t none of us chasin’ after college bitches,” Hound yelled, and that got a rousing chorus of agreement, even from Dev which seemed a hard conflict of interest since he lived with a registered nurse.
Keyes’s gut twisted at the inner turmoil. In all these months, nothing had really changed at all, except now, he was so far past the concept of letting Alec go that he’d spill his brothers’ blood to keep Alec safe. Someone, somewhere was going to figure him and Alec out, and when they did, he would be sitting in Ray’s position, blindsided. His palms grew sweaty with worry.
Stop, Keyes. Stop.
“How did I have any control over that? She’s a fuckin’ skank, was back then and still is now,” Ray yelled, raising the anger level from about a seven to a solid nine.
“Goddammit, I said stop. We got other shit to talk about, and I’m not goin’ on until everybody fuckin’ agrees to lay low a little fuckin’ longer. Does everybody goddamn agree?” Fox shouted angrily. A round of grunts was the only acknowledgement he would get.
“Next. We got some differences of opinion on who we are.”
Keyes raised his brows at that. He had no idea what Fox was talking about and crossed his arms tightly over his chest.
“Hound, take over.”
“Dammit, Fox. I don’t want to follow that fucker,” Hound yelled the last word.
“Tell ’em,” Fox growled after maybe as much as a minute of complete silence.
“Some old lady was bein’ harassed. I took care of it,” Hound declared in an end of story kind of way that in no way explained how that made the club any different than minutes before.
“How’s that?” Mack asked, skeptically.
“Vigilante shit that could’ve gone wrong,” Fox answered, standing to his full height, crossing his arms over his chest.