Enzo (Jinx Tattoos 1)

“I appreciate you taking up for my fiancée,” Enzo said.

“Hey, you’re a friend of the club, and we take care of our part of town,” Mike replied. “I don’t want that shit going on. Last thing we need is Feds to have a reason to come in and get all up in our shit. We had a hard enough time shaking them five years ago.”

Enzo nodded. He had Aoife. The less Keir new about the recent changes, the safer she would be. The sight of Snake cuddling the baby to his chest and her patting his cheek might be the funniest thing he’d seen in a while. The Vice President had a soft spot for women and children. Enzo glanced at his watch and shifted his weight. She’d been in the gallery for thirty minutes now. They had prospects nearby, but it did nothing to ease his anxiety.

He peered around the clubhouse. The mood was tense. I should be with her right now. Bike Mike had vetoed him anywhere near the gallery. He said it’d tip off anyone who’d been watching her. He’d never hated the fact that he and Ave did so much together until now. There was a lot resting on this. No one wanted war. But the Wild Ones would fight to protect the niche they’d spent the past forty years carving out.

Mike’s phone rang and he stood. “Hey, brother, what’s the update? Shit. When? Is she okay? Yeah? All right, I’ll let him know.”

Enzo leaned forward.

“Your old lady, her mother, and Keir are on the way to the hospital.”

“What happened?” he asked, rising to his feet.

“A car bomb went off in front of the store, blew out the windows, and rocked the front of the gallery. I’m not sure what state it’s in.”

“Fuck!” he barked.

Aoife began to wail, and he ran his fingers through his hair.

Snake hushed her.

Mike looked calm. “Go see to your woman. I’ll send a few prospects with you, post them at the door, and I think Snake here has Aoife.”

“Yeah, I got the little beauty,” Snake said.

“You sure?” Enzo asked. He’d barely gotten her, now all that could be gone in a puff of smoke.

“Positive, go.”

He grabbed his keys and jogged out with two men trailing behind him. Ignoring the speed limits, he made his way to Bethesda North. He came into the parking lot on two wheels and slammed the car into park. Dashing inside, he ran to the information desk. “Hi, I’m looking for my fiancée, Aibhlinn Leahy. She was brought in not too long ago.”

“She’s on the third floor, but you’ll have to wait, the police are interviewing her now.”

Ignoring the nurse, he rushed to the elevator with the prospects on his tail. Inside the elevator, he hit the door close and hit three buttons at once to insure the elevators wouldn’t stop until he reached his destination.

“Dude, nice trick,” the short, tow-haired, lanky male said. The kid couldn’t be more than twenty-one.

He studied his patch. Rad? Part of him wanted to know, and the other part was too afraid to ask. “Yeah, it only works on Otis elevators though,” Enzo explained.

“We’ll have to keep that in mind. Could come in handy someday.” The other prospect was a dark-haired boy with more base in his voice, and hair on his face. He had to be mid-twenties, to early thirties.

Enzo always wondered what drove each member to join, but it was such a personal question, he never asked. The patch on the older man’s vest read Clean. Clean? The elevator stopped and they stepped out. He immediately recognized her room as the one with a cop.

The cop stood in his path. “Excuse me, sir—?”

“That’s my fiancée in there, and I’ll be damned if I wait out here a second longer. “

“Enzo.” Her voice sounded thready and weak.

He pushed through, shouldering the cop out of the way.

She had scratches all over her face and a cast on her arm, but otherwise seemed unharmed. Relief flooded through him. “You scared the shit out of me, Aibhlinn.”

“Yeah, well, you think you’re shocked,” she said.

“What the hell happened?”