Jagger wasn’t one to voice his opinion without considering it first. It was a lesson he’d learned while he was locked up over a crime he had every right to commit. He was a good guy, through and through, and when he spoke, we tended to listen—including Widow.
“Yep, he’s got a point there. Says a lot that she showed up here.” Widow stepped over to me as he warned, “You better be careful, brother. You don’t know anything about this girl.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t know anything about Frankie when you got tangled up with her either.”
“That was different.” Widow crossed his arms with a scowl. “Frankie wasn’t sitting in the back of a cop car when we met.”
“Technically, we didn’t meet until I bailed her out.”
Rafe gave me a nudge and chuckled. “You’re not helping your case here, brother.”
“I know. I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, and I’m just saying you might end up with more than you bargained for with this girl, and the club already has enough to deal with.” He motioned his hand towards the unfinished bathroom wall. “Right now, we can’t afford to be distracted by unnecessary bullshit.”
Without saying anything more, Widow turned and went back to work. We all followed suit, and the room fell silent. I felt an immediate shift in mood as we finished installing the drywall. Everyone’s intense focus was no surprise.
From one delay to the next, all of us were feeling the pressure to get the rooms back in working order. Due to insurance company issues and all the red tape with the city contractor, the construction company hadn’t been able to start when we’d hoped, so the exterior wall repair was just now completed.
We were under the gun, so all the brothers pitched in to help finish the interior. Space was limited, so we each took eight- to-ten-hour shifts, busting our asses to get as much done as possible in a short amount of time.
Everyone was running on empty, and still not knowing who’d planted the explosive device in our bathroom didn’t help matters.
Menace had gone over the camera footage a hundred times but saw nothing that seemed out of the norm. It could’ve been anyone from a rival MC looking to start some trouble, a local gang striking up a war, to some nut job trying to make a statement against strip clubs.
Since we had no idea who we were up against, Viper put the club on high alert—which didn’t leave any of us with a good feeling. We’d been under attack many times before but in the past, we’d usually had some indication of who we were dealing with early on.
Preparing a plan of retaliation at this point was an impossibility, so we only had one choice—to wait.
I hated fucking waiting.
We all did.
I thought our conversation about Raelyn was done until Rafe leaned over to me and asked, “So, what else has this chick gotten into?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like what other shit has she done?” He cocked his eyebrow and snickered. “I don’t figure she just up and decided to jump off the roof of a building. You gotta work up to that shit.”
“Yeah, I get the feeling she’s done some pretty crazy stuff and plans on doing more.”
“Oh, yeah?” He stared off into the distance and murmured, “I got some shit like that I’ve always wanted to do but never got around to it.”
“Like what?”
We spent the next couple of hours passing the time by sharing all the things we’d like to do and places to see, which made the time seem to fly by. I hadn’t even realized how long we’d been at it until Sophie came walking into the bar. She was dressed for work, and she sounded flustered as she rushed over to Jagger. “Hey, babe. Sorry I’m running so late, but it’s been a crazy morning.”
“Everything okay?” Jagger asked with concern.
She let out a breath. “Not exactly.”
“What’s going on?”
“Well, apparently, the client I’ve been working with ran into a problem at the prison last night.” She shook her head, frustrated. “He had some kind of altercation with another inmate.”
“It happens, babe. More than you might think.”
“I know, but it doesn’t say much about all the work I’ve been doing with him over the last few months.”
Sophie was an anger management therapist and terrific at her job--which was one of the reasons why Menace had hired her to work with Jagger. Menace thought she would be Jagger’s ticket to an early parole hearing, and he was right.
Jagger got his hearing.
And he also got the girl.
Jagger stepped over to Sophie and slipped his arm around her waist. “Sometimes fighting with other inmates is the only way you can survive in that place.”
“I get that, I really do, but I still feel like I failed him somehow.” She glanced down at her watch, then said, “We better get going. I have an appointment in thirty.”