“And your broodin’ is so swoony. Want me to call up Lou and get her in here to properly appreciate it?”
“Enough,” he said, finally anglin’ his body to face me, a smile in his beard.
I grinned back at him as we clasped hands and tugged each other in for a hug and a slap on the back.
“How’d I raise two mouthy kids?” he muttered, but it wasn’t a condemnation.
His twitchin’ mouth made it a compliment.
“Pretty sure snark is the Garro family language. Now stop beatin’ ’round the bush. Have you heard from Harleigh Rose?”
The humour tamped out of his face like a snuffed candle. “Says she ‘needs space’ as if that wasn’t the whole fuckin’ reason she got into this mess in the first fuckin’ place.”
The brother in me agreed with him. My little sister had been abused by her boyfriend without our knowledge for the past couple’a years, and because she lived down in Vancouver, it was all too easy for her to hide it from us. Still, guilt burned in my gut like an unbanked fire because I was just that kinda man. The kinda man who needed to take care of his loved ones, and when they hurt, it fuckin’ killed me that I couldn’t save them from that pain.
And there was no denyin’ H.R. was in pain. She’d been forced to kill the sack of rancid shit who had no right to call himself a man after he’d sexually and physically assaulted her two months ago, and now she was like a ghost livin’ among ghosts.
She didn’t want help. Even when we’d forced her back to Entrance in the aftermath so Cress and Dad’s wife, Loulou, could comfort her and the club could protect her, she’d been an unreachable island.
It was rough for men who were used to control, to gettin' their way and enforcin’ their protection, to have one of their women refuse to let them do as their hearts and instincts demanded.
So as a brother and a man, I was bitter with frustration and unrealized revenge, angry with her for scornin’ our care.
But as the kind of human I’d been born, one with a heart that sometimes felt too acutely and understood others too emotionally, fuck me if I didn’t understand it.
Since we were kids born into a home with a shit mum and a dad who went to prison, Harleigh Rose had always been my responsibility. Maybe that was why I got that she needed space in order to process before she could come to us. She needed space to find her strength again because she wouldn’t be weak for anyone, not even herself.
I got it.
I didn’t like it, but I respected the hell outta it because no one was stronger than that girl, except for maybe Dad’s girl, or mine.
“She’ll come back,” I told Zeus. “In the meantime, got anything you wanna share with me?”
There was an edge to my question, but it was justified. I’d been prospectin’ for The Fallen MC for months now, and Zeus still told me dick all about the issues plaguin’ the club. Technically, I got it. Prospects were kept in the dark until they had an opportunity to earn their patch. But I wasn’t just any prospect. I was born King, raised to be king by the current fuckin’ king of our club.
If there was any time for fuckin’ nepotism, it was now.
But Zeus wouldn’t crack, and my patience was wearin’ really fuckin’ thin.
He stared at me for a moment, somethin’ workin’ behind his silver eyes. “You and Ransom got that custom job for that Lombardi actor needs doin’. He’s comin’ for it in a month, and you’ve got a fuckuva lotta work to do.”
“Don’t be a dick.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms, facin’ off with the devil. “I want in on real shit. Why’d you think I joined up after so many fuckin’ years? To wear grease on my jeans and a cool patch on my back? I’m not some newbie that needs vettin’ here, Dad. I’m the fuckin’ son you raised for this shit.”
“And who says I’m done raisin’ ya?” he countered. “You think you’re ready for the kinda pressure I get every fuckin’ day as prez? Let me tell you somethin’, King, you could be born with a crown on your head, raised every fuckin’ day on the kinda shit you need to know about power and keepin’ it, and you still wouldn’t know shit all about the mantle passed to your shoulders. Heavy is the fuckin’ head that wears the crown, even if it’s made of grease, leather, and iron.”
“Maybe I’d be better prepared if you actually discussed shit with me as it went down? You want me to be like Harry Truman when he took over from FDR? He didn’t know fuck all about the atomic bomb, and then he was being told to drop it on a goddamn city. You want that kinda devastation in your wake?”