She taught me to tame my bushy hair and harness the power of my tan. She took me to the gym with one of the brothers, Bat, who taught us how to use the equipment to carve steeper curves into our girlish forms. H.R. had stuck with it for two weeks, but I’d made the gym a routine and had the results to prove it.
Still, I wasn’t used to compliments, and Zeus knew it.
Which meant he was sure to let me know how lovely I was every chance he could.
He was like that. Generous with his love and attention.
I aspired to be like him, and it was exactly that characteristic that prompted me to visit him that day with a plan.
“Listen, I’m not here to shoot the shit with you, Z,” I admitted, staring down at my tattooed left hand to distract myself form the sudden glower on his formidable brow. I loved the intricacy of the blooming vines as they opened their petals across the insides of my fingers and wound all the way across the backs of my hands. My other hand was luridly bare in comparison, a blank canvas as yet untouched by the kiss of ink from Nova’s flourishing tattoo gun.
I resolved to go into Street Ink soon and get something done to the space, even if Jake didn’t like it. Its emptiness irritated me because, in ways I was reticent to explore, it mirrored the malcontent I felt in my own life.
Hence, my plan.
I squared my shoulders as my gaze met Zeus’s silver bladed eyes. “Something’s got to change here. I know you’ve got antiquated rules about women getting involved in club shit, but that shit is up to all our ears right now, Z, and like I said, something’s got to change.”
He peered at me through narrowed eyes, his massive hands folding into fists on the laminate counter. “Maybe so, Li-girl, but you aren’t gonna be the one to do it.”
I tipped my chin into the air so I could look down my nose at him. “You got something against women I don’t know about?”
He scowled.
Of course, I knew better than most that Zeus was a rare outlaw MC Prez, he valued Old Ladies and club kids––male or female––a helluva lot more than most bikers did.
I’d insulted him, but it was for a purpose.
“You wanna twist it that way when you know I’m comin’ from a place’a pure love, I’ll take it if it means you ditch whatever hair-brained plan you got formin’. Got a lotta respect for you, Lila, doesn’t mean I’m willin’ to sanction whatever heroic bullshit you’re cookin’ up.”
“It’s not dumb,” I argued. “I’ve got a plan.”
“Gotta daughter who had a plan’a vengeance to bring down a rival MC…don’t think I need to remind you how that went for Harleigh Rose.”
I winced, because I’d known he would bring up my best friend’s nearly ill-fated ploy to take down the Berserkers MC in Vancouver. One of their brothers, an asshole by the name of Cricket, had raped Harleigh Rose, and my girl wasn’t the kinda girl to take that shit laying down.
So she’d partnered with a local undercover cop to investigate and dismantle the organization.
In the process, she’d had to stab said cop, watch her dog die, been abducted, and had been threatened by her own mother as well as the Prez of the Berserkers.
So yeah, I had to admit, hers had been a hare-brained scheme.
But mine was not.
“Yeah, well, I agree H.R. went off half-cocked because she was traumatized, but I’m clear as fucking day, Z, and I gotta real plan.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me seriously as he stroked absently at his short beard. His contemplation was one of the many reasons I loved him. I was a twenty-three-year-old woman with no real affiliation to his club. I had no right to question him, to push him, to even to talk to him based on the unwritten rules of normal 1%er culture.
And here was the great and infamous Zeus Garro, listening to little old me, taking me seriously because he was just that kinda man.
“Got the feelin’ I don’t let you air this out, you’ll go off and do some extreme shit anyway,” he finally said, slanting me an exasperated look. “So I’ll hear you out on the condition you relent if I tell you to fuckin’ relent, yeah?”
My mouth corkscrewed to the side because I did not like those conditions.
I wanted to do what I felt I needed to do to save my family.
But I got him.
He was showing me respect, and I had to do the same.
So I tipped my chin in a gesture I’d long ago stolen from Nova and spread my hands on the table as I launched into my plan.
“The Ventura’s have been fucking with our town and the club for way too long. First, they abduct Cressida and stab nails through her hands by proxy of their puppet MC the Nightstalkers. And then they prop up Staff Sergeant Danner’s corrupt police force. Javier is coming for the club, his first step getting you locked up for a murder you absolutely did not commit,” I pointed out, laying the groundwork so he would get just why we needed to take extreme measures. “I think it’s past time we came for them.”