My bike would never be as clean as it would be when they were done with it.
With that, he ran inside. Once the other prospects were out and walking the grounds, shoulders hunched forward against the cool fall air, I made my way inside, the chorus of voices quieting down as eyes found me.
"What's this all about, Daddy Reign?" West asked, his light-hearted grin falling when he saw the ticking of my jaw.
"We have a problem," I told them before launching into it.
There was a mixed reaction from my men, as I had come to expect. Resignation from the older men, the men I had grown up with, who had seen so much drama already at my side. Then the anger and indignation, the thirst for blood in the younger guys, the ones who hadn't seen as much action, and were craving something new to focus on.
It was good to have both.
Age and wisdom mixed with youth and impulsiveness.
That was how we were all going to get through this, figure out who it was, and take them out.
The weight on my shoulders felt a little less heavy as I rode my bike out of the yard a few hours later, in no rush to get home, knowing Summer was off shooting all kinds of guns I didn't want to know about up at Hailstorm with some of the girls, so I was on my own.
It wasn't until I was already on the long stretch of deserted road on the way to my house that I realized something was wrong.
It wasn't long after that when my bike stopped moving.
And before I could even pull out my phone to call one of the guys to come get me and the bike, headlights were pulling up behind me.
My hand went for the gun hidden under my seat.
But the prongs of the taser were faster than I was. And the volts of electricity stole anything resembling muscle control from me as I slammed down on the pavement, pain ricocheting off every nerve ending.
"Well, well, well, look who we have here," a voice said, coming up beside the man holding the taser. "You two, load up the bike. You," he called, gesturing toward someone else walking out of the shadows. "You know what to do."
I thought we were going to bring the war to their door.
But now the war was here.
And my men were going into it without me leading them.
Fuck.ONEColsonChurch had gone later than any of us planned, leaving me making my way home well after midnight, my eyes scratchy, but the caffeine buzzing through my system as I cringed at the rumble of my bike as I drove into our quiet neighborhood.
I'd moved Jelly and me out of an apartment a couple of years before, buying up a townhouse in a nice area of town back when they were nothing but plots of lands and blueprints and promises.
They were each set in three-home blocks, each house going from blue, to green, to tan. We lived in a blue corner that gave us a bit more yard space to the side, something that came in handy when Jelly was younger and still played outside. Now it was all electronics and hangouts on the couch with friends.
She was asleep now, or she should be. She'd likely gone to bed pissed at me. She hadn't exactly been pleased when the babysitter had shown up five minutes before I left.
"I'm not a baby anymore, Dad," she had snapped at me, one hand on her hip, the other waving out in the air, frustrated.
To be fair, she was twelve, and had been for a whole five months. She was legally allowed to stay home alone if I had to run out.
"It's not about you, Jelly," I had reminded her. "It's about my job."
And then we were off.
She made several valid points about how I had chosen my job, that if she was in danger, that was because of my decisions, and then went ahead and wondered if the twenty-year-old babysitter was aware that she was supposed to defend her against possible gun-wielding bad guys.
Needless to say, I had to pull the Dad-card. She, on the verge of being a teenager, had to pull the resentment card, and both of our evenings were a bit more unpleasant for the whole ordeal.
I had the kid thing down after some hiccups when she was a baby, and she seemed so small and breakable and utterly dependent on me for everything. But the kid phase? That was great. Games and reading and adoring eyes when I took her to get ice cream or showed up at all her school events.
This pre-teen shit, though?
No one prepared me for this.
Sure, I remembered my sister being a bit of a pain in the ass when she was a teenager. But I had chalked that up to Freddie being a younger sister, and therefore always a little annoying.