There were non-bikers watching too, though those people hung further back, along the sidelines. This bar had seen its share of fights, most of them probably in this same parking lot. A big, burly guy stuck his head out the door and shouted in a bored voice, “Get the fuck out, boys. Someone’s called the cops.”
“Shit,” Devon growled. “Let’s get moving.”
I turned to McMurphy. My head was pounding like hell. “We done?” I said.
He shook his head. One of his ice-blue eyes was bloodshot and he had blood in his teeth, which was a sight that shouldn’t have gratified me. But it really did. “Never,” he said. “We’re never done, Wilder. Not as long as you breathe.”
“Wrong.” This was Ben, Devon’s lawyer, who stepped in between us, putting his phone in his pocket. He, too, had no fear of a few bikers, and this time I really did see why Devon hired him. “I just got a call from inside the Lake of Fire,” he said to both of us. “Word’s gone out from Preston. Anyone who touches his daughter, or her husband, is starting a war. You want that, McMurphy?”
Dani, I thought. There was only one reason Robert Preston would decide to get involved after all these years, and that must be because Dani asked him to. Which meant that Dani must have gone to see him in prison. You brave fucking woman, I thought. And hard on its heels was: What did you promise him?
In response to Ben’s question, McMurphy spat blood on the concrete. “Stay the fuck out of Arizona, Wilder,” he said. “Come into my territory, and it’s off. I’ll rip your fucking balls off and feed them to you, motherfucker.”
“Classy,” Ben said, “but honest. Now all of you get out of here before someone gets arrested. I’m not doing any fucking bail hearings today.”
The biker gripping me let me go, and Devon helped me up. I scrubbed more blood from my eye as one by one each motorcycle roared to life and peeled out of the parking lot, vanishing down the highway before the cops could come.
“Feel better?” Devon asked me.
Everything hurt—my face, my hands, my jaw, my back. “Yeah,” I said. “I feel much better.”
He laughed softly. He completely understood, the asshole. Fuck, I had missed my brother. “You can’t drive,” he said, looking at the blood in my eye. “Grab your bag from your car and get in. Time to clear out of here. The last thing we need is cops.”
So I grabbed my bag from the car I’d bought in Vegas, and I got in Devon’s car. Ben gave us a wave, got in his own car, and drove off. Devon?
?s car was a Mercedes, deep black, about ten years old, cared for like a baby. Basically, erotic love on wheels. My brother had always had taste in cars. If I wasn’t married to Dani, I might marry that car.
“Bleed on my seats, and I disown you,” Devon said, deadpan. “You don’t get a dime.”
“Yeah,” I said, folding myself gingerly into the passenger seat. “I get it.”
“You need a hospital?” he asked, getting behind the wheel.
“Are we fucking related?” I asked.
“No hospital,” he agreed. He started the car and left the parking lot. From far off, we heard faint sirens. “You want to call your wife,” Devon said, “considering she just saved your sorry ass?”
“I’ll call her,” I said.
“Impressive,” he commented. “One woman making the Lake of Fire bend to her will. Sounds like maybe she gives a shit about you.”
“She thinks she does,” I said. “I told her she needs to think it over.”
“Maybe,” he told me. “But if you ask me, she sounds like exactly the woman you need. You fuck it up and lose her, I disown you. You don’t get a dime.”
I pulled up the hem of my shirt and used it to mop my face. “If I disappear for another ten years, will you stop nagging me?”
“No,” Devon said. “Also, don’t go back to Arizona.”
“Right.” I’d spent ten years in the desert; I was done with it. I didn’t care about McMurphy’s threats. I only wanted to be where Dani was. Assuming she would even look at me again. “Anything else?”
“I’m bringing you back to San Francisco,” he said. “I have a house in Diablo that our grandfather left. It’s big, and it’s nice. I live there with Olivia. You’re staying there until we get some shit sorted out. Your wife wants to join you, there’s plenty of room. Max wants to see you and introduce you to Gwen.”
I was quiet for a minute. The fact was, I choked up. I’d spent ten years with nothing, no one. Now I had my brother, and the woman he loved, and Max and the woman he loved, and even Devon’s badass lawyer. And Dani. I could have Dani. Maybe I didn’t deserve any of it, but it was what I had. And as Devon would put it, what was I gonna do with it?
Devon put his hand on the back of my neck. Just that one touch, lasting a few seconds. He grabbed me, squeezed, and let go. That was everything I needed, right there. So I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.
Sometimes, talking doesn’t matter.