Just a few things to look forward to while she healed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“SIXER’S DEAD.” ZACH let that bomb explode smack in the middle of breakfast, causing Maverick to choke on his cinnamon roll waffle. Sixer and Lefty had been vying for top dog in the Gray Dragons now that Shark was fish food. Took a full month, but it looked like Lefty had won.
And that meant it’d been a month since he’d seen Stephanie. Though not a month since he’d thought about her—that was about ten minutes.
“All right, brother?” Jig slapped him on the back from his seat in the booth next to Maverick. Fuck, that hurt. His ribs still weren’t a hundred percent, not that his brothers gave a shit.
“Say it again?”
“You heard me just fine, dipshit,” Zach said as he shoveled a forkful of pancakes in his trap. “Sifser if dead.” He spoke around his mouthful. The club didn’t typically discuss business in the diner, but it was a rainy Wednesday morning, so the place was uncharacteristically vacant. So empty that Toni had sent some of the servers home early, and the rest were milling around behind the diner’s eat-in counter. No one within earshot.
“Jesus, man, were you raised in a barn? Swallow before you start spewing that shit all over the table. How’d it go down?” Mav asked.
Zach took a big gulp of his coffee and shrugged. “Civil war, like we thought. Lefty had the stronger backing. Sixer was found minus his tongue and eyes on the side of the road.”
“Shit, that’s some rage for ya.” Nothing like ripping out someone’s tongue and eyes to get the point across.
Across the table from Mav, Copper grunted and rubbed a napkin across his mouth. These days, his beard was much more under control, cropped close to his face. Didn’t detract from his don’t-fuck-with-me vibe but was much less mountain-man.
Shell’s influence for sure. Last time, she’d sicced Beth on him. She’d pouted and whined about him being too itchy-scratchy. Next day his beard was well groomed.
“So Lefty’s taking over? What do we know about this fucker?” Copper asked before sipping his coffee. Even though he was fully engaged in the conversation, his eyes kept drifting to Shell refilling salt shakers behind the counter.
Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and her normally put-together hair was thrown up in a sloppy pile on the top of her head like she hadn’t had much time to get ready that morning. Come to think of it, she’d mentioned something about her little girl having an earache. Beth was the sweetest kiddo but, man, there was serious drama when she wasn’t feeling well. Shell must have had a shit night.
Copper frowned each time Shell came into his field of vision. She worked her fingers to the bone to provide a good life for Beth and took the club up on embarrassingly few offers of help. Prideful woman.
Drove Copper batshit.
When he’d flat-out ordered her to let the club pay her rent for a few months, she’d blown a gasket. Never once had Mav seen her react in anger before or since that day but, man, when she let the temper run free, even the scariest of his brothers cowered.
If Prez wanted her to stop working and be cared for, he needed to man the fuck up and make her his woman. Until then, she’d made it damn clear the club might be her family, but they had no say in how she ran her life.
“Hate to say it, but we know dick,” Jig answered. “Lefty was high up in the gang, not quite as important as King, but probably third in command, their bastardized equivalent of Sergeant at Arms.”
“Hey, gentleman, how is everything?” Toni asked as she sidled up to the table wearing denim cutoffs that showed off some pretty sweet stems. Her diner T-shirt was snug and stretched across tits Zach stared at like he hadn’t been all over them in weeks, when in reality it’d probably been less than a few hours.
“You tell me,” Zach said, tagging her around the waist and pulling her to his lap. He captured her lips and kissed the hell out of her right there in front of the rest of them.
“Mmm, sweet,” Toni said, breathless when they pulled apart. She’d come a long way in the month since she’d killed Shark. At first, she struggled to deal with it, but Zach got her through. Watching them suck face gave Mav some strange twinge of discomfort on the left side of his chest.
Something was wrong with him. Maybe he needed to see a shrink or some shit. It’d been over a month since he’d even touched a woman. Stephanie was the last, and she had done some voodoo shit to his dick because it wouldn’t get hard over anything but thoughts of her and her slick heat coating his fingers.