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My hands curled into angry fists.

“We don’t know if they are aware of her connection to us, but it’s likely, so we wanted to be prepared.” Facet had looked up from his laptop to continue. “I’d like to set up better cameras in her place. I wish we’d thought to do it before this. Maybe we’d know who they were. I’ll keep digging, because I’m sure I can find some kind of trail to who it is.”

“Thanks, bro. I appreciate that.” My head fell back as I looked at the ceiling, but then dropped down at Raptor’s next words.

“I’m real sorry to hear about what happened in Kentucky. That sucks that you didn’t know about your kid. You sure it was a good idea to bring them here in the middle of this shitstorm?” His head tipped as he raised a brow and awaited my answer.

“Well I sure as fuck wasn’t leaving them there after we finished with Lester Damon,” I replied.

“Coy and his boys could’ve watched over her,” Raptor reasoned.

“He’s my son,” I rasped, leaning toward my VP. “A son I didn’t even know existed until the night we did the job and I was shot. There was no fucking way I was leaving without him. Besides, like I said in my call, he needs me to teach him or he’ll never live a normal life.” After thinking about what I said, I snorted. “Well, I’ll be able to teach him to use his abilities covertly so he can live as normal of a life as possible.”

“I understand,” Raptor said, then rubbed his palm over his mouth. “So what are your plans?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. I told her they weren’t going back, but I’m not stupid, I know I can’t keep her hostage.” It was my turn to scrub my face with my hands.

“Anything else?” Phoenix asked Raptor.

“Yeah. Someone broke into my garage. Set off the alarm before they could get in the house. That’s why Kira and the dogs are here,” Voodoo admitted.

“Goddamn it, bro! Why the fuck didn’t you say something?” I asked. He was my friend before anything else. The fact that he hadn’t called me or pulled me to the side cut deep.

“You just got back. While you were gone, half the time you were fucking out of it. You damn near died. And why didn’t you? Because your kid saved you. A kid I knewnothingabout. Never saw that shit coming. Why? You’re the closest thing I have to a blood brother, yet I never fucking saw it. In all these years.” Hurt and disappointment rippled across his features.

“You think I knew and didn’t tell you?” I asked, shocked.

“No. I know you didn’t, but I feel like I let you down.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Voodoo, how many times have we told you that you can’t know everything?” Hawk argued.

“But I should have known this!” Voodoo shouted, and the pictures of days gone by rattled. “I should have seensomething! Yet, I sawnothing!”

“Because it wasn’t meant to be,” Ghost said quietly from his seat. We all turned to find him staring vacantly into the room. “But everything is falling into place. Be patient.”

“What are you talking about?” Phoenix asked him, perplexed. When he didn’t answer, Phoenix tapped him on the arm with the back of his hand.

“Huh?” Ghost said with a confused shake of his head.

Chills skated down my spine. “I fucking hate it when you do that,” I muttered. It wasn’t often, but on the rare occasion when a spirit used Ghost as their medium, it was freaky as fuck.

My heart ached at who it might’ve been. The connection had been broken, though.

“Oh shit, my bad, bro.” Phoenix apologized to Ghost for not realizing what had been happening.

“As soon as Venom gets back, we’ll call church and we’ll make a plan. Hopefully we’ll have more information by then. I don’t plan to sit around waiting for those loan shark bookie fuckers to strike again. Yet we need to make sure we have a solid plan before we go running off after them.” Raptor was right, but the waiting sucked.

“I hate to do anything that bails my fucking father out, but I can’t risk Jasmine’s safety.” I buried my face in my palms.Could anything else pile up on me? Fuck, I shouldn’t even think that, because it probably could.

“We won’t. But she’s been bitching about going home. Chains has been going out of his mind dealing with her attitude. You need to talk to her—we need to tell her what happened at her place. Ask her to give us time to figure this shit out.” Raptor laid down the law.

“Fine. I’ll talk to her.” I sighed.

“On top of all that, we ended up with the state public health inspectors at the farm. Stokes was able to appease their concerns, but the bigger question is who made the ‘anonymous’ complaint. It’s no coincidence that we also had our books audited for the forensic cleaning business too. Add in Angel’s sister’s shit, Voodoo’s place, and the resources it took to cover the shit that went down in Kentucky, and it’s a real mess. Too many things all at once. It’s making us all nervous. We’re on an unofficial lockdown until we figure out what the fuck is going on,” Raptor announced to those of us that hadn’t been here. Stokes was the general manager of the hog farm and had been loyal to us for years.

“I’m sorry about Kentucky,” I muttered. “That was my fault.”

“Bullshit. Things happen. We thought we had good intel. How were any of us to know that Lester’s assistant would be there, that she’d shoot Angel,andthat she was the mother of his child? No one could’ve anticipated all that. So we’ll put out one fire at a time.” Raptor tapped the table hard with his index finger over every point he made. “Any other questions? Because I have shit to do, and I’m tired of being the fucking boss right now. Fuck, I can’t wait for Venom to get his ass back here.”


Tags: Kristine Allen Royal Bastards MC: Ankeny, IA Fantasy