“I want to know who killed Isaac,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Isaac?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Who killed my cousin?”
“You mean that shooting outside of town last week? That was your cousin?”
“Cut the bullshit, Saber, you know it was. Tell me, was it payback?”
He stuck a toothpick between his lips. “Now why on Earth would there be a need for payback?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
He held his arms out at his side. “It’s all good, brother.”
A noise from across the room interrupted us. We both turned to look. The drunk biker by the jukebox shoved his girl away from him and called her a whore. We watched as he smacked her to her floor and stood over her.
Anger ripped through me. “You going to take care of that bullshit?”
Saber shrugged. He didn’t give a fuck. “Nah. I’m done here.”
He turned and began to walk away.
The drunk biker hauled the girl up from the floor and smashed her in the side of the face with his fist, sending her stumbling against the wall. I was at his side in an instant, just in time to stop him from inflicting a second blow.
Gripping him by the collar, I thrust him up against the wall.
“Every part of me wants you to try that again. Just so I have the pleasure of stopping you.” My voice was dangerously low and I had no doubt the look in my eyes let him know that there was no room for negotiation here. “You want to hit women, then you need to get past me first. Got it?”
Fury and frustration soared through me.
“Get the fuck off me,” he spat.
“You like to hurt women?”
“Fuck you.”
I smacked his head against the wall. My rage was a fucking freight train and it felt good having someone to release my fury onto. “You’re a real douche, you know that? A really fucked-up piece of shit.” I grasped his collar tighter and got real close to his face. “I see you hit a woman again, hell, if I even fucking hear about you hurting a woman, I am going to find you and break your goddamn face. Do you understand me?”
I released my grip on him and let him drop to his feet.
You would think he would walk away. You would think he would realize he had gotten away with it reasonably pain free and that walking away was in his best interest. But he didn’t. Instead, he took a swing at me and it clocked me right in the eyebrow, splitting the skin open and sending blood trickling into the corner of my eye.
The fuckstick had pushed my last button.
And now I was going to have to hurt him.
It took three Knights to pull me off him. Then two of them held me back while one big mountain of a man called Hogg got ready to throw a few punches into me. But he was stopped by Saber’s gruff voice in the doorway, commanding him to back down.
“Enough,” he ordered.
Reluctantly, the thugs released their grip on me.
But I was already seeing red. Blood fucking red. So, as soon as I was free, I seized the gun I had shoved into the back of my jeans, and within a second, I was pointing it at them.
“Any of you assholes come at me again and I will kill you,” I warned. And I meant it. I was done with being the nice guy.
Fucking done.
All three Knights took a step back. The woman-beater slumped in a bloody mess on the floor groaned as he slowly regained consciousness. Saber glared at me from the doorway. Unlike the other men, his body language was relaxed, unthreatened, because the fact that I had a gun pointed at them in their clubhouse was more disrespectful to him than an actual threat.
“You might want to think about what you’re doing, Cade,” he warned. “Such a show of disrespect can be very unhealthy.”
“You tell these goons to keep their hands to themselves and I walk out of here.” I gave him a pointed look. “With all my teeth.”
He thought for a moment and then nodded at Hogg and his two sidekicks, before turning his gaze back to me. He folded his big arms across his chest. Along his forearm, amongst the collage of tattoos, were three thick, black crosses. Rumor had it, they represented the three lives he had taken.
“We are at peace, my friend. But if you ever come into my club and pull a gun on any of my brothers again, you won’t be walking out of here in one piece. Me casa ain’t no su casa. You got it?”
We stared at each other for a moment, his words hanging between us. I glanced at the girl shaking on the floor.
“She comes with me,” I said.