“Good. Now get the fuck outta here. I got shit with the fuckin’ bitch wife that needs straightening out.”

“Looks to me like you got some shit with pretty little Raine to sort out, too.”

Prez shoots me a look full of venom and says, “There’s the door, motherfucker. Walk through it before my piece goes through you.”

I chuckle half-heartedly, and make my way over to it.

“I mean it, Tank. You slow your fuckin’ roll on that cunt, you hear? I don’t need the Russians up my arse ’cause you couldn’t control your fuckin’ temper.”

I sigh and don’t bother to turn around. What’s the fuckin’ point? He’s just going to stare at me with that pissed off expression, and I’m just going to glare back twice as fuckin’ pissed off because it’s my old lady’s life on the line.

Prez and I are too much alike. Both stubborn and pig-headed, neither one of us are real keen on being told what to do, and we’re both gonna disagree on this front, because even though he may claim that Ivy is family to him as well as to my club brothers, she’s more than that to me. She’s not just family, and she’s not just someone I want to fuck—she’s my woman. That makes her more than family, and I’ll stop at nothing to keep her safe.

The question is: can she handle that?

She doesn’t talk about her father, ever. She won’t let anyone in on that front. The most I think she’s ever told anyone was to Kick, and even he’s too fucked up to really comprehend the kind of gift she was giving him. Kick didn’t care that Ivy loved him enough to entrust that information to him, Kick only cared that he finally had someone to indulge in his pathetic little fantasies with. Sick fucker.

It tears me apart knowing she’s in love with him, and he doesn’t even fuckin’ see what he has. I guess we’re not so different, him and me. We both tried to save the women we loved, and we’ve both found ourselves miserably fucking short when it came to making shit right. I’m going to change that. I’ll save this bitch if it’s the very last thing I fuckin’ do. And she may hate me, but I don’t give a shit, because at least she’ll be alive to do it.

Kick doesn’t care enough about Ivy to help get her clean, and he certainly doesn’t care enough to seek out her father and kill him. He’d more than likely track the fucker down just to watch the expression on Ivy’s face when he revealed what he was hiding up his sleeve.

He’s not all bad, just seriously fucked up. Despite this colossal fuck up with the warehouse and saving the stray, he’s usually a good man to have at your back. I trust him with my life. I just don’t know if I’d trust him with my woman. I don’t know what it is about the little fucker—I’ve always liked him. Always felt a brotherly bond beyond the one the patch gives us. I betrayed my first club because my loyalty was more tied to him than the patch I wore, or the Prez I’d pledged loyalty to. I even fuckin’ went against what my new club Prez would have wanted me to do when it came to keeping that bitch in the warehouse alive. People are gonna think I’ve gone fuckin’ soft.

Maybe I have. Between Kick and this shit with Ivy, I feel as though my balls have been shoved into a vice and squeezed until they fuckin’ exploded all over the goddamn room. This is why I don’t get attached to anyone or anything. Because you become a liability. Love makes you a liability.

I head out of church and through the hall leading to the main lounge. Crazy has Neischa bent over the black leather couch. She’s the pig in a spit roast sandwich between Crazy and Grim. And while Grim stands there having his dick sucked by a bitch we all like to call Hoover, he’s glaring at Raine. She pretends not to notice the threesome taking place four feet from where she’s wiping down the bar. Country is seated at the bar, too. When is he not? He’s prattling on about his fucking chickens or some shit, and he’s too deaf, dumb and fuckin’ blind to notice the threesome taking place a few feet away.

Raine’s not though. Try as she might, she’s completely embarrassed. Her cheeks are beet-red and every time Grim grunts she flushes a deeper shade of scarlet. Jesus, it’s like watching a fuckin’ day-time soap, only with more bodily fluids. Stupid arseholes, every one of them. I turn and walk down the opposite hall, toward my room. Standing in front of my door, I fish the key out of my pocket and slide it in the lock. I spare a brief glance at Kick’s room, beside mine. His door is closed, but he’s not there. He’s holding that bitch we found in the warehouse hostage up at Prez’s cabin. On any normal day at the clubhouse, I’d find myself wandering into his room lookin’ for Ivy. She was always in there. Hell, she basically lived with Kick. Kept a bag full of all her stuff in his cupboard. Her drugs, too.

I hated seeing him with her, but it’s not like I had another choice. I might have seen it differently, but Ivy belonged to everyone. Not me. In her mind she belonged to Kick. In the minds of the rest of my club brothers, she was fair game as long as she was up for a good time and a quick fuck. But none of those fuckers cared about her. Not a single one cared enough to help get her straight.

I open my door and push inside. I don’t shut it behind me because I’m not staying long enough for it to really make a difference. I head to the bedside table and rummage around in the drawer, grasping for the other burner phone I keep stashed away in a compartment under the bedside table. The one I keep for situations that have nothing to do with club business.

I locate it and pull it out, and then I glance up and see Brooke standin’ in the doorway.

Shit. Guess I’ll be finding myself a new hiding spot.

Brooke’s tall, blond, and skinnier than a crack whore. We’ve gone at it like rabbits a few times, and Brooke comes harder than any female I’ve ever fucked. She’s a sweet kid, she’s just not … well, Ivy.

She leans in the doorway with a soft smile on her face. “Tank?”

“What’s up, babe?”

“I was just wondering how Ivy is?” she asks, as she enters the room and sits down beside me on the edge of the bed.

“She’s doin’ okay. It’s been tough. Real fuckin’ tough, but she’s getting there,” I say, a little impatiently. I wanted to get this out of the way while I was here instead of bringing the burner back to the cabin, but I guess it can wait until tomorrow. Besides, if that fucker winds up dead the day Prez tells me to put a fuckin’ lid on any ideas I may have had about offing him, I’m gonna have one seriously pissed off Prez gunnin’ for my arse.

“Oh, okay … good,” she says, and I feel like a heartless fuck because I know she can sense my irritation. She stands, looking down at me with pursed lips and a pinched brow. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it then. Tell her the girls said hi, and that we miss her.”

“Hey.” I reach out and encircle her wrist before she can leave. “There somethin’ else you wanna tell me?”

“Nope,” she says, with a plastered on fake smile. “All good here.”

“Bullshit,” I say, and pull her down on the bed. She falls mostly into my lap. Brooke looks up at me with these soft blue doe eyes and leans in for a kiss. Her lips crash down on mine, and her tongue thrusts into my mouth. I don’t kiss her back and after a moment her hand flies to my cock and she gently squeezes. I slide my hands into her hair and gently pull away. I meet her gaze evenly, but my brow is arched because being this forward isn’t like Brooke at all. I know she’s a club whore, and she’s damn good with her mouth and those tiny hands of hers, but normally she waits for someone else to make the first move.

Her eyes are big and pleading, and … fuck me, is she crying? “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, darlin’,” I say, letting her curl into me and wrapping my arms around her because I’m not a total arsehole.

“It’s true, isn’t it?”