Ajax watched her. He waited.

“No,” Sophie whispered.

“That’s not who he was,” Ajax agreed with a quiet ferocity. “The man I knew was never meant to die alone.”

“He didn’t kill himself,” Sophie said, feeling nothing but dull inside. Or maybe that was numbness. “That wasn’t in him. He would have hated the idea that anyone could think he was that much of a whiny bitch.”

Ajax nodded. “That’s my take.”

Her head spun. And again, Ajax was her anchor. Solid and unyielding beneath her and around her, holding her tight.

She let out a long, hard breath.

“You think somebody ran him off the road,” she said, and she knew what she was saying even as it came out of her mouth.

She knew it meant war, one way or another. Blood and darkness. Retribution. She could see it as if it was scrolling across Ajax’s hard face, and unlike yesterday at the cemetery, there was nothing she could do to stop this.

He hadn’t even had to tell her. Her father wouldn’t have, she knew. But Ajax had.

She clung to that.

“You think,” she said, very distinctly, “that someone killed my father.”

Ajax nodded. Hard. And his eyes were a holy terror. Then he grinned in that way of his, and that was worse.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Chapter 13

The lawyer was still a fucking douche, just like Ajax remembered.

Ten minutes late turned into fifteen, and Ajax wanted to start kicking asses to relieve his own irritation at being kept waiting by a man he could crush with one hand. It was that or throw Sophie on the bar and let off some steam in a far more interesting manner, but he figured he could keep his dick in his pants through a single morning while waiting for a will to be read.

Maybe.

He eyed Sophie, looking entirely too hot to his way of thinking in a long, black skirt that made him think about getting beneath it and a little cropped thing that showed off her belly ring. It made his pulse hammer in his cock. She also looked pissed, leaning against the Priory bar with her arms crossed, which he had to admit was pretty much his favorite thing. He wanted to lick that cranky expression right off her—

Not helpful, asshole.

With effort, Ajax stretched out his legs in front of him, leaned back in his chair so the front legs lifted from the floor, and surveyed the motley fucking crew that was all that remained of his full-patch, full-bodied brothers.

He’d give himself and Blue pretty good odds against whoever might have taken Priest out, Ajax thought. Blue sat across the table from him, his expression closed off and dark, his back to the same wall like he and Ajax were holding off a fucking siege.

Solid and dependable, the way a brother was supposed to be.

Unlike those other two pricks.

Prince had rolled in wearing another one of those suits, looking a lot like the kind of asswipe he used to enjoy beating up ten years ago. Now he stood all the way on the other side of the bar’s floor space from Ajax and Blue, like maybe he thought getting too close might contaminate him. Ajax felt he could definitely pollute that motherfucker should the time come, and happily. Bring it on. Prince had hardly said a word since he’d arrived this morning, right on time. Just muttered something about a plane he had to catch, which Ajax might have told him he was going to have to cancel, except fuck that guy. He’d find out soon enough.

Ajax shifted his attention to Cash. Back in the day the guy had been magic with money, and last night Ajax was pretty sure he’d heard the bitch tell someone he was a fucking “security analyst” in Florida. Ajax would have offered to cut his balls off, but that seemed a little redundant. Today he was scowling as he paced back and forth in front of the bar, like his agitation could make a scumbag lawyer appear faster.

And Ajax knew that if he offered any commentary on any of this, it would end in a fistfight. Which he would win, because please, but would likely cause more trouble than it was worth.

He was eyeing Prince’s fancy fucking tie with pure malice when the door slammed open, the clatter of Bourbon Street filled the air, and then the lawyer shut the door behind him and walked in. Not, Ajax noted darkly, in any kind of hurry, which might indicate he was aware he’d kept them all waiting.

It reminded him of way back when this same lawyer had showed up to bail Ajax out of jail on some or other charge. He’d been as unimpressed, and as late, back then. Ajax couldn’t really blame him. His entire career was based on the seedier side of New Orleans and all the shit they stirred. He was unimpressible.

On the other hand, he’d kept Ajax’s record pretty clean for a man with his interests and associations. Which didn’t make Ajax any less interested in making him bleed.

“Oh, good, we’re all here,” the man said as he walked toward them, in a Cajun accent that sounded dusted through with powdered sugar. “If any of you don’t know, I’m Jared Dauvers, attorney of record for the recreational organization called the Deacons of Bourbon Street Motorcycle Club”—Dauvers only eyed Prince when he let out a little laugh at that—“and personal attorney to one Theodore Lombard, better known to you all as Priest, I believe.”

“We know who you are,” Blue said. The menace was implied in the way he looked at the much, much smaller man.

But Dauvers only smiled faintly as he set his briefcase down on the table.

“I’m delighted to hear it. Let’s make this quick.” He snapped open the briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers, then proceeded to hand copies out to each of them as he spoke. “This isn’t a movie, so let’s get to the relevant parts that I’m sure most interest you, gentlemen.” He nodded at Sophie as he handed her a will. “And you, of course, ma’am. Approximately ten years ago, in an effort to shift the business enterprises of the Deacons of Bourbon Street Motorcycle Club in a more productive direction—”

“Legitimate,” Cash interrupted, like he was personally offended by the use of a different word. “You mean legitimate.”

“Because I’m pretty sure the previous direction the club was going in was plenty productive,” Prince drawled from his place against the bar’s far wall, his eyes on the lawyer. “If of greater interest to the NOPD, sadly.”

“Oh, cool,” Sophie said, her tone far more amused than that look in her green eyes, and Ajax wondered if he’d made the right call, telling her his suspicions about how Priest had died. Then he wondered why the fuck he was second-guessing himself, like a bitch. “I’ve always wanted to be a Deacon and hear club business. Does this make me, like, a prospect? My daddy would be so proud.”

Ajax had to admire the way she did that, and sure, he had a fucking hard-on all the time where this woman was concerned. But still, she’d managed to cut off a conversation about shit that shouldn’t have been mentioned in front of her and remind everybody that they were there for a reason and it wasn’t a dick-measuring contest.

She was the perfect woman. In his bed and in his life. There wasn’t even the slightest shred of doubt in him.

The lawyer cleared his throat. “The Deacons of Bourbon Street is a recreational club, and as such, participates only in club activities dedicated to enhancing the lives and enjoyment of its members. Theodore Lombard, on the other hand, a local businessman, privately owned a number of properties in the French Quarter, both residential and commercial.”

He started rattling off names and addresses. Some falling-down, abandoned rich person’s house somewhere in the Quarter that Ajax had no idea why Priest would ever have owned in the first place. All the buildings around the courtyard, from the Priory to the clubhouse—it still pissed him off it was an art gallery, of all things—and the handful of apartments that brothers or other friends of the club had rented over the years and that the woman who ran the gallery and Sophie lived in now. And, of course, the strip joint across the street. All once used for various other reasons by the club, but all now fully tax-paying and law-abiding, which the lawyer managed to say using about seventy more words than necessary.