Page 89 of Soulless Saint

I’d gladly stay high on her for the rest of my miserable life, aching for my next fix.

“You should tell them the truth,” Kaleb said finally, and I noticed he hadn’t so much as touched his scotch. Instead, he just stared at it like he might find the answers to every question he’d ever had but didn’t actually want the answers to somewhere at the bottom of the glass. “They deserve to know.”

“This never should’ve happened.”

My back tensed, muscles flexing with annoyance. “Jimmy Boy didn’t deserve to go like that, but he didn’t follow orders.”

Dad had told us everything he knew when we met him beneath the billboard out on the canyon road. He was an idiot for going there himself after getting the tip from a beat cop still loyal to the Saints.

Dad shook his head.

“Hardin’s right,” Kaleb added. “You told Jimmy to hole up at the shop like everyone else. He’s the idiot who didn’t listen.”

“He had kids for fuck’s sake.” Dad seethed, his grip on his now empty glass tightening. He rarely drank, for the same reason I didn’t. People tended to die when we weren’t in control of our emotions and other than rage, I was in full control of the rest of mine.

“Two little girls,” he added, pouring more scotch into his glass. “His wife…” He trailed off.

“They’ll be taken care of,” Kaleb said. “Like always.”

Dad sagged on his barstool. “Hush money in exchange for growing up without a father.”

“Riley knew what she was signing up for when she married him,” Kaleb argued. “She was a Saint’s Sinner for fuck’s sake.”

“It won’t make telling her any easier.”

Kaleb threw a hand through his messy hair, scattering dirt over the bar, getting some in his scotch. “Do we even know if she and the kids are all right?”

“They seem to be. I had that beat cop go ’round to check on them. He said lights were out, no signs of forced entry, and he could see Riley asleep on the couch inside. No doubt Jimmy was on his way to the shop when they grabbed him.”

Were we really not going to address the elephant in the room? I wasn’t up at five in the fucking morning to talk about how to tell Jimmy’s wife, or even how to tell the other guys.

“Does it really matter how the fuck you tell her?” I all but snapped, the simmer of rage in my gut was already turning up the heat, rolling into a boil again. So much for my short-lived sense of calm. It was nice while it lasted. “What we need to be talking about is what we’re going to do about it.”

Kaleb took the first sip of his scotch, grimacing. “We can’t let the Son’s get away with this. If they were willing to make a move this fucking ballsy just because we didn’t show up for their meet, what’s going to be next? Maybe Riley? Her and Jimmy’s little girls. I mean, fuck, did you see what they did to him?”

I’d seen my fair share of gruesome shit in my time with the Saints, but what they did to Jimmy was on another level. If it weren’t for the ink on his skin, we wouldn’t even have been able to identify him seeing as his head was missing.

They’d artfully arranged his body parts into their gang tag, arms and legs bent at opposing angles to make S’s. His torso, missing all limbs and a head made a macabre ‘O.’ His own blood slashed over his pale chest to make a strike through it.

We’d just seen Jimmy two days ago. While he operated directly under my father, he lived in Santa Clarita. In fact, the fucker lived barely five blocks from our place.

The idea of some scum being so close to our place, on our turf, taking our men right out from under our noses, made my fucking skin itch.

I shoved away the last swallow of my scotch, not trusting myself not to go ape on the first person who didn’t share blood with me. I enjoyed taking money from the preppy fuckheads who thought they could beat me at pool or darts here too much to like the idea of Sam dead.

“Good talk,” I sneered sarcastically when no one answered me, pushing the stool out from the bar, ready to leave them both to wallow without any help from me.

“Sit the fuck down,” Dad hissed.

I cut him a glare.

“What exactly are you proposing, Son?” he demanded, his eyes getting that crazed glint I knew all too well, but my father wouldn’t lift a finger to harm us, no matter how much we pissed him off. Ma would literally kill him. Instead, I had the pleasure of watching his face turn red and his eyes bulge.

He wasn’t really angry at me, anyway. He was angry at himself.

“Hmm?” he pressed, leaning in close, unblinking. “Do you know something I don’t? Something like, I don’t know, where these bastards are hiding out? Because we’re flying blind here. We got nothing. Zip.”

I cast my fury away from him, staring at my glass atop the bar instead, my teeth grinding. He was right. We still didn’t know where they were, which would make retribution all but impossible, but they had to fuck up sometime. And somewhere out there, someone had to know something, we just hadn’t found that motherfucker yet.

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