Page 59 of Never Wed an Outlaw

“Shit, Firefly! Easy!” Skin growled, taking a rough elbow to the gut when my big Enforcer got some leverage.

“Fuck everybody, and fuck you, Prez! You wanna do hera goddamned favor, you can stay the fuck outta her life. She's too good for this, damn it. Too fuckin' good.”

“This is turning into a shit show,” Joker said, leaning toward me, maintaining his icy calm. I looked at him and nodded.

Fuck's sake, I had to tread lightly. I'd narrowly saved my patch a couple months ago, after that dust up with the Deads. More horrific infighting in this club would do me in for good. Brothers at each others throats were easy targets for any outsiders looking to pick us off.

“I'll give you boys the rest of the details as soon as I can hear myself think.” I waited, eyeballing Firefly, feeding the rage boiling over in his eyes.

His face was red. Every few seconds, his temples bulged, grinding his teeth like he wanted to chew me up and spit me out. If he ever regretted the swing vote that kept me at the head of the table, it was now.

“They roped her into a money laundering scheme through that matchmaker app of hers. She's torn up their infrastructure, cut them off, and thrown out their shit since we killed the two assholes. This file, here, contains everything we know about thecapoafter her, a man named Dom Barone.” I pushed the manilla envelope in front of me toward Joker.

My Veep flipped through the flimsy pages, ignoring the chaos around us, giving me a quizzical look before passing it to Sixty next. “Hardly anything there.”

“Yeah, that's our biggest problem at the moment,” I said, drawing more smoke into my lungs, before I let it outin a good, long puff. “We need more intel. Need it fuckin' bad. I moved Hannah into my place because we're spread too thin to watch her mansion around the clock.”

Firefly twisted in his brothers' arms, his eyes becoming pure death, fixed on me. Almost like he knew what was coming next before I even said it.

“She's living with me. It's no secret –“

“Motherfucker!” Firefly lost it, struggling with all his might, elbowing poor Skinny boy in the guts again. This time, Skin lost it, winded. Crawl took his place, grunting as he tried to hold the giant back. Took the rest of the boys in the room jumping up to hold him against the wall, howling like a maniac the whole damned time.

I stood up, putting out my pipe. “Brothers, I ain't the enemy, and neither is Firefly. We've got our disagreements, and I'm hoping one day, we'll put it all behind us. It's no secret me and her have had a thing for a long time. Half this club knew. So did the brother who's pinned down, trying to tear my head off.”

Moving between my men, I stopped about three feet from Firefly, close enough for the fuming hulk to spit in my face if he wanted. He looked up, opening his lips. “You're a two-faced, cradle robbin' sack of shit, Dusty. You put a bigger fuckin' mark on her head than the Sicilians ever will.”

Several men jeered. Others whispered among themselves. The brothers were getting pissed with his antics, and we'd have a full blown fight on our hands real soon if I didn't play lion tamer fast.

“Firefly, we've rode together, fought together, bled together, even fuckin' wept together. I can live with you wanting to reach down my throat and pull my balls out through my teeth,” I said coldly, coming closer, 'til we were face-to-face. “One thing I ain't tolerating is you letting your anger spill over, fuckin' up the rest of this club when Hannah needs our support. She'll always be your little sis, yeah, everybody knows it. We get it. But she's more than that now. She's my old lady, brother. She's my wife. And I'll take a hundred kinds of death before I let your bullshit cause hers, or anybody else's wearing this patch.”

“Wife?! The fuck?” Half a dozen identical cries went off, almost at once.

Firefly's eyes bugged out his head, and then pinched shut. For a second, I feared he was having a goddamned stroke. Several brothers probably wondered the same thing, holding him down, looking back over their shoulders at me for instruction.

“Leave him be,” I said quietly, watching as the big man finally overloaded himself, and slumped. Overwhelmed or giving up, who the fuck knew, but he'd lost his will to fight. “You all heard me the first time. Hannah and I got hitched about three weeks ago in a quick little ceremony in her library. Just a couple days after Skinny boy and Joker tied the knot. I couldn't wait a day longer, knowing the danger, and the fact she'd be facing this world like a defenseless fuckin' lamb if I didn't protect her with everything we had.”

“She had that anyway, Prez,” Skin said, the scar on his cheek rippling as he twisted his lips. “The girl's always beenfamily, before you came along.”

“Yeah, but she wasn't mine, and that had to change. I love her.”

Nobody argued. Firefly opened his eyes. The lightning hot rage scorching through his body faded, but a deader hatred simmered on his face, focused on me.

“This club's doubled down on Hannah's life, brothers. Skin's right about us owing her a helping hand from day one, thanks to her blood, same as our very pissed off Enforcer here. Now, she's wrapped up in this patch even deeper, part of our hearts and souls.” I thumped the skull with its smoking pistols on the back of Joker's cut, just above his bottom rocker. “I know this shit's getting real old. Seems like every month, we're chasing down some jackals, trying to keep them from eating us alive. This ain't no different from what we've done before. We're going after the Sicilians for love, for peace, for vengeance, for money, or maybe just because they're demon fucks who deserve to die.”

Half the boys in the room nodded. Lion looked at me, taking one hand off Firefly to scratch his scruffy beard. His closest brother, Tinman, stood behind him, still trying to wrap his head around why this club oughta have more heart than a man needed to sink his dick into new whores begging for the patch. Crawl held onto Firefly's arm, his dark features making him look even more determined in the dull light.

“We've taken pure hell this last year,” I said. “So much shit. We've survived beatings, bullets, knives, roguepimps, and two of the meanest fuckin' clubs who ever set up shop in Dixie. I'm asking ya'll to step up and stand strong one more time.”

“Prez, you can stop right there,” Joker said, a little bit of his trademark crazy returning to his hazel eyes. “We're with you. Whatever mistakes were made before with the Deads, they're ancient fuckin' history. We ain't leaving anybody's old lady to suffer alone, especially not yours.”

“Old lady, wife, over my goddamned dead body...” Firefly snorted harshly under his breath, shaking his head.

“I couldn't ask for better friends and brothers. All of you,” I said, bowing my head gratefully. “We'll hash out the details as soon as we know more. Skinny, I want you on the financials in that folder full time. See if you can use your sense for numbers to find out where the fuck those shell accounts go.”

“You got it,” he said, a slow smile pulling at his scarred face.

“I'm trusting every man in this room to do me the biggest solid of my life. I'm counting on you. Even the ones who want me dead right now...well, here's hoping we can put that shit aside, and make sure Hannah lives out her days in one piece. We can settle what else that means with fists or words later.”

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