Page 25 of Ruthless Reign

“Now that she’s my wife, you don’t need to worry about that anymore,” I said, hoping to make my point clear. We’d signed his damned contract. That was where his involvement ended.

“She was my sister long before she was your wife,” he said.

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you offered her to me as a show of alliance.” I left little to the imagination with the harshness of my tone.

He held his hands up in solidarity. “I meant no disrespect. I only wanted to make sure our agreement was on track.”

“That’s none of your fucking business,” I snapped.

He pursed his lips and let out a small, amused chuckle. “All right, Montgomery. I appreciate your possessiveness.”

“One day, you might have your own wife,” I said. “And perhaps you’ll understand.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded and turned toward the door, pausing to turn back one last time. “Don’t leave it too long. Julia gets agitated when she’s bored.”

Yeah, no shit. But I remained resolute on not touching her until she wanted me to, and based on our family’s long history of bloodshed, that day may never come.

“Have a nice night, Leo,” I said, and he walked away. After he left, I went to the back of the clubhouse where our IT gurus, Switch and Castor, had set up their operation. They affectionately called the area “the trench,” but it was really an old storage closet turned into our server shed. Castor sat perched in front of four monitors, typing on his keyboard with his headphones over his ears. Switch was on the other side with the same number of screens in front of him. At my approach, Switch turned to face me and smiled.

“Descended from on high to mingle with the plebs, huh?” He shoved my brother in the shoulder to make him pay attention.

“Hey, shithead,” Castor said, moving his headphones to hang around his neck. “What brings you to the trench?”

“Just checking in.” I glanced at whatever he had been doing, grimacing when I saw security footage of the Hell’s Knights MC in Southern Virginia. They’d officially trespassed onto our territory, and we’d have to be prepared to fend them off sooner or later. “They’re getting close.”

“Too close,” he said, typing on his keyboard to pull up another screen. “I intercepted a text from Stallion to Coffin, their acting president.”

“And?” That got my heart racing. If this was the smoking gun, I would put those traitors in the ground before they knew what hit them.

“Nothing good,” Switch said. “Stallion is asking for an ETA, wanting to know when he might have backup.”

“Do we know for what?” I asked the question, but I already knew the answer. Stallion was teaming up with the Hell’s Knights to overthrow me, probably kill my wife and new brother-in-law while he was at it.

“I can guess,” Castor said. “But I don’t have any evidence yet. He’s keeping all comms squeaky clean.”

I sighed and blinked against the headache starting to form between my temples. “All right. Keep your eyes peeled. Let me know what you find.”

“Ten-four, prez,” Switch said.

“Hey, you eat dinner?” I rubbed at my little brother’s head the way I’d done since he was a kid. “You’re looking scrawny.” He’d always been tall and thin, but his hours behind the computer screen hadn’t helped, especially if he wasn’t eating.

“Get off me,” Castor said, shoving me away. “Now that Pollux is seeing that hot nurse, I can’t cook at my place.” Around November of last year, Castor’s twin had been severely hurt in a bombing at the Beacon. He’d been on a ventilator for months, and for a long time, we thought he’d never recover. But the little shit pulled through, and after he’d been released, he started dating Phoebe, the nurse that had cared for him until he was healthy again. They spent a lot of time together, apparently too much in Castor’s opinion.

“And I can’t go to V’s,” Castor whined. “She and Hollywood fuck pretty much all over the place.”

I pretended to plug my ears and groan. “I don’t need to hear about that shit.”

“I wish I didn’t know,” Castor said. “I only needed to walk in on Hollywood tied to the kitchen table once for me to never eat off it again.”

Fucking hell. Maybe at the start, I’d had an issue with my best friend dating my sister, but now that I saw how happy they made each other, I didn’t have a problem with it. That didn’t mean I wanted to know about it.

“If you need a place to crash, come to my house,” I said. “I’ve got those extra rooms in the basement.”

“And ruin your honeymoon?” Castor scoffed. “Pfft. No, thank you.”

There wasn’t much honeymoon to speak of, but I didn’t tell my brother that. I rubbed his hair again and turned to leave, calling, “Get some food,” over my shoulder as I went.

I expectedto arrive home to the same thing I normally did—dark downstairs, Julia in her room, the entire evening to myself. But when I said good night to the prospects and dismissed them to go inside, I froze at the sight.

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