Page 71 of Graveyards & Greed

“Ivan called. He wants us to come over to his loft.” His tone dropped an octave. “The OutKast MC had church last night, and what you did to Carver riled them up.”

We knew this would happen. Hell, wewantedit to happen. I sighed and swung my legs over the side of the bed, my feet hitting the cold floor. "Give me twenty minutes to clean up and pour coffee down my throat. Before coffee, I hate everyone. After coffee… well, I can at least tolerate them.”

His lips tipped up, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. When I walked out to the kitchen buttoning up my shirt, Drakos handed me coffee the way I liked it and a toasted English muffin to go.

“Thank you.” I took a sip and then a bite. “Remember when weekend mornings were all about cartoons and sugar cereal?” I mused.

“My weekends consisted mainly of horse riding lessons or math camps. Anything to get me out of my mother’s hair.”

I studied him. “That kind of sucks. I was pretty much a free-range kid since my mother didn’t have it in her to micromanage me.”

He smiled softly and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m not surprised you were a wild child. Come on, let’s go see what Ivan has to show us.” We walked down to the garage and used the door linking Ivan and Drakos’s spaces. “Brace yourself,” Drakos warned as he held the door open. “Ivan’s loft is a hacker’s paradise.”

Drakos wasn't kidding. Ivan's space reminded me of walking into the computer section of a Best Buy store on steroids. One wall was dedicated entirely to monitors—more screens than I could count at a glance—each flickering with code or surveillance feeds. Another wall held shelves full of gadgets and gizmos.

“Hey,” Ivan grunted, not bothering to look away from one of the screens, his fingers dancing across the keyboard. “Don't mind the mess.”

Sipping my coffee, I gazed around. “It looks like a tech store threw up in here.” The space along the back wall held computer monitors and laptops, but there was an oversized, expensive-looking couch in the living area and an urban industrial feel to the rest of the loft.

“Peaches said something like that too.” Ivan’s lip quirked.

I studied him. “Why do you call her that? She hates it.”

A ghost of a grin flitted across his face, his beard almost hiding it. “I know.” He finally turned to face us. “I can’t wrap my head around what you and your lunatic cousins did to that asshole. It’s barbaric, ingenious warfare. You’re all goddamn nuts, you know that?”

Drakos folded his arms. “Quit being impressed and show us what you have.”

Ivan smirked, then turned to the monitor in front of him and clicked on a video feed. The feed showed several angles of a large, open room with a bar on one wall, mismatched tables pushed together to create a makeshift conference table, and chairs scattered around the grungy room.

Several men sat or stood around the tables, all in their leather cuts. I recognized Terrance LeBaron and one of his grunts, with Billy Grolier standing next to his brother, Axel, on the other side of the table.

“This is their latest church meeting,” Ivan muttered as he typed. “It shouldn’t surprise you that the House of Spades was the main topic this week.”

I nodded. “What was the consensus?”

He shrugged. “There wasn’t one. Some of them want to burn down your businesses and homes, and they specifically want you. Most of them have enough brain cells to be afraid, and you were smart to add the video clip of Carver bragging about assaulting Camilla with Samuel. Some of them—especially those with families and daughters—were fuckin’ livid about the rape. It’s causing a rift in the club. How’s your girl doing? I’m sorry about what happened.”

Shaking my head, I watched the screen. “Not well, but thank you.”

Ivan patted my shoulder and restarted the video. We listened to their gruff voices arguing about whether or not to avenge Carver. A few of them wanted to kidnap me, and maybe one of my cousins. Most of their ideas involved rape, knives, and then a bullet through my head.

“They don’t have a lot of imagination, do they?” I muttered. Ivan smirked and Drakos ground his teeth.

The MC club meeting continued to play out on the monitor, casting an eerie glow over Ivan’s face. “The consensus is they don’t come after you for now, and Grolier meets with Fennick to try and call a truce. I wouldn’t count on LeBaron following orders though.”

“Maybe Fenn had the right idea to just blow up their compound and salt the ground,” I muttered.

Ivan leaned back and folded his arms. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m starting to like that idea.”

“Do you know which cousin they're thinking about targeting?" Drakos asked, his gaze never leaving the screen.

Ivan nodded. “Declan or maybe Callum. They think because those two aren’t involved in the day-to-day Spade ground operations, they’re less dangerous.”

I rolled my eyes. They could be almost as unhinged as Fenn, they just hid it better. The meeting on the screen erupted into shouts when Grolier put his foot down against coming after us.

“You stupid shits,” he muttered loudly at the dissenters. “The Spades have more connections and money than fucking God himself. They play dirty, and they’re avenging their own. Do you wanna be next?” He pointed at the video on his computer he’d shown them with Carver’s face swarming in flies.

“We gotta do somethin’, man!” one of the members yelled.

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