Page 83 of Monster

It had only been a mere hour since I left the house, and already I wanted to go back to her and lose myself inside her.

The chair across from me suddenly scraped the floor, and though I didn’t react, I was still fucking surprised to see Roman plopping down on the seat, his brown eyes glinting.

“You okay, prez? You seem out of it this morning.”

I raised one eyebrow at him and smirked. “Do I? You must not be paying attention. I’m as fucking focused as I can be.”

“Sure?” he asked, grinning. I had the sudden urge to punch his stupid face. I didn’t show any reaction, though. I wasn’t the hothead I’d once been in my teen years. My expression didn’t change, but his face did, the smugness even more unbearable. “You sure it’s not a certain girl you’re keeping locked up?”

I was sure this was payback for all the shit I’d given him with Ryleigh.

“Pretty sure,” I answered casually.

The fucker laughed.

He was damned lucky he was a good VP whose loyalty I would never have to question, because I would have handed his ass to him before now.

I turned to him, my face serious, and it wiped all the playfulness off his face.

“I’ve been thinking,” I began. “We’ve known there’s a fucking traitor in the ranks.”

He nodded, glancing around the room. We were hours away from the bar opening, and most of the brothers were in their own homes. They wouldn’t be getting up until at least noon. The MC always worked better at night.

That was when we really got shit done.

I was an early riser by nature. Raising two boys by myself didn’t leave any room for me to slack off, and Roman—

Well, I didn’t know why this fucker got up so early.

“I’m gonna separate the most likely bastards to betray us into groups. We’re gonna lure them, and I need you to compile a list of the most likely contenders.”

“You think it’ll work? How did they even infiltrate us in the first place?”

“Fucking carelessness on my part. I won’t let it happen a second time,” I said darkly, my fists clenched by my sides.

The door to the bar opened, and we looked over to see who would come in this early.

Trent paused when he realized we were watching him, and bowed slightly to me in greeting.

“I think I know the name that’s going on the top of the list,” Roman said quietly.

I nodded in agreement. Trent had always been a slippery little fucker. I’d let him in ’cause his old man vouched for him.

Jacob Henderson had been the VP for the King’s Men long before I joined. He was also one of the first men to join me when I started the insurgent group against the first president, and he continued to be my VP for a few years before Roman joined.

A shootout gone wrong injured his hip permanently, and he stepped down from the VP position around the time Roman killed a traitor put in by the Mansen Brotherhood, a small local gang that had ruled Sacramento before I took over.

The gang was destroyed by us several years after Roman took over the position of VP.

Jacob died from lung cancer shortly after he stepped down, twenty years of heavy smoking catching up with him. He had two kids.

His daughter Tammy was a fixture around the club, and Trent pledged to become a member.

I had promised Jacob I would look after his kids, and Tammy was all right, but Trent…

I had my suspicions about him for a while now, but he had given me no reason to kick him out of the club—or kill him.

But I wouldn’t—couldn’t—look the other way just because of who his dad was.

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