Page 212 of His Virgin Romance Series

CHAPTER23

Ryder

“Hi there, honey,”the waitress greeted as she came over to me. “I hear you’ve been asking some questions around here.”

She was tall and willowy, and she was wearing a short black skirt that showed off her legs. She had dark eyes and dark blond hair that could have passed for brown. She was obviously pretty, and I knew that on any other day I would have hit on her, but today she held no interest for me.

“I’m looking for someone,” I replied. “He’s a big guy, tattooed, about my height. Goes by the name Walter Black.”

The waitress frowned, but I could tell from her expression that she hadn’t heard the name before. “Sorry, hon,” she replied. “I haven’t heard of anyone with that name.”

“Has anyone come in here that fits that description?”

“It’s not much of a description,” she said.

“He has a tattoo of a siren on his right calf,” I said. “And a massive tattoo of an eagle that covers his entire back.”

The waitress smiled at me. “Most of our customers come in with their shirts on,” she said. “We have a lot of customers, and most of them have tattoos. I haven’t seen anyone come in here with the tattoos you just described. But even if he had… they’re not exactly in places that I would have seen.”

“Fuck,” I said, under my breath.

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want any trouble, ok?”

“I’m not trying to make trouble,” I told her.

“In my experience… men like you coming into places like this and asking questions never ends well for anyone involved. I know you run with a gang—”

“We’re not a gang,” I corrected.

“Doesn’t matter what you call yourselves,” she said. “It amounts to the same thing. You don’t play by the rules. You do things your own way. Which is fine, as long as you keep the rest of us out of this. I have a son to raise, and this bar is my only livelihood.”

I nodded. “Understood,” I said. “I’ll be going now.”

She nodded and watched me walk out of the bar. I walked down the street and turned down the corner where I had left my bike. Devon was already waiting for me. He didn’t look as bad anymore, and the swelling on his face had gone down considerably. He was smoking a cigarette and leaning against his own bike.

“Well?” I asked. “Any leads?”

“Dead ends,” Devon replied, in obvious frustration. “Every single one. What about you?”

“Same,” I replied. “No one seems to know anything about this fucker. He’s a ghost.”

“What do we do?” Devon asked, with a raised eyebrow. “We can’t just let this go.”

“No, we can’t,” I agreed.

“Do you have a game plan?”

I sighed. I wished I had, but the truth was I had no clue what to do. Approaching Godwin openly would be a huge insult. It would give him the opportunity to deny everything outright, and that would leave me without an opportunity to retaliate. Of course, I was assuming a lot. What if Godwin simply admitted to everything? Then that would mean I would have to act and approaching him would mean walking right into his turf with only a handful of my own men. I couldn’t exactly show up with an army at my back and claim I was there just to talk.

This was one of those days when I wished I had chosen a different life. I had never wanted to be leader of this club. I had wanted to ride my Harley and live free, outside the rules that other people lived by. But after Dad had died… somehow everyone had looked to me to carry on his legacy. This wasn’t a fucking dynasty. I had repeated that till I was blue in the face, but the vote had been cast, and my name had been drawn. I had no choice but to accept the mantle with some amount of humility.

“Ryder?”

“I’m thinking,” I snapped.

I looked towards the street. It wasn’t the best area to be in, and the good crowd tended to be on the opposite end of the town where there were ice cream parlors and bakeries and old record stores that played music from different decades. That was the world that I didn’t belong to… and yet sometimes I wondered.

“You can head back now,” I said, snapping out of my fog of thought.

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