Page 72 of Declan's Dove

“I had the system open on my phone like everyone else. I was out partying with the club girls, same as the rest, Pres. Normally, I’m alerted to any issues with the system. I don’t know why it didn’t this time. I’ve been trying to figure out how we were locked out all fucking day,” Hawk snaps.

“Watch your fucking tone,” Gabe growls. Both Jake and Mack move to stand between the two, ready to break things up should they need to.

Jesus. Seems like just about every time we meet for church, there’s a fight brewing lately.

“What if he’s not off the property?” Ethan speaks up for the first fucking time.

“Come again?” Pres asks, leaning his arms on the table.

“I said, what if he’s not off the farm? Did we check everywhere?” Ethan shrugs. “I mean, it’s a large property. Lots of places to hide. Shit, Sadie and Sky have told me stories about how you all used to spread out all over the fucking place as kids playing hide-n-seek. Thomas would know those hiding spots too, wouldn’t he?”

“We’ve combed the farm,” Caleb says. “He’s not on the grounds. He may have been for a short while after escaping, but there’s no sign of him now and Pres has all the prospects, even the new kid Trevor, patrolling and checking shit on rotation.”

“Okay, so back to the original thought,” Mack suggests. “What if Hawk is right? What if your buddy at Trident helped Thomas escape and took him to Parisi for a trade? They’re trained military experts. They could’ve easily gotten on and off the farm if they could disengage Hawk’s system, right?”

Scratching my chin, I nod. “They could’ve, sure. But I don’t believe it’s them.”

“Why? What proof do you have that they wouldn’t?” Jake glares at me. “They’re mercenaries, right? They work for money. And we all know Parisi is fucking loaded.”

“My gut tells me it’s not them,” I argue.

“But what if you’re wrong?” Jake pushes.

My anger is rising with every second of this conversation. “Tensions are high and we’re all looking for answers, but my gut tells me it’s not Kayce. He helps people get out of shitty situations. He doesn’t help shitty people who deserve to be locked away.”

“But what if Kayce owed Parisi a favor?” Jameson asks. “Could it be they owed Parisi, not Violet? Maybe that’s why he had her set up the meeting. They drop her off with you at the cabin and then they meet somewhere else and work out their plans to take Thomas and fuck over the club in the process. We all know Parisi didn’t want Gabe to kill Thomas. He needs him alive for some reason, otherwise Thomas would already be fucking dead for what he did to my dad and Maggie. He deserves to rot in hell, and I would happily send him if Pres hadn’t said no.”

Jameson’s red-rimmed eyes turn to Gabe. “We’re fucking blood. You and me. I don’t count Thomas as my blood after everything he did. But you and me, we’re real family. We should’ve fucking killed him when we had the chance. We owed it to them to avenge their deaths. If we had, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

“I had my reasons. And like it or not, I’m still the goddamn President of this club. I make the decisions,” Gabe yells. “You think I didn’t want to kill him the moment I saw him? I see Maggie’s face—the blood on her shirt, in her hair—as she laid there dead in my lap in the middle of the fucking road. Every. Fucking. Night. But Thomas is somehow connected to Eleanor and Cusenza, and I want them just as bad for the part they played in fucking up our lives. My wife. My daughter. They deserve to be avenged, I agree. But we don’t even know if Thomas was fully responsible or if he was just another fucking pawn in the grand scheme of things.”

“And you’re forgetting the other piece of this puzzle.” Gabe leans his elbows on the table, gripping his head in his hands, then scrubbing them down his face. “My mother,” Gabe says softly. “How do I kill my brother? My blood. Her son. Without being one thousand percent sure that he was the one who did all this shit? What if it was Nate, like Thomas said? What if someone else made it appear to be Thomas calling the shots? And I kill him? And I’m fucking wrong. How do I ever hug my mother again?” Gabe’s voice cracks ever so slightly, but I hear it. “So no, Jameson. I hadn’t killed him yet, because I have to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was Thomas’s fault before I put a bullet between his eyes and have to face my mother with his blood on my hands.”

The room is damn near silent, thick with tension and regret. We’re all wound tight and pissed as shit. There’s no good response to what both Gabe and Jameson are saying. They’re both right. If Thomas is at fault he deserves to pay, but without solid, indisputable proof, Gabe can’t, in good conscience, order him to death.

I clear my throat and raise my hand to speak.

“Kayce has always been a loyal friend to me. He wouldn’t double-cross me or use me to pay his debt. He may be an asshole, but he’s loyal to his core. He’s never let a brother down. He’s not like me.”

Jake looks at me suspiciously. “What do you mean? Who’d you leave behind?” he asks.

“Everyone. Kayce and I were on several missions together. We lost a lot of our men. I lost my wife. And when I got home and realized the devastation my job had caused not only for myself but for the families of all those who died beside me, I left it all behind. Kayce, Tate, Angie, all of it. I let them all down. I gave up. Not Kayce.” I explain further. “He tried to get me to come back to work for him. To continue to fight the good fight, only with no strings attached. We could pick our own missions. Get paid what we wanted. Same old shit, but on our terms. But I didn’t want that life anymore. I found the club instead.”

“If he’s such a great friend, and you trust him, then reach out to him. Get Kayce to come here and let us see for ourselves that he’s not the person who’s fucking around with the club,” Mack suggests.

“Do it, Dec. I want to talk to him. And afterward, I want a sit down with Parisi,” Gabe agrees.

“I’ll get on it, Pres.”

“Now, what are we doing about this dirty ass cop and your ol’ lady?” Gabe switches subjects and again, all eyes are glued to me. “And what do we have on the guy we found snooping around in her apartment?”

There’s a rumble of curses throughout the room.

“The intruder wore a mask, so I didn’t get any hits on facial recognition, but he’s definitely not the husband,” Hawk says.

“How can you be sure?” I ask.

“A cop would be more strategic about breaking and entering. If he’s looking for something specific and wanted it to look like a random robbery, most likely he’d tear shit up to scare Violet. Obviously, the asshole has a mean streak a mile fucking wide.” He looks up at me, regret on his face. “I pulled some of her records once I cracked the fucking virus I found on my laptop. He used Violet as a punching bag on a pretty regular basis.”

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