Page 76 of The Kings of Kearny

“Why did Daniel tell you that the thing with him didn’t pan out?” I pressed.

“I have no fucking idea,” Jakob said, frustration creeping into his tone. “Like I said, nothing Daniel King does makes any sense to anyone besides Daniel King.”

“But you have a guess, don’t you?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know Daniel knew who Mike was until that night. Now I think he might have known about Magnolia longer than I have and has been trying to pin it on Dad all along. I think he mentioned Mike because he wanted to see my reaction.”

My brows crept up my forehead. “He thought you were in on it with your father?”

Jakob nodded.

“Does he still?” I asked.

“No idea,” he said.

“Who did you think was watching us that first night?”

He laughed. “No one. I just wanted to get close to you and needed an excuse.”

I snorted, remembering how much I’d wanted to get close to him too. “You wouldn’t have needed an excuse.”

He shot me a sly grin. “Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly.”

I watched him for a few minutes, mulling everything over. I had about ten million more questions for him, but all of them were minor, and only half of them were about trying to figure out what was going on. The rest could wait, I decided.

“Those were my biggest questions,” I said. “Now will you tell me what you think is happening?”

“I think my dad has some involvement in it, but I’m not sure how much,” he said. “This is too messy for him to be behind everything. It’s too big, too volatile. If shit pops off between the Jokers and us, the bigger clubs will get involved, and it will start a war between them. Dad would never want that.”

“And he wouldn’t intentionally put you in this kind of danger,” I said, remembering the concern on Liam’s face earlier.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Jakob said.

“So what happened?”

“I think shit got away from Dad somehow, and we need to find out who the fuck Redding really is before I start making assumptions about anything else.”

“Which is why you want to talk to Daniel.”

Jakob nodded. “We need to get this out in the open. Daniel might have the missing piece of information we need, and if we don’t figure this out soon, he and Dad might try to get rid of each other.”

“Get rid of each other,” I said, “like...”

He glanced over at me as we slowed to a stop at a red light. We were back in the nicer part of town, only a few miles from Daniel and Eva’s house. “You know exactly what I mean,” he said.

“Yikes,” was all I managed to squeak out. No wonder Jakob was wound so tight. His gang leader and father had been about a heartbeat away from trying to kill each other this whole time.

He reached out and tipped my chin up, pulling me from my dark thoughts. “We should go somewhere when this is all over.”

“What?” I asked, fighting the urge to lean into his touch.

“Get out of town for a long weekend. Unwind.”

I arched a brow at him. “You mean fuck each other for three uninterrupted days.”

His gaze dropped to my lips. “Yeah, that.”

I grinned, but a heartbeat later, it fell. “I’m still mad at you for keeping me in the dark about everything.”

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