Page 88 of The Girlfriend's Guide to Dating a Biker
I stood by the back wall, arms crossed over my chest, pulse hammering. My mind was racing with brutal images I’d conjured on the ride over.
Hauling that Black Deeds cunt who came for my family out of his chair.
Smashing his face into the ground.
Standing over his broken body and telling him my mum says hi, right before making sure he’d never hurt anyone I loved again.
What I had planned for him today wouldn’t just be the lesson King wanted delivered, it’d be the kind of warning that didn’t need repeating.
King ended the call and looked at us, his phone still gripped in his hand. The muscle in his jaw ticked, like he was chewing back the kind of violence that usually ended in a bloodbath. “It’s not happening.”
It took me a second to register the words.
“What?” I snapped, pushing off from the wall.
He eyed me. He was calm and controlled, but it was the kind of stillness that was deadly. “Everyone stands down. This has to wait.”
The room rippled. Protest and confusion.
My voice cut through all of it. “You’re fuckin’ kidding.”
King didn’t react like he normally would when a member challenged him, but the look in his eyes said he wouldn’t continue giving me grace if I didn’t step the fuck back. “Winter just got hit with a health inspection on a nightclub, and Axe and Sarah just received new information. Black Deeds are targeting our Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne clubs. This isn’t about territory. They’re fucking setting us up.”
“What the fuck for?” I asked.
“There’s a federal task force watching us. East Coast wide. They want me in cuffs, and right now they need a reason to drag me in. They need violence.”
Understanding crashed over me. “They want us to retaliate.”
“Exactly.” King’s eyes blazed with fury. “Black Deeds is in bed with the task force. They want us to make a scene and spill blood in the street so they can move in and take our territory.”
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “So, what, we let them get away with this?”
“No. But we don’t play fucking checkers when they’re playing chess.” King’s voice carried the kind of authority that ended arguments before they started. “They’re watching our every move. So, we don’t give them the blood they want. Not yet.”
“This is bullshit,” Kitty, one of our members muttered from the other side of the room.
King’s gaze cut to Kitty, sharp enough to gut him where he stood. For a long second, I thought he might. The silence crackled until the air felt toxic, every man in the room holding his breath, waiting to see if Kitty would survive his own stupidity.
“This is survival,” King snarled. “You think I wanna fucking walk away from this? You think I don’t want to take their president’s head and mount it on the goddamn table in front of you?” His voice dripped with raw violence, heavy with hunger for carnage. “That’s what they fucking want. And I don’t play anyone’s game but mine.”
I stared at him, my hands balling into fists of suppressed violence. Everything in me wanted blood. But King was right; walking into their trap would destroy us all.
King looked at Scott, some kind of silent communication happening between them before he looked at us all again. “This isn’t mercy,” he vowed, each word ground out like he was tasting blood already. “This is patience. When I’m finished, they won’t just wish they’d never heard my name. They’ll beg for death to shut out the sound of it. I’ll make Black Deeds a fucking ghost story mothers tell their kids so they never grow up stupid enough to cross us.”
When everyone filed out of the room, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Every muscle in my body still screamed for vengeance. Every breath I took burned in my lungs.
King came to me on his way out. “I’m not telling you not to be angry. I’m telling you to wait.” He paused, his eyes boring into mine. “If you don’t, there’ll be hell to pay.”
When he followed that up with, “We clear?” I nodded.
Then he turned and walked out, leaving the order final in the air behind him.
My rage stayed lodged under my skin, hot and bitter, poison in my veins with nowhere to go. King’s leash was around my throat. For now. He could cage me, but Black Deeds had already signed their own death warrant, and sooner or later, it would be fucking served.
WAITING FOR THE STORM TO PASS (OR: HOW LOVE AND FEAR DANCE TOGETHER)
Posted by Anonymous at 11:36 p.m.
