Page 61 of Micro
“Can she leave the room? I don’t want her having to listen to this.”
“No. She fucking stays, because she needs to know what she’s signing up for,” Stitch hissed at me, nodding to Reacher, who rolled his eyes.
“Thanks, Stitch, nice of you to shut it at last. Micro, you did things no biker can come back from, hell, nomancan come back from. You should be rotting in a prison cell, or dead in the basement. Instead, you’re neither, and there’s a reason for that.“ Sophie was squeezing my hand so tightly, I think she was trying to crush it, which was adorable, because she had such cute little hands. See how I’m focusing on something other than the words coming at me? I know I’m gonna die, so why drag it out?
“There’s a way that this goes down where you don’t die, not here, not tonight, but there’s work ahead, so I need to know if you’re gonna be the man you claim you are now, that she claims you are, and work with us here.”
What?I leaned forward in my seat, certain I’d just misheard him, because what the fuck.
“What? I don’t die?”
Reacher stared at me, waiting for something, but I had no idea what. He said I wouldn’t die, and that possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Is it so hard to fucking say yes, and find out what we want you to do?”Shit.
“Yeah. Anything, I’ll do anything, I swear. Just tell me.”
“He’s making demands again, Reacher, this is how it’s gonna be if we do this,” Stitch warned, and I squeezed Sophie’s hand, like it could stop me from freaking out. My life was hanging in the balance, and it seemed like one wrong word or reaction would end it.
“Please. Please tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. Anything,“ I practically begged. Fuck it, I literally begged. I never thought I’d be the begging type, but I wanted a life with Sophie, and I’d do anything to earn it.
“You don’t get to come back here, and you don’t get to visit, unless we demand it. Let’s get that straight first,” Reacher said, but it sounded like I’d live, so I nodded, even though the thought of not returning here burned somewhere in my chest, like there’d been some hope there, and he’d just crushed it, once and for all.
“You go back to the former Rogues club. You run it as interim President, you get it clean, and keep it that way. You make sure the remaining members are Phoenix material, and if not, you remove them. You bring in worthy prospects, and train them up. We will be involved in every decision that needs a vote, and for now, they’ll have to be unanimous, as in we’ll get the power of veto in everything. You turn it into a decent, worthy club, and we’ll consider making it a Phoenix chapter.”
What the fucking hell did he just say? Was he serious?
“I… honestly? You’re not only letting me live, but trusting me to build a club you’d put your colours on? I don’t understand. I’m not knocking it, or refusing, but I don’t understand this at all.”
Stitch grinned savagely. “It’s simple. We’ll have eyes on you from day one. You’ll update us regularly too, so we can make sure you give us the real story on things. Like Reacher said, we’ll have ultimate power, and if you try to fuck us, we’ll kill the entire club, including you. We’re not playing around here. You should die for what you did, but this serves a purpose for us. Some idiots in this club don’t hate you as much as they should, and their wellbeing matters to us too. Yours doesn’t, by the way. I couldn’t care less if you stepped in front of a bus right now. We want that club though, so this is how we’ll proceed.”
Reacher eyed Sophie then, and his eyes on her was suddenly really fucking pissing me off. I had to fight the urge to yell at him to stop looking at her. Before, it was like he was idly addressing her, without really looking, but now? Now, he was really fucking looking.
“Sophie, I don’t understand how a nice lady like you ended up with this fucker, but you’re part of the package deal. You seem to keep him in line, and we like that. Also, your skills that you applied before for the Rogues, we’d like you to continue, but you’ll get a decent cut, which I’m sure you weren’t getting before. You’d be workingwithus, not trapped under our thumb.”
“But you just said-”
“In addition, we’ll be sending a few brothers from this club to work with you, to support you, and back you up. They’ll also be our eyes and ears, as will the full camera setup we’ll be adding. And that brings us to tech,” he paused, exchanging a look with Stitch, and I clenched my free hand into a tight fist. Don’t send Ice with me, Jesus fuck, don’t send that asshole with me.
“You remember our good friend Grease?”
“Tesio, you mean? The mafia douche?”
They both grinned, before they wiped any trace of humour from their faces.
“Don Rossi is loaning him to us long term. Seems he wants a closer relationship with the club, and this actually works in our favour, for reasons I don’t see being any of your business.”
“Plus Grease got a real boner for club life, so he jumped at the chance.”
“Make no mistake, he’s going to be faithful to Rossi, and to us, and definitely NOT you.”
I clenched my fist tighter, but it was more to feel the bite of pain as my nails dug into my palm, and the cracked skin of my knuckles split open again. I needed something to make me certain of whether this was real. Suddenly I felt like I’d stepped into a fucking parallel universe, because somehow I was getting all the things I’d wanted, albeit with a shitload of supervision.
“This is all for real?” I asked warily, waiting for them to laugh in my face, and say ‘hell no, of course we’ll kill you today’. Instead, they both just nodded.
Sophie
Iwasinshock.I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but they were letting him live. He was going to stay alive, and be mine. Sure, I’d still be cooking drugs, and supplying them to the club, but this time I’d get paid for it, and since I already had the perfect setup for it, it wasn’t exactly a hardship to keep going. At least this time it wasn’t something I was being forced into, to keep my sister safe. It was employment. It was collaboration. It was a future.
