She was beautiful, and it was impossible to guess her age. She looked young, but her eyes were old. She’d seen too much. Endured too much. He should have known he was looking into the eyes of a child who had been horribly brutalized. He’d certainly seen it enough.
“You with us, Steele?” Czar asked.
Steele nodded. “Savage is right. These men may not have been from our school, but they’re brothers. They need Torpedo Ink, in my opinion. I’m certainly willing to listen to any other opinions with an open mind.”
That phrase was used a lot. Czar had taught them the importance of hearing everyone out. Each person’s input had counted when they were children, no matter how young—and Steele was one of the youngest. All were heard, and Czar had emphasized they should be heard with an open mind. He’d encouraged participation from everyone. Steele had caught on early that by listening to each child, Czar had made them feel important and the group cohesive. They were tight-knit and rarely fought. They often had lively and heated discussions, but they didn’t get angry with one another as a rule.
“I’m all for giving them a chance, Czar,” Ink said. “But we have family now. We’ve got Blythe and the children. Gavriil’s and Casimir’s women. Anya, Reaper’s lady. Lana and Alena. We’ve got more to protect than ever.”
“I don’t need protection,” Lana said with a little sniff. She tossed her head so that her glossy black hair fell around her face, framing its beauty.
“Neither do I,” Alena echoed. She was a true platinum blond, her hair rioting down her back in waves. Her eyes were that same startling blue her older brothers, Ice and Storm, had.
Ink ignored the byplay. “Pierce is going to be watching us closely, Czar. You know that. He’s very suspicious of us.”
“I can handle him,” Reaper said. “A quiet accident.”
“Not you,” Savage said decisively. “You have Anya. I’ll do it.”
Pierce wasn’t going to be easy to kill. Both knew it. All of them knew it.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alena snapped. “He doesn’t have to be killed. Leave him to me. He advocated for us. It was because of Pierce we didn’t go to war.”
“He may have advocated for us, Alena,” Reaper said, “but don’t kid yourself. He was there to kill us if anything went wrong.”
“He would have tried,” Savage said. “I was on him the entire time and he had no idea.”
Alena shrugged. “If it comes to that, I can do it myself.”
“We know if our club grows it will make the Diamondbacks nervous, but there was no limit put on how big our club could be. We’re charter members, but they expected growth,” Czar said. “They knew we had a couple of prospects.”
“Maybe not twenty-five new members,” Master said with a faint grin.
“Put it to a vote whether or not to meet with them,” Czar said. “This has come at a bad time for us, but we may as well get it done if we’re going to do it.”
“We’d have to send someone to Trinity for a few weeks. And then Savage will need to go back and forth. We have to trust these men if they’re part of us,” Steele said.
“I could go,” Casimir volunteered. “Lissa likes to travel, and she’s all I need for backup.” Lissa and Casimir had done what no one else had been able to do. They had freed all those trained under Sorbacov’s brutal schools by assassinating Sorbacov and his son. Now they were free to live their own lives and choose what they wanted to do. The problem was, they only knew how to seduce and kill. All of them were struggling to find their way.
Czar nodded. “Let’s take a vote on whether or not to bring them here for a trial.”
Steele knew the vote would go through. He actually liked the idea of having another chapter, men trained as they’d been trained in the art of assassination and warfare. If it came to war with the Diamondbacks—and that was always a very real possibility—Torpedo Ink was outnumbered. The Diamondbacks would have an endless army, just as the Swords did.
Financially, they’d broken the Swords. The money had been earned from trafficking, and Code had siphoned off every penny from every local chapter as well as international ones. They’d taken out a number of members in a massacre, as well as the president, Evan Shackler-Gratsos. Before they killed him, they’d hit his personal bank account as well as every one of his businesses. Code had made certain the money couldn’t be traced to their accounts. Torpedo Ink was wealthy beyond its wildest dreams. They were trying to spend the money wisely, using it to establish themselves in Caspar with legitimate businesses. They tried to do business with locals as much as possible. Czar wanted their club to have a good reputation.
There was no 1-percenter patch on their vests. The local law enforcement didn’t believe them, but that was okay. No one could prove anything against them. They wanted to keep a low profile and fit in with their community. That was the plan—and the hope.
Steele glanced down at his watch. For the first time, he realized he wanted out of a meeting, so he could get back to Breezy, even if it was just to watch her sleep. It had been so long. He had made up his mind he would never have a woman of his own again. He’d had her, the right one, the only one, and he’d lost her. The ache in his chest hadn’t ceased, not from the moment he’d put her in a car and watched her go.
She’d been crying when she’d left him. Sobbing. That had torn out his fucking heart, but there had been no way he was going to risk her life. He’d known the war was coming and her father would never forgive her for being with him—even though her father had handed her over to him to incur favor. At first, after she was gone, he couldn’t stand another woman touching him. Then, no matter how many women blew him, he’d been desperate to feel something—to get relief from the agony of dreams waking him nightly with a raging hard-on that wouldn’t seem to go away.
The vote was unanimous to bring the others in, if they were suited for Torpedo Ink. That didn’t surprise Steele in the least.
“All right, Gavriil, let them know to come up for a meet,” Czar said. “Anything else?”
“There’s the mandatory run with the Diamondbacks coming up. We can’t forget we have that,” Preacher said. “It’s a couple of weeks away, so no worries yet, but if we don’t find Steele’s boy in that time period . . .”
“We have to,” Steele said. “He can’t be left with Bridges, you all know what he’s like. He’ll hurt him. He likes hurting anything smaller than him.” Bridges was Breezy’s father, and he was the type of man to kick a sleeping dog just to hear it yelp. He’d done so numerous times and laughed as the dog turned tail and ran away from him.
“You want to tell us what happened, Steele?” Czar invited.
He’d known the question was coming. These were his brothers—and sisters. They would risk their lives for him. For his son. They were silent. Patient. Just waiting for him to give them any kind of explanation. If he didn’t, they’d still help him. He knew that.
“She’s my Anya. My Blythe. She always was. It wasn’t some bullshit white-knight rescue-her thing. You know my . . . appetites. The women in that club were always up for anything.” He stopped and shook his head. “Let’s just say I thought having them would be a way to get through rubbing shoulders with those sickening men. They weren’t anything I really wanted, but they were bodies and they were willing. Then I saw her. The first time I laid eyes on her I was a prospect and she was the daughter of a fully patched club member. There was no going there.”
He couldn’t help shoving his hands through his hair, betraying his agitation. “I watched her, though. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t have to tell my body to react. It was there. One fucking look at her. She was it for me. I thought it was just sex. I just wanted her because she looked like an innocent angel among all those she-devils, but . . .” He broke off.
“She was different,” Lana agreed.
He shot her a grateful look. That
was Lana, always ready to back one of her brothers.
“She was very different. I watched her closely over that first year and the next. Talked to her every chance I got. Her father used her to cement deals with the scum they did business with. She’d come back battered and bruised, and he didn’t seem to mind. I minded. I started figuring out ways to kill the bastard, and I should have done it. Eventually, I made it known I wanted her. I made certain her father knew. He wanted in with you, Czar, so he offered her to me.”
Czar nodded. “I thought you took her to keep her from having to do any more drug runs or be given to Bridges’s friends.”
“That too, but it really was for me. I just didn’t want Bridges to know how much she mattered to me. It wasn’t safe for any of them to know. I had her for a year. Best fucking year of my life.” He looked down at the table, the pain in his chest that had been there since that car had driven away, taking her from him, increased in strength. “What I didn’t know was her age.”
He dropped that bomb right on them. He had to get it out fast. They hunted pedophiles. They weren’t men to tolerate any kind of sexual predator.
“What are you saying?” Code asked.