The Fallen didn’t react to the sight of the four severed heads placed in a row on the hood but I gasped and took a step back to find myself pressed up against my brother.
His hand came down on my shoulder to hold me there. “Don’t move and don’t draw attention to yourself.”
I nodded slightly.
“These are the Presidents and Mafia leaders who chose the second option,” the leader said with faux sadness. “It would be a shame to add to my collection. You can’t imagine how hard it is to find a cooler big enough to hold them all.”
His hyena-like yip and cackle pierced through the night.
“Enough,” Zeus’ low, thunderous voice stopped everything, even the cackle, even my breath as it tried to leave my body. “Get the fuck off our land. By now the fuckin’ police will be on your heads and I doubt you want to be around with your sick as fuck severed heads when they arrive.”
“Now, you must be Zeus Garro,” the man clapped. “I’m so excited to meet you. Heard so much.”
“I’m going to give you five minutes to roll out,” Zeus said, calmly.
There was a pout in the man’s voice when he said, “Oh, you really are no fun. They warned me. Okay, if you want to do it this way, let me tell you how it is going to go. You’re going to look for us again, harder this time. You won’t find us. Meanwhile, kids are going to keep overdosing from that awful fentanyl that keeps finding its way into drugs these days and who are people going to blame? Well, the villains they know. So, while we slowly pull your business out from under you, your own city will start to run you out of town. It really is a simple plan but you’d be amazed at its efficacy.”
I shivered at his pleasant voice reciting his plan like some kind of evil villain in a Bond film. The scary thing was that I believed he could do it.
The sound of sirens merged with the night air and quickly grew closer.
“You got less than two fuckin’ minutes,” Zeus drawled.
The man laughed manically again. “You think we’re scared of the police? Of course, we have some in our pockets. Are you saying you don’t? It’s a surprise you lasted this long, it really is.”
The Fallen brothers hummed with tension and I could tell they wanted to rip the rival gang apart with their bare hands but they had to follow Zeus and he was smart enough to know better.
The sirens drew even closer.
“Well, this was fun. I can’t say I have much hope for your continued survival but buena suerte and happy fucking hunting!” he crowed.
Gunshots sliced open the dark night, shot upwards for the effect and nothing else, the way one might use fireworks or trumpets. As one, the Nightstalkers rounded themselves up and peeled out of the lot in under two minutes.
As soon as they were gone, the brothers moved. Some went to the gate, closing and locking it up tight while others whipped out their phone flashlights to shine it on the tire treads left behind in the gravel and grass. Others disappeared past Sander and me into the clubhouse.
King came to me.
“Should have taken her back inside,” he growled at my brother.
“It was too late, he would have noticed her,” he responded.
King seemed to find that acceptable because he started ignoring Lysander and paying attention to me. I wrapped my arms tight around him as he kissed the top of my head.
“That was totally fucked up,” I murmured into his shirt.
“Yeah.”
“I thought The Fallen didn’t have rivals.”
“They didn’t.”
“Who was that guy?”
“The crazy motherfucker who thought he was a fuckin’ Bond villain? That was Luis Elizondo, the Prez of Nightstalkers MC.”
I shivered.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said, pulling away to lead me into the clubhouse.
I followed. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Now, I’m going to put you to bed.”
“You’re not going to join me? Why aren’t we going home?”
He stopped at the mouth of the hallway to the backrooms and tugged me into his arms for a hard kiss.
“Love that you called it our place,” he said against my lips when he was done kissing them.
“Well,” I grumbled, “you’re there all the freaking time.”
He laughed and moved forward again with me under his arm.
“I want to stay here tonight. I’m going to sit in on a meeting in church to talk with the brothers about what to do with those fuckers.”
“What does that mean?” I asked again.
He pushed open the door to his room and immediately started to undress me. I let him, searching his face as he stripped me and retrieved an old EBA sweatshirt for me to wear.
“King?” I asked again when I was dressed and he’d swung me into his arms to literally tuck me into his bed.