Page 14 of Ruthless Son

Cal’s eyebrows raised at my question. “You’re astute, brother. That’s why you’re my sergeant.” His boots hit the floor with a thud, his hand running over his head as if he was trying to claw out information, leaving red welts along the skin. Sonic watched him worriedly, the dark slash of his eyebrows forming a V.

“Why aren’t we all here?”

“I can’t help shake the feeling that the only reason we’re not able to find out anything is…” Prez swallowed his next words, but the implication was there.

“You think there’s a rat.” Sonic’s hushed reply had an immediate denial on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to curse him for thinking such bullshit about a brother. It wouldn’t happen, it couldn’t! We’d taken an oath, and that oath was sacred. The brotherhood, the club… it was family. And you didn’t fuck with family.

“You’re angry,” Prez noted when I couldn’t hide the disdain, the rage at the idea that someone would ever betray us. I wasn’t able to keep my emotions clear when something like betrayal was on the table.

“I can’t believe it, Prez.” The paper crumpled in my fist. “There’s gotta be something else, a rat can’t be our first thought. It’s ruining the good names of our brothers.”

“I know, son.” He hadn’t called me that in a long time, not since he’d found me, a scrawny kid with nowhere to go. Cal had given me a family, and with one sentence, it felt like it was being ripped away from me.

Sonic shuffled forward, wariness lined his face as he approached me. “He’s right though. Think about it.” He stood as still as a statue, frowning down at the cement floor like it held all the answers. “We’ve investigated every avenue, every lead, there’s nothing. Every time we get to a location to speak to someone, they’ve done a runner. No one’s talking to us anymore, because someone has got there first… but how the fuck did they know we were coming, huh?”

“We’re losing the town, we don’t have the edge anymore,” Cal stated. “People are still scared of us, but they’re more scared of something else. Neither do they trust us to sort this shit out.”

“Who do you… who do you think it is?” I ran over the members in my mind, seeing their faces and experiences like a film reel in color. For me, I’d been part of this club for 20 years, since the day I met Cal and he’d taken a chance on me. I’d be a lifer. It was the same for many of us, Link especially. Our enforcer was Street Kings born and bred.

The stress was taking a toll on our president, the heels of his hands dug into his eyeballs, rubbing them to ease the pressure of his worry.

Callahan was strong, a warrior. The one man who never showed his weakness except to his wife. But now, his dark eyes pinged between me and Sonic, except we had no answers for him, only more questions.

“I don’t know, I’ve run that over and over in my mind on repeat. But I can’t figure it out. Everyone except the prospect carries the patch, and has fought and bled for this club. And even then, Ryan has been prospecting for almost two years now, I was going to have a vote on him soon.” He let out a great sigh. “I’ve paused that for now, until we know who it is that’s been sharing our secrets.”

“Did you know?” I asked Sonic.

The stoic man nodded. “I’ve been exploring the idea for a little while now.”

“Is that where you’ve been running off to lately?” It was almost like shutters slamming down behind his eyes, his face closed off to every emotion. He didn’t respond to my question, but his eyes shifted to Cal, a silent message that implied our prez knew exactly where he was every single time. And if he knew, then it was none of my fucking business. I shook off the disturbing question. Why the fuck was I asking where he was? Did I think he was the rat? No way… not our VP!

“We keep this between us for now. And it’s not because I suspect those who are not here. I trust my brothers with my life, but the smaller the circle, ya know.”

“I get it.” I chucked the ball of paper on the desk. “The less people who know, the less chance it gets out to anyone. We don’t want to show our hand too soon… info first. I’m heading up to Nag’s cabin, see if he’s got anything to share.”

Slowly, I twisted to leave as if I’d aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes. Hearing that there’s someone you trust with your life that might be trying to stab you in the back was a killer.

“Hey, Rex,” Cal called out.

Pausing with my hand on the door frame, I looked at the man who had spent more than half my life by my side.

“Be safe.”

And with a nod, I left them to their meeting, intent on finding out as much as I could, because I knew I wouldn’t sleep with the daunting task of hunting down a traitor.

Mia

There was something so completely freeing when there was a woman like Jenna in your corner. When I’d left Millie to sleep, determined to sort out the bloody insurance fiasco, I’d found the little ball-buster at reception waiting for me with a serene smile on her pretty face. The new nurse at the desk had a deer-in-the-headlights look, as if she’d been given the third degree and come out wanting.

With a brown envelope filled with paperwork—that was already filled in—I sat on the little armchair beside Millie’s bed, watching her sleep with one eye and rifling through the sheets of paper with the other. It was all arranged with our travel insurance. Dad was in the process of scanning and emailing Millie’s birth certificate, and at some point really soon, I’d have to grab her passport and send a copy of that too. But for now, the hospital required no payment, that would be paid by the travel insurance. All I’d had to do was pay a $200 excess charge, and the insurance company would cover the rest. I sighed with relief and a massive dose of comfort knowing that this wasn’t hanging over our heads.

And the minute that Millie was cleared, I’d be taking her home, to England. Not that shitty little place she’d rented with her loser boyfriend. Jenna had looked at the address on her driver’s license—yes, she had a damned license out here, but she couldn’t pass her test back home—and grimaced, explaining that it was in the rougher part of town, and not somewhere Millie should have been staying.

At that point, I’d wanted to run in here and shake some sense into her, but that wouldn’t have helped matters at all. She would have clammed up and refused to speak to me. In her childish immaturity, she would see it as me ‘telling her off’ and not simply worrying about her living conditions shacked up with fucking Mickey.

So I’d kept my mouth shut, intent on giving her my peace of mind when we were back on English soil, and where dad could give her a better talking to. Hopefully.

Perhaps this experience would make her grow up a little bit, and realize the error of her ways. I didn’t even mind that she was traveling and experiencing the world, like lots of people her age did, as long as she was safe. But that was just too much to ask apparently.

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