Page 155 of Break Out

He stared at me with that neutral expression. Then, I realized maybe I was seeing through it because there was something else working in his eyes.

“You made a decision.”

“I wouldn’t say that yet.”

In the whirl of events from last night, I vaguely recalled how he’d nearly been sick at the sight of Mug and Sledge lying on the floor.

“Killing people isn’t something that happens often.”

He nodded. “Yeah, killing Mug and Sledge didn’t bother me. It’s sending someone after Josie. I thought women were off-limits.”

“Normally, yes. However, Josie would rat us out. Hell, she led Mug right to my woman. She had no kids, had recently lost her job, and none of that justifies her death, but I’ll never let anyone get away with harming Simone.”

“And what about Farah?”

“We didn’t kill her.”

He arched a brow. “I don’t believe that.”

“She isn’t dead. She left town.”

Rafferty narrowed his eyes. “She owns a house.”

My lips tipped up. “A house that is in foreclosure. So the hundred grand we offered to get her to leave was enticing.”

His lip curled. “You blew money on her?”

I shot him a pointed look. “Knuckles had money to give his contact. Technically, he paid her.”

“That’s convenient.”

“No, it’s smart.”

He picked up his coffee cup and held it near his lips. “But it won’t always work out that way.”

“No, probably not. And no matter how much time you take to plan and strategize, when shit’s going down you gotta have faith it’s going to work out. And typically, it does.”

“How often does this shit happen?”

I tilted my head side to side. “To this degree, not often. But we deal with assholes trying to take our turf almost every day. It’s unusual for another MC to target all of our cities at one time. The day-to-day shit gets handled by the individual chapters as they see fit. ”

He kept quiet.

“Not usually with murder,” I added.

“Right,” he whispered.

I stood and put the barstool under the breakfast bar. “You’ve been active with us. You hang around for another two months. Then you have to shit or get off the pot.”

Rafferty nodded. “Got it.”

“Jordan is on his way here,” I told Simone when she came out to the deck where I was grilling steaks – the one culinary thing I could do well, as long as I wasn’t distracted.

“So I have time to leave,” she muttered.

I gave her a sideways glance. “Sweetheart, he offered to approach Josie to help find you.”

“That wouldn’t have worked.”

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