Page 18 of Wolf.e

It’s okay, I have a big enough ego to handle her evasiveness. I already know her secret.

She wants to look at me.

My phone buzzes on the table just as we’re all through toasting Chantel and her maid of honor’s speech. No sooner does mine buzz, but every one of my men’s start buzzing and dinging simultaneously.

I’m instantly on high alert, my hand covers the gun concealed under my cut at my hip, and I look around the room for threats. I open the text, it’s a photo from an unknown number, of myself, Kai, Ax and Jake in Jake’s dad’s old Silverado yesterday at a stop light leaving Lakeshore. DOS territory.

We were there to stake out across from the coffee shop watching for Gator’s men picking up his weekly Percocet. You can’t even see us through the tinted windows. I can’t understand how they knew we were there—Jake’s truck isn’t registered to him. There’s no way they would’ve known it was us—

The entire building shakes as an explosion rocks the outside of the club house. It’s instant pandemonium. Women scream and people get up and start running for shelter. I stand without thought and get to Brinley in one stride. I wrap one arm around her waist. She gasps and tips her head back, looking into my eyes, her face just a few inches from mine. Her eyes fill with fear as I pick her up in a rag doll carry and following Ax and Layla, we burrow the girls into a hallway alcove for safety.

When I set Brinley down her mouth pops open, but she doesn’t speak. She breathes in shallow breaths, the way the body does when it’s dipping into fight or flight.

“Stay,” I order.

She closes her mouth, gulps and nods. Her ocean eyes and the way her throat works to swallow threatens to hold me, but I know I have to go.

“Don’t leave them for one fucking second! And no one leaves this building!” I yell to Mason over my shoulder, then turn to Chris, one of our prospects. “Lock it all down, now!”

It's only been twenty seconds, but I’m already running to the front door forty feet away. I see the Silverado is engulfed in a mass of flames and smoke in the parking lot near the hall. We fly through the clubhouse door. I don’t even have to turn to know Jake, Ax, and Robby J—one of my most trusted and longest-patched members—are behind me.

Mason, Kai, and the grandpa of our group, Flipp, stay inside and keep the room as calm as possible. Out here we’re poised and ready to attack whoever the fuck somehow got through our security system and our gates.

Ax and I are first. We move like trained operatives, organized and stealthy. I’m searching for something, anything I can shoot at. I two-finger point to Jake and Robby J then to the woods beyond our premises. A couple more of my men are outside now, putting out the blaze with the two-hundred-foot hose we use to spray down our metal building.

My boots are quiet on the gravel. I hear something near the gate and turn and aim my custom 1911 at the sound. I see the fucker instantly behind a stack of pallets at our gate. His cut tells me he’s a Disciples of Sin prospect and that he just failed.

He's probably going to die, but not until I get all the intel out of him that I want. I’m seething as I move toward him. I want to know how the fuck he got past my security gate. He moves his hand behind his back when I approach him. He knows there’s no point in fighting. If he runs he’s dead.

“Don’t fucking do it,” I warn him. He tries to pull out his heat and take aim at me, but I’m faster. I take my shot and it hits him in the hand, blowing two of his fingers clean off. His gun drops to the dirt below and he howls in pain.

“Move an inch you’ll lose the rest,” I say, unmoving and calm. Once I make it to his kneeling body, I see he's frantically squeezing his two severed fingers in an attempt to stop the bleeding. I pull his skinny ass up by the cuff of his shirt and rip his cut from his body in one clean movement, dropping it to the ground and spitting on it. He’ll never put it back on. I signal to Ax as I haul this pain in my ass to the cargo van at the side of the clubhouse.

Motherfucker.

Can’t even get one fucking night off.

“What’s going on, Layla?” I whisper. My voice sounds foreign in my own head, panicked as I ask the question. We’ve been behind one of the big scary members since Wolfe scooped me up and sent my heart into my throat before he dropped me here.

“You can move, Mason. I think we’re safe,” Layla says, not at all fazed and sounding more than a little annoyed that this happened in the middle of her rehearsal dinner.

I look up under hooded eyes at the man she calls Mason. I don’t want to stare but he scares me nearly as much as Wolfe. He’s almost the same height and he’s solid. He wears a black bandana around his head and has a scruffy goatee and mustache, yet he doesn’t appear much older than me. His jaw is wide and permanently set in a straight, grim expression. It isn’t his looks but what’s behind his eyes that scares me, like nothing would phase him because he’s seen and done it all. I’ve only heard him say about five words up until now.

“I’ll move when someone tells me you’re safe,” Mason says in a deep voice, looking down at me and I look away. “Don’t look so scared. They aren’t getting in here, new girl. This place is built like Fort Knox.” He pats the concrete wall behind him.

My eyes flit to his briefly but I’m sure to look away as fast as I can. I’m unable to understand what I see there. I swear I hear gunshots ring outside and I feel like I’m about to pass out. My breathing increases.

“You’re safe,” Layla says. “Sean and Wolfe were Force Exploration, although I never thought we’d need their skills at my rehearsal dinner!” She narrows her eyes at Mason like it’s his fault and as if she isn’t even afraid of him. Desensitized is what she is.

“Just some after dinner entertainment for us,” he says to her with an evil smirk that tells me he’d enjoy toying with whoever is out there.

I shudder.

“Force… exploration?” I ask, partly to distract myself, partly because I’m actually curious. I must look at her with a blank stare of what the hell are you talking about because Mason leans in.

“Marines. Both of them. Three long ass tours,” he says. “A little explosion won’t shake them in the slightest, it’s just enough to get their blood going.”

I gulp and nod, still terrified but somehow, I feel better knowing Wolfe is the one out there.

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