Page 60 of Grave Games

No one disrespected her.

No.

One.

My brothers were like family, but Shiloh… she was myeverything. They had to understand my woman was untouchable, now and forever. She’d already put up with enough shit in her life, but that was all in the past. I was here now. I would be her shield and her sword. I’d tear the world apart before it would ever be allowed to hurt her again, even with a few careless words from my own bro—

“Enough.” An arm came around my chest and hauled me back. Instinctively I fought it, then got tripped and landed with a crash in the chair I’d vacated. With a snarl I shot to my feet, only to find myself nose-to-nose with Tyr, who blocked my way. “Have you gone fucking deaf, Romeo? I said enough. Stand down.Now.”

“Fight, fight, fight, fight,” Slash cheered, punching fists into the air like he was hitting an invisible speed bag.

“Stow it, Slash. We can’t do this now,” Tyr snarled in my face. Behind him, Ajax got to his feet while everyone in the Clubhouse had gone so still they looked like a garden of statues. “You two want to beat the shit out of each other? Fine. Pick a time when I don’t need every able-bodied soldier standing with me and ready to go at a moment’s notice. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by while two of my best men—two of the Original Four, for fuck’s sake—take each other out of the line-up over bullshit pettiness when we’re on the brink of war. You wanna fight? Fight Hades and his crew. Otherwise I don’t want you here taking up space and my valuable time. Clear?”

“Clear.” I snarled the word.

“Clear,” Ajax muttered, readjusting his sunglasses before sending an exploratory hand to the back of his bald head. Grim satisfaction twisted through me when his fingers came away smeared with red.

“I’m with you on this,” I told Tyr, forcing my attention back to him. “You just need to know I stand by my statement. We take out Hades alone, we’re only trading one problem for another. A newer, younger, more dangerous version of Hades will take his place, and then we’ll have to deal with that fucker for decades. If we don’t take Marvel out now, I guarantee we’ll regret it somewhere down the road.”

Tyr opened his mouth to respond, but before he could get a word out, a high-pitched scream sliced through the air.

As one, every man in the clubhouse turned and bolted in the direction of the open back service door. All around me, the sound of multiple guns being pulled and cocked filled my ears, and I was no different; my Sig Sauer M17X was in my hand, its weight comfortingly familiar against my palm, like a handshake from an old friend.

“Where?” I barked at the mamas and hang-arounds still clogging the doorway. The one nearest me looked at me like I was rabid before she and a few others gestured wordlessly to the left, down the service alley toward the access gate. Our group pushed out into the alley, and at first I didn’t see anything amiss. The alley directly behind the converted bank was kept meticulously bare—no stacks of pallets, dumpsters or trash cans to hide behind for a perfect ambush. The dumpsters were all the way at the mouth of the alley where it met with the road, and where a ten-foot chain-link fence and gate—all topped with razor wire—kept the world at bay.

The alley gate had been one of the softer points of access to the compound Tyr and I had pinpointed earlier, so I’d put four men on it, two brothers and two prospects. The gate was now closed and locked with a heavy chain, but the men who were supposed to be guarding it were nowhere in sight. A group of four women wearing Gravedigger jackets clung to the locked fence, looking at something on the ground that looked like a pile of rags.

In an instant my gaze zeroed in on Shiloh’s jacket, and I broke into a run. Goddamn it. What the fuck was she doing out here? She was fully exposed to anyone on the other side of that fence. If someone wanted to take a shot at her, the chain-link wouldn’t protect her. Hell, she might as well be standing in the middle of the fucking road playing chicken with the traffic.

As I watched, Shiloh banged her fists against the chain-link before she cast about wildly, only to spot me coming up fast. The look on her face was one I knew I’d never forget—fear and distress and a towering rage all rolled into one, and all at once I knew without a shadow of doubt that it had been Shiloh who screamed.

“It’s Arthur!” she raged, pulling uselessly at the gate she clearly wanted to tear apart with her bare hands. “For God’s sake, call an ambulance! I think he’s dead!”

Chapter Twenty-One

Bonfire, Barbecue and Bullets

“It’s my fault.” Shiloh sat very still by my side. We were back inside the clubhouse and gathered around the same table we’d vacated when Shiloh screamed. Her friends were also seated at the table with their men, while Tyr, Ajax and Slash stood in front of us, the table between us. Like the rest of the women, Shiloh’s face was bloodless, and she sat with her shoulders hunched, as if she were trying to make herself smaller. My hand clasped hers as we sat with our knees touching, ready to take her out of there if she showed any sign of breaking. But so far her shock-darkened eyes were dry, and though her lips were ghostly pale, they didn’t tremble with fracturing emotion.

My amazing Shy.

She was stronger than anyone knew.

Tyr frowned at her. “What do you mean, it’s your fault?”

“I sent Arthur away from the Barracks to deal with a delivery screw-up—twenty pounds of buffalo wings were missing from the order. I gave him the receipt and told him to try to catch the delivery guy, while I stayed in the kitchen unloading groceries and getting ready for tonight’s barbecue. Then the girls showed up, and I got distracted with chatting and making mimosas, and before I knew it two hours had passed. Arthur still hadn’t returned. When I realized he was missing, I wanted to rush out and look for him, but Mabel wouldn’t let me go alone, so all four of us wound up walking around the compound.”

“Thank you, Mabel,” I said, glancing over at the older blonde with Ashtray, where she sat gripping one of his hands with both of hers. “Thank you for looking after my woman.”

“I told Shiloh we’re chosen family now, honey.” Unlike Shiloh, Mabel’s voice shook like she was suffering some sort of internal earthquake, and she gripped her man’s hand that much harder. “And family looks after each other.”

“Yeah,” Ashtray said with surprising force, before he put a supporting arm around Mabel and held her close. “What Mabel said. Your Shy girl’s good people, just like my woman here. That means they’re family, practically by blood.”

Actually that wasn’t what it meant at all, but I was too fascinated by Ashtray’s total about-face on Shiloh to comment.

Tyr shook his head a little, as if he too, had to work at getting past Ashtray’s Shiloh-is-a-super-scary-ninja to Shiloh-is-my-family transformation. “Oh-kay,” he said after a moment, and focused on Shiloh once more. “You went looking for Arthur, and…?”

“We couldn’t find him anywhere, so I decided to ask the guards at the service alley gate if they’d seen him or the delivery guy he was supposed to catch up with. As we approached, a dark blue pickup roared by. A body was thrown out of the back. It was Arthur. The bastards didn’t even slow down. They just tossed him out like… like garbage.”

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