Page 17 of Grave Games

“Thought you were going to be late for church.” Tyr greeted me as I walked into the Clubhouse’s main room. Wintry light slanted in through the multi-paned windows lodged in the former bank’s cinderblock walls, bouncing off the pale cream marble floors. Framed pictures of Gravedigger members who had served in the military lined the entryway on one side, and an American flag was pinned up on the other. I paused long enough to shrug out of my coat, then turned to face Tyr, who wore a cut that was virtually identical to mine. There were a few exceptions, of course. For instance, his title patch marked him as President, where mine marked me as Vice President. He also wore two small, curved patches on the left side of his chest—over his heart—with the road names and dates of Gravedigger members who were now dead. I’d known both of those brothers well, and each death—one lost to cancer and the other to a hit-and-run—had been a real blow. When a club as young as ours lost solid members, those losses threatened the stability and future of the Gravediggers MC itself.

No way in hell was I about to let the Gravediggers go down without a fight. Against all odds we’d made it out of Hades’s killing grip and established our own territory, building up a rep that not even Hades could tear down. At least not from the outside.

But he sure as hell could rip it apart from within.

“You know I’d never miss church.” I clasped hands with Tyr with a semi-chest bump. “Not unless I’m on my deathbed or in the gray-bar hotel. You get my text?”

Tyr nodded, then raised a hand to another group of brothers coming in from the cold. “That’s why I called all the officers in, in addition to the Original Four. It’s time to get serious about this shit.”

Yes. The sooner we put this behind us, the sooner I could focus on Shiloh and proving to her that MC didn’t always equal pure evil. “Outstanding.”

It took about twenty minutes for the officers of the club to show up, so I had time to touch base with my brothers and Tyr’s lieutenants, Slash and Ajax. The three of us had joined Tyr when he’d split from his uncle to start his own chapter of the Gravediggers, and that was when we’d picked up the name, the Original Four. Normally, founding a new chapter wasn’t a big deal; when a successful club grew so large in numbers and popularity, it had no choice but to branch out into new territory. The birth of new chapters for a motorcycle club was actually a sign of a healthy club.

But starting up our chapter, known simply as the Gravediggers, hadn’t been a genuine branching out from the Chicago Gravediggers.

It had been an all-out fight to survive.

When Hades had taken over the club from Tyr’s father, he’d proven himself to be a blight. He recklessly waged turf wars when negotiations would have been the better call, then screwed over one of Chicago’s most notorious street gangs, the ultra-violent Yard Kings from Back of the Yards. These spectacular fuck-ups had eventually led to a war that lost the Chicago Gravediggers over a third of its members, half of its business deals, and most of its reputation as being a solid, money-making club.

If Tyr hadn’t split from the mother club to strike out on his own, I would have bounced the hell out of that death trap. But this new chapter we’d created was now on the verge of becoming something not just real, but legendary, in both our world and in the civilian world. All we had to do was keep Hades from poisoning it from the inside out.

“There he is, Mr. Grab-Ass himself.” I held my hand out to Tomahawk, then spied Zee a few steps behind him. “You two kiss and make up?”

“Like I’d kiss anything that ugly,” Tomahawk drawled, tossing a wry glance Zee’s way. “I’ll never be that desperate.”

“Yeah, I heard you two were having a tiff.” Beside me, Ajax crossed sleeved-out arms in front of his chest, a Gravediggers bandana covering his bald head as he stared at the two men through reflective sunglasses he wore even indoors. “What was it all about?”

“Ooh, Ajax, lemme give you the cliff notes.” Slash, Tyr’s other lieutenant, came up from behind me, sipping on a cup of coffee that was probably his third or fourth of the day, even though it wasn’t yet noon. Slash wasn’t big on booze, but his caffeine addiction was in a class by itself. “Zee brought in a sweet young thing with no clear tags on her that said she was his property, then left her on her lonesome like a fucking dumbass here in the club—”

“For no more than three minutes,” Zee put in, shaking his head.

“Which was more than enough time for Tomahawk to get handsy, because he’s Tomahawk and his dick does most of his thinking for him,” Slash went on, talking fast because Slash on caffeine always talked fast. “Zee’s chick went from sweet young thing to Kill-Bill psycho in a New York second, scared Tomahawk into shitting his pants, and Zee was somehow to blame for everything. That’s what I heard, anyway.”

“Accurate, especially the part about Tom shitting his pants,” Zee drawled, snorting as he nudged Tomahawk with his shoulder. “But we’re not going to spread that around the club, Tom, honest.”

“Yeah, you can trust us,” Slash said, grinning, then turned to a brother who happened to be passing by. “Hey, did you hear Tom shit his pants?”

“You guys suck,” Tomahawk muttered just as Tyr took his place at the head of a large banquet table set in front of what had once been the teller counter and was now a fully stocked bar. Glancing around the room, he grabbed up the custom-made gavel with a grip shaped like a skeleton, and banged it down.

“Church is in session, so sit your asses down,” Tyr said just below a bellow. “We’ve got a lot of shit to get through and none of you are gonna like it. The quicker we get this over with, the better.”

Like that, the mood in the club changed. I watched the men around me exchange speaking glances as I took my place next to Tyr. Ajax sat on my right, while Slash sat on the other side on Tyr’s left. The four of us had been tight long before we’d officially become the Original Four, so while we were about to go through some things, at least I’d be going through it with my brothers. There wasn’t anyone on earth I was more comfortable with than them.

Then the memory of Shiloh flashed before my eyes for the millionth time that day—her wary green eyes, her irresistible smart mouth and all that damn hair begging for my hands. Hell, yeah, I was comfortable with her, too. But considering she’d looked at me like I was the monster under her bed when I’d dropped her off at her place yesterday, I doubted the feeling was mutual.

“A few months back we struck hard against some bottom-feeding mob boss, because he’d grabbed my little brother’s woman,” Tyr began, and the room fell unnaturally silent. No doubt everyone remembered that brawl. It had been short, vicious, and crippling for our enemy. Just the way a Gravedigger liked it. “When he got her out, Loki’s woman told us these assholes talked about how Hades had given the mob guy loads of information on just how important she was to my brother, and therefore to the Gravediggers. Nobody but the people in this room knew that.” He let that sink in, which it obviously was, since everyone started looking around the table as if they would somehow be able to spot the snake that had somehow bitten us.

“I’m not going to demand to know who the hell is sitting here, lying to our faces as he betrays us. Waste of fucking time. And I’m not going to ask who dares to hold loyalty to the man who drove our original mother club into the ground,” Tyr continued, and though his voice was calm and even, the rage behind it seemed to make the walls around us heave like a bellows. “That’d just get us all mired down in a finger-pointing hissy fit that would tear us apart even more than we already are. Instead, I’ve decided to let you all know about the spy sitting with us right now, because I want to promise you loyal Gravediggers something. I’m promising each and every one of you, my brothers who mean more to me than my own flesh and blood, that I will give you each a turn to do whatever the fuck you want with the traitor when I find him. Slash,” he said suddenly, making the other man jump, “what’re you gonna do to the traitor once I have him? I’m curious.”

At first Slash looked like he thought it was a trap. But then the caffeine got the better of him, and he began to grin like the maniac he was. “You know that guy onGame of Throneswho tortured that other guy for, like, half a season?”

“They all did that, dude,” Zee drawled, making some members laugh, albeit nervously.

“Yeah, but this guy was a fucking nightmare. His whole family was, because they were known for skinning people alive. I’d try my hand at that, because I can’t think of anything more painful than having your skin removed inch by inch, but you’re still alive and you have to watch it happen.”

“Skinning. Damn good start.” Tyr nodded, then looked over to Ajax. “What about you?”

“Fire’s always good,” Alax shrugged.

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