Page 62 of Tripp

“I can only imagine.”

“No, you can’t. I’m tellin’ ya, I saw a side to my wife I never even knew existed. She was pissed that I chose to hide what her father said from her, sure, but she was more hurt than anything. She thought I didn’t love her anymore and that eventually I’d leave her altogether. She told me she kept thinkin’ she’d done something to deserve the way I treated her, that she was just waiting for the emptiness to creep back into her life when I finally decided to walk out the door for good.” Marek hung his head, breathing quickly to regain his fleeting composure. “All of her hurt and fear manifested into rage. She almost scared me, and I’m man enough to admit that.”

A slow smile spread across his face as if he was proud of his wife’s reaction, that she was able to let go and not bottle everything up inside. Then again, it proved what I’d always thought about Sully, that she was a fierce woman underneath all the calm. His smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, however. “I’ll always regret putting her through what I did, treating her as if it was her fault that I couldn’t even bear to look at her, let alone touch her.”

Clasping his shoulder, I said, “You two will get through this. I can already see that she’s forgiven you. No one can mistake the way that woman feels about you, man.”

“Forgiven, maybe, but it’ll be a long time before I can prove that I’ll never hurt her like that again.”

I didn’t know what else to say in support so I chose to remain silent. That was until he started his own sort of interrogation on me.

“What the fuck happened with that crazy bitch showin’ up here like that?” He abruptly changed the topic and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. Marek wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy, and the fact that he told me as much as he had was a rarity in and of itself.

“I have no goddamn idea. I’m still tryin’ to wrap my head around it. I haven’t thought about Rachel since the night I left her, and for her to show up out of the blue, and claiming she has my son of all things, is mind-blowing. Then she fuckin’ takes off and leaves her kid behind.” A heavy exhale passed my lips. “Everything happened so fast. One minute she was here and the next she was gone.”

“Crazy shit,” Marek mumbled before pouring himself another drink.

“You can say that again.”

A half hour later, we were all still trying to relax and find our footing after the evening’s events. Riley and the baby boy, whose name we didn’t know, were resting in one of the back bedrooms. It seemed like the night was gonna end on sort of a good note when all of a sudden one of the prospects—I believed his name was Cod—rushed inside.

“You guys better get out here,” he shouted, the panic on his face unmistakable.

Tripp

“Fuck!” Marek yelled. “What the hell is goin’ on now?” All the members hurried outside, the women following close behind. But as soon as we saw who was waiting for us, I turned toward the females and shouted for them to go back.

“I got ’em,” Trigger offered, thankfully following the confused women back inside the clubhouse.

As we approached the gates, badges were flashed and a few more SUVs appeared.

“Open the gates, Marek,” Sam Koritz shouted. The crooked DEA agent who’d raided our club, and who was still in bed with the Savage Reapers, I was sure, had the audacity to show up out of the blue, without cause, and put the cherry on top of one of the shittiest days I’d had in a long time. Granted, I hadn’t been there when he and his goons had stormed in, but I heard all about it.

The man was around ten years older than me, yet he looked at least twice that. A huge potbelly hung over the top of his cheap khaki pants, a laughable comb-over doing shit to hide his receding hairline.

“Why?” Marek’s stance was unyielding. He didn’t want to deal with Koritz any more than the rest of us did, but being in our position it was part of the deal, I supposed.

“Do it or we’re gonna ram ’em.”

“Why don’t you go set up someone else?” Hawke shouted from behind me. I twisted around and shot him a warning look. We didn’t need any reason for Koritz to put a target on our backs again. Granted, the club was legit now, no longer dealing with Los Zappas Cartel, but we did have a few decomposing bodies under our belt. Recent ones, at that.

Koritz signaled for the men still occupying two of the SUVs to back up, no doubt waiting for his go-ahead to lurch forward and slam into our gates.

Before they could make another move, Marek threw up his hand and rotated his finger in the air, signaling for the prospects to open the gates. The defiant part of me wanted to stand in front of the gates and tell them to fuck right off. In order to get rid of them, however, we had to comply.

The groan of the metal infuriated me. None of us understood the reason for Koritz’s visit, but I was sure he was gonna fill us in real soon.

All five SUVs entered the compound, our men stopping them from going much farther than the entrance. No way in hell they were gonna make themselves at home and traipse all over our lot. My heart picked up pace the longer we stood in silence, waiting and wondering just what the hell brought them all out that evening.

Koritz finally stepped closer, a few of his men behind him with their hands on their weapons. None of us were armed. Well, let me clarify. As soon as Cod ran into the clubhouse shouting for us to come outside, all of us strapped up, the cold of the metal tucked safely in our waistbands. But Koritz didn’t know that, and we sure as hell weren’t gonna let him in on our little secret. For all he knew we were unarmed. Element of surprise and all that shit, in case it all went south.

“What the hell are you doin’ here?” Marek spit out, taking a single step closer to the bastard stupid enough to think he could just show up out of the blue and there wouldn’t be any consequences.

“We’re looking for Psych Brooks,” he cockily responded, arching a brow as if that reaction alone was enough to make us think he knew what we’d done to the Savage Reapers’ president.

“What makes you think we know where that piece of shit is?” I took my place by my prez, offering a united front of sorts, denying any involvement in Psych’s disappearance. A lie, but they’d never know that little tidbit of information. Henry ‘Psych’ Brooks was exactly where he should be—rotting in the ground. Marek had done the world a service when he’d extinguished that bastard’s existence. Granted, his demise had been more brutal than what we were used to, but the ends justified the means.

“I have it on good authority that you were the last ones to see him alive.”

---