Page 10 of Raiden

My husband’s jaw clenches and a flush of anger slowly creeps up his neck.

I palm my H&K VP9, squaring myself up with the target. I’ve been shooting for pretty much as long as I can remember. My mom would take me out to ranges owned by her friends and most of them got a kick out of teaching a kid to shoot and having her show up the grown men because she wasgood.

Everyone is behind me where they should be, I’ve got my protective gear on, so I’m good to go. I don’t want to do anything to piss Bullet off. He might never let me come back and then what am I supposed to shoot? Or should I say where?

I bite down on a grin as I unload all seventeen rounds—two extra, because I just got this gun last year and they updated some features recently. It’s overkill and the inner ring of the target is a shredded mess.

Raiden still has to taunt me as I click my safety back on and shed the gear. “Careful, princess, you might chip a nail.”

I glance down at my black nail polish then back up at him. “Fucking right I’m a princess, but it’s you who should be careful.” Tyrant and Bullet both have hearing protection firmly in place, so I go one step further than I know I should.

“Fucking excuse me?” Raiden hisses, crowding up on me.

I resist the urge to knee him right in the balls so he backs out of my personal space. Damaging my husband’s jewels probably isn’t a very wifely thing to do when he’s done nothing beyond being an asshole. Men out there that ever raise a hand to a woman or worse? They deserve to have them clean off, but that’s not this man. I don’t feel panic or disgust. There’s something about Raiden that screams that he’s honorable enough to respect a woman and kill any man who hurts her, even when he’s crowding in on me.

He notices me looking past him, watching my brother shoot. It’s his left hand that had the finger cut off. He can still do everything he used to do, including hold a gun. I wonder if Zale chose that on purpose? He wanted to make a point and send a message, not kill his own son. Satan’s Angels might think differently, but I know my father isn’t the monster they’ve made him out to be.

“Get close enough to your cunt father and you’ll have more to worry about than chipped nails.”

Ahh. We’re thinking along the same lines again. How quaint. “He doesn’t like traitors.”

Being witty and holding my own is one thing, but I told myself not to push too hard. Raiden’s rugged face goes scarlet.His dark eyes snap with an electric rage. I’ve pressed on a sore spot, and I know all about those. He looks angry enough to tear that office beside us apart with his bare hands.

The office, because he’d never truly lay a finger on me.

“Your father should do the world a favor and shoot himself in the fucking face then. He’s the reason I went to prison for five years. He made up the club’s mutiny all in his head. It was never a reality. He was jealous of his own son and the bond we had. Thought we had too much power and everyone liked us too much. He wanted to make sure one of us went away. He betrayed his club brothers and his oath, or is that not what you’ve heard?”

Inside, I’m reeling, but outside, I maintain my calm. I’ve had lots of practice. Being a woman in this world doesn’t leave a lot of time for public displays of emotion if you want to be taken seriously. I know how to be stoic. “I’ve heard that version, his version, and every single one in between.”

“This isn’t aversion. It’s the truth. Your brother let Zale live when the club voted to put him to ground for his treason when they found out that it was him who set the whole thing up. Gray let him go, and on his word he was never going to return here. How does he repay that kindness? He comes back, calling it justice, and burns your brother’s house to the ground. He terrorized my sister and my niece and struck fear into the heart of every old lady and child that belongs to this club. They all had to be evacuated from their homes until we knew what the fuck was going on. He left Gray in some trapper’s cabin up in the mountains after torturing him for days, a fucking note stapled to his head. He had a doctor treat every single thing they did to him so they could do it all over again. He promised to keep him alive just so that the club could have their way with him for lettingZale live when he was told to take care of it. Gray truly thought he’d lost everything and everyone he loved. When I got those chains off him and put him in my truck to bring him home, told him he was still my brother, that we were all still behind him, he sobbed. Zale Grand did that to his own fucking son. That is the man you call Daddy.”

“I call him Prez too,” I retort lazily, but it feels like my chest is fracturing and my lungs are shot full of all those bullets I just put into that target. I didn’t drink last night, but I’m soaking my shirt with a cold sweat and my stomach is threatening to erupt. My father’s version of the events that led to him being ousted as president of Satan’s Angels MC was way different, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve misjudged these men.

“Raiden?” Bullet has noticed that there isn’t a whole lot of shooting going on over here and a fuck of a showdown. He motions for him to walk over. “Got a minute?”

My husband rolls his huge shoulders back in his black t-shirt, flexing the shit out of his leather vest. He curls his hand into a fist at his side, drawing my eyes straight to those numbers again. Twenty-two. I knew he’d done time, but I didn’t know what he’d gone away for.

That was something my father conveniently left out.

“Yeah. Coming.”

Bullet switches spots with him, either so Tyrant and Raiden can have their talk in private, or because the mounting tension is going to come to a head if he stays where he is.

As in, we probably look like we want to kill each other. At a range.

I don’t. I can’t look like that. I can’t look likeanything. It’s easier to survive when you don’t have a weakness and people can’t get at you, so I’ve perfected it.

Raiden gives me his back, walking away with that bowed angel both protecting him and weeping for him. I feel betrayed in the worst way. What Raiden just told me wasn’t opinion, it was fact, and it was most definitely not the facts I’d heard.

How can I remain true to my dad and reconcile what happened here? What am I even doing here if there’s no justice to fight for? There’s peace because there needs to be peace, but I don’t know what my father’s plans are beyond that. I’ve always known he’s a dangerous and hard man—most one percenters are—but untrustworthy, dishonest, and a traitor?

That’s a heady revelation and I have to stand here pretending like the foundations of me didn’t just get an almighty shakedown.

I owe Tyrant, Raiden, and everyone else here in this club, everyone related to it and touched by it, an apology. That’s something I can’t do. It shouldn’t come from me anyway. I know that, but the guilt and the shame stay with me all the same, soaking into me and burning far hotter than the sun overhead.

Chapter 4

Raiden

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