Page 65 of Raiden

“I do and I will. I’ll give him the truth and hear him out.”

He can see my determination and his face bows into a frown, but he doesn’t fight me on it. “We’ll go to Gray with this together. He might suggest someone else, but I say take Gunner. He might be thankful to Zale for letting him in here, but he’s loyal to his club and his brothers without question. I’ve seen him kill and so have you. He won’t hesitate or let his emotions get in the way.”

I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me before that some of the men here might still feel like they owe Zale loyalty and might take that one step further, into betrayal of their club brothers.

“What if all this time, Zale’s had a rat in the club. Someone he approached who knew he was alive and has been spying for him?”

It obviously isn’t the first time Raiden’s thought of it. “That could be. I know it’s in Gray’s mind too, even if he’s never put it to us. If there’s someone here we should be wary of, we should do it without them knowing that we’re thinking about it. That’ll just drive them underground.”

“And if he backs me into a corner and it comes down to his suggesting something he knows you won’t do?”

“Then we decide as a club what our options are. If it’s war, then we get the women and children out of here, look after our businesses, and stand together.”

Dying or creating a bloodbath is not an option. I refuse to let it be. “There are other ways. It’s sneaky and unthinkable, but it wouldn’t have to be you. It could be me. My dad’s club is huge. They have cops on their payroll, but not all of them andnot at the kind of levels they can control. They’re doing much worse than you guys can even think. Bodies. Cocaine, heroin, and meth. Running women. If I can prove their crimes, with evidence and get someone to listen to me, I could take them down.”

“That’s a level of dangerous that I’d never let you get involved in.”

It slams into me what I’ve been seeking my whole life. It wasn’t the thrill of living, it wasn’t even knowledge. It was peace. Peace and happiness. Living in the thick of this chaos, the hurricane of life ever since I had to leave my PhD unfinished, makes me long for quiet and solitude. A simple life can still look like this. It can still be a club, loyalty, the road, because that’s based on family above all.

That kind of life doesn’t come without work or risk and the framework of a plan knits itself together in my head. “If he’s not here to force me back home, I could act like the good and loyal daughter and say I was seducing you for information. You’d have to give me just enough, that I could tell him to make it seem legit. I could beg to go back home. Tell him how unhappy I am here. If I was in their den, I know I could gather up enough information to—”

“No.”

“It could be the only way out of this,” I plead.

“And if Zale and a few of his men go to prison? Trust me, they won’t all go, and they’ll be gunning for revenge twice as hard.”

“If his only aim is to annihilate this club, then show him that he’s wrong. He has so much more power down there,more men catering to his every whim, more money, women, everything and anything. But what he really wants is this club. We could show him that he doesn’t have to destroy it.”

Raiden chews on that, churning it over in his mind. “Appear to surrender.”

“Yes. Become a chapter of the Berserkers. Get Gray to step aside. Give Zale back his spot here as president. Make him think that he’s humiliated his son and everyone else here into submission. Make him believe he’s won.”

“Ain’t happening. I wear the angel on my back not a fucking rabid monkey. We’re Satan’s Angels through and through. It’s a crazy idea, but if we’re gonna do some Machiavellian shit and play the long game, then Gray might agree to step down as president and let Zale back in. But how would that work? And then what? Do as the Romans did, and execute him by stabbing him repeatedly in the back?”

“I don’t know.” Horror infiltrates the hazy framework of plans. “I didn’t mean kill him. I meant… Fuck. He’s my dad. I don’t want him to come to harm. I don’t want to sit around plotting anyone’s demise. I want what you said. Happiness. Freedom. A good life. But I know he can’t be convinced to leave you alone.”

“How loyal are his men? Anything happens to Zale and we’re likely to have a whole club gunning for us.”

“Wait.”A whole club gunning for us. Unless…“Isn’t there some old rule that anyone could challenge someone for president and if they beat them, then they took over? They didn’t have to kill them. Just displace them by proving they’re stronger. The men in Zale’s club will follow strength. I’m sure a few havetried in the past, but Zale wouldn’t tell me that. He likes to be flattered and worshipped like a god.”

“I don’t know that clubs still do that, but for any sort of challenge to stick, it couldn’t come from an outsider,” Raiden admits.

“It would have to come from a chapter.”

“Yes. If we give Zale time to set someone else up in the Berserkers, probably his VP, and come up here to run things, someone could challenge him. We’d just have to figure out who. Someone who would have to be willing to be at the top of everything and that means probably leaving here, putting Gray back as prez or acting prez in his stead or making him his VP. Even if it’s all just appearances, there would have to be a certain legitimacy to it. And there’s always the chance that something could happen and whoever was challenging could die and then we’d have a real mess here. You’d be living, but as you said, in Zale’s cage.”

“We should go to Gray with this right now.”

I expect him to shake his head and talk me down, but his expression solidifies into determination that matches mine. “Even though we don’t know what Zale wants, I agree.”

“You’ll stand by us, over your own father?”

“My father made me a pawn. By showing up here like this, it’s pretty clear that he’s using me. What choice has he given me except to fight back? I don’t want him dead. I want to love him. I want him to be my dad before he’s just another man who thinks he can get something from me. He’s the one who put me here. If he judged me wrongly and underestimated me for his own gains, then I’m not to blame for that miscalculation. I’ll do anythingI can to keep him alive as my dad, but honestly, I don’t give a shit if he’s running some club or not. If he’s here, there’s always the option that we could take him down some other way too, but Gray would have to be on board. This whole club would. It couldn’t work otherwise. And we’d have to do it without his men here knowing. Maybe it’s best that no one knows I’m involved with it either. You could want me and lust after me without trusting me with club business. That would be the commonsense thing to do anyway.”

“I’m not a ruthless bastard,” he snaps.

“I know. This place, you and Gray and probably a lot of the men I still don’t know well yet, you’re all the exception.” I watch his face soften, aching to hold him, aching for all of this to be over so we can do what we both thought was unthinkable and maybe work on living a life together. “You can still be and play Zale’s game. If he’s got you involved, then you have to rise to the challenge and conquer your opponent. Go to Gray by yourself and talk to him so it doesn’t appear like I’m involved. I’ll say whatever you want me to say and act however you want me to act tonight. Just let me know.”

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