Page 1 of Trigger

1

Trigger

Ileaned over the engine, trying to force my long, thick fingers to screw on the nut needed to secure this fucking alternator in place, but car manufacturers never made these spaces big enough for men like me. I’d bought this piece of shit truck a few months ago, but I was about damn ready to just push it off a bridge. It was proving to be a lot more trouble than it was actually worth, and I was over it. Sure, it gave me something to do on days like today, where shit wasn’t happening, but this mother fucker should’ve been running already.

“Still working on that piece of shit?” Geek asked, coming to lean against the fender. He was holding a beer in his left hand, and he braced his right forearm on the truck to lean over so he could see what I was doing. Nosy fucker.

Geek was our tech guy. We had Scorpion—the president of the Texas Charter—who was practically a tech genius, but we needed someone here in the mother charter, too. Johnston had pulled strings to get him out of prison when he got wind of a hacker being locked up, and Geek had been our Treasurer eversince then, which was a couple of years now. He was a genius at laundering club money, and he was even better at hacking into shit we had no business putting our fingers in. If Johnston, our president, ever asked Geek to hack the FBI, I had no doubt Geek could accomplish it—and wouldgleefullydo it.

None of us knew where he got his skills from, but we weren’t going to ask either. Sometimes, it was just better not knowing.

“Don’t you have some database to hack or something?” I asked, sighing when I finally got the nut on. Fuck, that took forever. I grabbed the wrench I needed and worked on tightening it while hoping Geek would fuck off somewhere.

I missed my woman, and I just wanted to be left the fuck alone. She’d been mopey this morning when I’d called her, and while I knew Chase, the Vice President of the Texas Charter and her old man, would take care of her, it didn’t make this achy feeling inside of me any easier to deal with.

Sophia, who had already been claimed by Chase, and I had started our relationship a little over a year ago when she’d been tipsy and wanted to be shared. Chase, wanting to give her everything she desired, let it happen. But she’d gotten hooked, and so had I. Chase and I were making it work for her sake, and neither of us was jealous of the other.

In fact, I was head over goddamn heels for Chase too, but the man was as straight as a man could be.

“Nah. Did that while eating breakfast this morning,” Geek teased.

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “What do you want, Geek?”

He harrumphed but got on with whatever he was actually bothering me for. “Johnston asked me to come get you. Said he needs to talk to you about something.”

Damn. If the Prez was calling me to his office, he needed me to take care of something. And as his Sergeant at Arms and beingex-SEAL, I was his number one option to take care of shit that needed to be done quietly and with a low profile.

I finished tightening the nut onto the bolt and set my wrench aside. Grabbing my grease rag, which was dangling over the raised hood, I wiped my hands on it. “He say what about?”

Geek shook his head. “Nah. Seemed pissed though.”Just great. Johnston was an asshole when he was angry. Geek lifted his beer to his lips, swallowing a healthy swig. “Then again, Johnston always seems pissed.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong.

I snorted and grabbed my wrench, tossing it into the tool bag at my feet before reaching up to close the hood. “Let him know I’ll meet him in his office as soon as I wash my hands,” I told him. The hood closed with a slam that made Geek curl his lip at me. He wasn’t a fan of loud noises.

“I’ll let him know.” Turning, Geek headed back toward the clubhouse. Picking up my tool bag, I tossed it into the driver’s seat of my truck before slamming the door shut and heading inside. Heading to the bathroom just inside the clubhouse, I scrubbed my hands clean with the Fast Orange hand cleaner, then headed down the hall toward Johnston’s office.

He was already seated behind his desk and waiting for me when I knocked on the open door. Without looking up, he beckoned me in. “Shut the door behind you.”

I did as he instructed before shoving my hands into the pockets of my cargo pants. “What’s up, Prez?” I asked

Johnston was a cold-blooded monster. The only thing in this world he truly gave a fuck about was his wife, Aaliyah. He ran this charter and the Texas charter with an iron-clad fist, and if any of us stepped out of line, we had him to contend with. None of us were afraid of him, but wedidrespect him. Because Johnston gave us all a place to belong when the rest of societydeemed us unfit. He’d given us a home and a second chance at life.

That was something that could never truly be repaid.

He grabbed some pictures off his desk and tossed them in my direction. I grabbed them before they could scatter to the floor, my jaw clenching at what I saw. Someone had been stalking Aaliyah, and she was clearly unaware the pictures were being taken. In each picture, she was doing regular day-to-day things: sweeping the porch, grocery shopping, getting her nails done, getting her hair done, shopping for clothes.

“What the absolute fuck,” I growled.

Johnston leaned back in his chair and rested his elbows on the arm rests, linking his tattooed fingers together over his flat stomach. “These were waiting for me on the seat of my bike this morning,” Johnston informed me. “They left a note with it.” Reaching forward, he snatched a piece of paper off the desk and handed it to me.

In blocky letters on plain, white printer paper, the note read:

Give me what I want, Trim, or she’s next.

My stomach clenched. About a year ago, the woman I was madly in fucking love with had been brutally beaten and raped and left unconscious behind the bakery display case in her bookstore. Chase had been watching her through the cameras at her store, essentially stalking her. He’d rushed to get to her as fast as he could, but he hadn’t gotten there in time to stop what’d happened.

Sophia still hadn’t fully recovered from what happened to her—not mentally. And I knew every fucking day, Chase lived with the guilt of not saving her in time, even if he never let her see it. And I knew most days when he looked at his hands, he still saw them stained with her blood.

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