Page 22 of Out for Blood

“Fuck you,” he spat at my feet. “You’re weak, Malone. You always have been.”

“Weak?” I asked, kneeling in front of him to look him in the eye. “My men make choices of their own and respect me. Yours? I don’t see any of them coming out here to stop this, to stand up for you.”

“They are lost,” he said. “Too high to know what happened.”

“You can’t control a couple of club members?” I replied. “And you call me weak?”

I grabbed the blade from my ankle and I ripped his patches from his cut. He didn’t say a word but he looked up at me, his eyes watery with anger and emotion. I looked over at Bear. He moved in and ripped his cut from him, and then his shirt, leaving him bare. I stood up, moving over to his club tattoo. We all had one, not in the same spot, but his tattoo was always on his shoulder. I sliced the blade through the tattoo. He tensed against Savage and Viper, but didn’t cry out.

At least he’d do this with some dignity.

I sliced at his tattoo until I’d marred his skin enough that the tattoo wouldn’t ever be legible again. “Let him go. He’s done.”

Savage and Viper both let him go, and he fell to the ground. Blood dripped down his back from the knife wound. Bear picked up his cut and we started to head inside.

“You fucker.”

We all turned around, just as I saw him aiming a gun at my head. There was no time to react. The bullet moved past my head, hitting the house behind us. Savage tackled him, knocking the gun free. Viper took the gun and pulled his knife free, slicing Snake’s neck. He struggled to breathe for a few moments before the gurgling stopped and his eyes became lifeless.

My blood was pumping hard, realising how close I came to losing my life just now.

“What now, boss?” Kendrick asked. I looked at the house, where a couple of men stumbled out, half out of their mind.

“We clean up the club,” I said. “We stay and get the Nomads back to what it was before we left. These guys have had no leader for too long.”

I didn’t know if that meant I would come back for good, or if I cleaned them up and appointed a new leader I could trust.

My chest pulled at the idea of never returning, almost as if I knew I needed to, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

She’s not yours.

Chapter Five

ACE

Ten Days Later

Kilkenny never looked so damn good as it did when I rode in through the gates of our compound with the boys. I’d left Viper and Kendrick in Limerick to find a new leader for them. Hawk had sent out the SOS for me to return and take care of shit, but he didn’t tell me what it was. I didn’t need to know, I’d made my mind up to return days earlier.

I needed to talk to Sheridan.

I needed her to know I would take care of her, and her girls. I didn’t care about being a stepdad, in fact, I would gladly take it on. I couldn’t imagine a better thing than an instant family. I’d always thought it had been a missed opportunity to not have kids.

There was no way I could let Sheridan get away, not after everything we’d been through, all the near misses and finally I got her only to fuck it up by being a Grade A douchebag.

I dismounted and headed inside to a clubhouse with furniture missing, bullet holes littering the back wall and hardly anyone was sitting around like they usually were.

Shona came around the corner from the kitchen and caught sight of us. She backed up, trying to hide whatever it was in her hand.

“Oh, Prez, I didn’t know you were coming back today,” she said.

“What the fuck happened in here?” I asked. Bear was at my side, taking in the damage.

“Ah,” she said, trying to hide behind the bar. I was losing my patience when the back door opened and I saw someone I didn’t expect to see in here again.

“What the fuck?”

The girl halted, shooting her gaze over to me and grimacing. “Oh that’s why you haven’t come back yet.”

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