Page 3 of Beauty & Corruption

“Ha! It’s not my fault thatÉangets bored easily with your primitive behaviors, Graham.”

“Mordicus, I’ll fucking drive my hand so far up your ass that it comes out that smartass mouth of yours,” I spat back at him.

“Sounds like a good time,” Mordy teased me, running his fingertips slowly up his body and biting his knuckle.

“Trouble in paradise. I get it.” Sticks shook his head, getting ready to try to diffuse the situation.

“Look, I don’t fucking care what kind of freaky shit you are both into. Fuck and get it out of your system if that’s what it takes, or knock each other out. I don’t give a damn. But do it when we don’t already have club shit to handle. Take your frustration out on fixing the solution, not making the problem bigger. And in case you two self-centered assholes haven’t noticed, our current problem is pretty damned big. So, fucking drop it!” Viking raised his voice in a snarl and pounded his cigarette into the ashtray sitting on the table in front of him; the filter bent and then snapped off in his fingers. He dropped it in with the rest and loudly cleared his throat.

Silence overtook the room. It was rare that Viking raised his voice, much less lost his shit, so when he even came remotely close to it, people listened. Normally, he was a calm, cool, and collected kind of guy. If I had to guess, I would say his tranquility was for self-preservation—to avoid bursting a carotid—and because he had to deal with all of us Crazed Kings. According to Hogtie and Cobalt, the founders of our club—along with Viking—he had a microscopic fuse for the majority of their tour in Germany. All of us brothers had seen Viking go off the deep end a couple of times, but it was never without just cause.

While he slowly inhaled, Viking’s eyes scanned the room. “What doyouhave for us, Sticks?” His voice was back to its normal calmness.

“Prez, I wish I could say what we’ve got was pretty damn useful, but it isn’t much.”

“Okay. Then—” Mordy began to say something, and Viking shot him a glare as if daring him to continue. Mordy smugly smiled at me, resting his fingers on the inner part of his wrist. Viking was right; this shit with Mordy had to be tabled, but his time would come.

“Sticks,” Viking spoke my brother’s name.

“Maryanne talked to Reggy’s mom, but she was pretty tight-lipped. She was more concerned as to why she hadn’t seen her daughter, and then Maryanne spent the better part of two hours lying her ass off and begging her not to call the cops.”

“For fucks sake. Having cops in the middle of all this is the last thing we need right now,” Dumble spoke for the first time tonight as he pointed out the obvious.

“So, you have nothing?” Wisenheimer asked.

“Not exactly. But it isn’t exactly something solid, either. Our source confirmed that Reggy is the daughter of Kirill Angeloff. That part wasn’t too hard to get, given the right motivation.” Knowing Sticks, by motivation, he meant brute force. I missed the days when he and I handled shit together. Even though it hadn’t been that long ago, sharing the safehouse with Mordy made it feel like years had passed.

“Do I need to clean up?” Mordy asked, tapping the same spot on his wrist.

“Got it handled,” Dumble answered.

“Anyway. What we couldn’t figure out was if her mom was her actual blood,” Sticks continued.

“She looks like her mom. Are we sure?” I questioned him as if he had given any one of us a reason to do so. I hadn’t seen her mom in person, but Bird had shown me pictures of her whole family, excluding her dad, who she’d never met.

Sticks was a good brother, and he was reliable. I was too close to Bird and was invested in her well-being. This was all new territory for me. In the past, I would have never given a shit about Mordy sniffing around to get my sloppy seconds, but Bird was different. She wasn’t like most women. She was more than tail. We hadn’t told each other we loved one another…yet…but that didn’t mean I wasn’t completely head over heels for her stubborn ass.

“Am I sure we couldn’t find any actual proof? I am. But I don’t think that matter is the most important thing we need to worry about at the moment. The more important info is why she’s significant to the Falbos. If we can figure that out, we can figure out how to use our leverage.”

“What the fuck?” Mordy and I said in unison. I quickly stared at him from across the table and gritted my teeth.

“Look, I know where your tripod rests at night, brother,” Viking said, locking his fingers together and then resting them on the table. “Mordy, I have no clue where you fit in their relationship, and frankly, right now, I don’t care. The facts are we do what we have to do to protect our own. Do I want to see little one hurt? No. I like her. But if it came down to keeping my brothers safe over anyone else, I would slit her throat myself. So, I recommend you two keep that in mind when you go back to your love nest or whatever in the hell you have going on there.”

“The closer you are to her, the worse it’ll hurt if something happens,” Dumble stated matter-of-factly.Shit!He was right, but fucking damn it, I didn’t want him to be. I had to find a way to keep her and my brothers safe. I wasn’t going to settle for less because my brothers didn’t see her as an equal. I thought this shit had been addressed when we found out she didn’t know shit about shit, but clearly, I was wrong.

The only one who was on the same page as me wasn’t someone I ever wanted to side with; however, if her life was putto a vote, having Mordy in agreement with me would help. He was persuasive when he wanted to be…that was when he wasn’t busy being his meddling self.

“No one is killingÉanexcept me,” Mordy spoke in a level voice. “I promised the lass the beautiful tragedy she deserves.”

“The fuck?” I asked, whipping my head toward him. “You promised her a pretty kill?”

“Deartháir,” he articulated the Irish Gaelic word for brother. “You ruin the exquisiteness of the English language. Perhaps you need to go to the author event Motorcycles, Mobsters, and Mayhem with me this year and enrich yourself.”

“Not here,” Sticks interjected when my lips parted to reply to Mordy.

“No one is killing her yet.” Viking shook his head in our direction. “I think I spoke for all of us earlier when I said I didn’t want to see her hurt. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. No one ispretty killinganyone right now. Right, Mordicus?” His eyes focused on Mordy.

“Aye. You all could take the fun out of a wet noodle party.”

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