Page 8 of Starting Over

Sure, I looked out for my baby brother and his guys. They did shit they knew was illegal, but they weren’t out to fuck with the innocent. They might not be one percenters anymore, but they still wore the fucking patch.

When we moved here from Arkansas, King told me they were going to give up the patch and try to go legit. He said he wasn’t promising anything, and they were leaving the patch on their cuts until they knew they could make it.

That was five fucking years ago.

They were legit now, had been since they started the chapter. They didn’t run drugs or guns. They had a strip club on the outside of town, but they didn’t sell sex, just the vision of it.

Were they fucking Boy Scouts?

Hell no.

I knew they were responsible for the disappearance of Grant Nicholson. I knew no one would ever find him as well. I didn’t care. He hurt my daughter. He would have done worse if they’d let him go. But that didn’t make me a bad cop. It made me a damn good father.

The law wasn’t capable of getting women the justice they deserved for the type of attacks they faced the most.

They deserved justice.

Maybe I straddled the law on occasion. I took my oath seriously, but sometimes I was bound by that oath. My brother wasn’t. I knew how the law worked. There were occasions when shit people went free.

Whether they had a good lawyer, a shit prosecutor, or a technicality that got them off, the truth was, the law didn’t always work for the good of the people.

So sometimes, I let the Silver Shadows take over. It was only when I had solid proof someone was guilty and no way to make the law do what it was supposed to do.

Keep people safe.

King pulled me out of my head when he asked, “How bad could it be? Look at her. You really that concerned about a woman?”

I felt her arm tense in my hand. She didn’t like being dismissed because she was a woman. I looked down at my captive. She was gorgeous. When she rounded the car to hand me my ass for calling her ma’am, the first thing I noticed was the way her green eyes sparkled like emeralds in the headlights.

Her hair was silver, naturally or from a salon, I couldn’t be sure, but she wasn’t in her twenties. Hell, I’d be surprised if she were in her thirties.

No, she was older. She had the slightest wrinkles by her eyes that told me she lived her life with laughter. She wasn’t thin, but she wasn’t overweight. Thick was the word to describe her. With the type of thighs a guy could get lost between, if he was lucky enough to take the journey.

King obviously hadn’t touched her, because with my hand wrapped around her arm, I could feel the muscle. She was strong. She wouldn’t break easily.

I didn’t want her broken, but compliant would be nice.

She stood with her chin up and her shoulders back, daring me to tell them what she said.

“Declan. Let her go. She’s had a shit night. She’s just moving to town and her car broke down on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. She’s a little stressed. I’m sure whatever she said was just spouting off because she was afraid.” King looked at her and winked. “Ain’t that right, darlin’? If you give her the chance, I’m sure she’ll apologize.”

Seeing the look of fire in her eyes, I knew that wasn’t true.

“You want her first night in town to go down like this? What would Beck say if I told her you arrested a helpless woman stranded on the side of the road because she said something you didn’t like?”

“Fuck you, King,” I hissed.

He was right, though. My daughter would kill me for taking a woman’s stressful night and making it worse. I took a deep breath and unlocked the cuffs.

“She rides to town with Tank in the truck. Not on your bike,” I told him.

“Why? You worried about her being on my bike?”

That was a good question. I shouldn’t care who he had on the back of his bike, except I knew it meant something to him. To this day, the only woman that had been there was my daughter, his niece.

“I ain’t got an old lady, yet,” he argued.

“You sure about that?” I asked, mocking him.

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