Page 67 of Traitor

I barely register how I get to my room at the motel, standing outside my door, my fingers fumbling with the key, my head still reeling from the sight of her. Ely. Beautiful. Magnificent.Not mine.

I push inside, heart still hammering, body still wired with adrenaline, and the first thing I see? Tank. Stretched out on my bed. Sleeping like he has no care in the world.

Rage ignites. Pure, irrational, unchecked rage.

The first thing my hand lands on is the room phone. A solid, old-school, wired-to-the-wall piece of shit.

I throw it with everything inside me.

It smacks Tank dead in the throat.

He wakes up with a gasping, choking noise, sitting bolt upright, hands clutching his neck like he’s trying to dislodge a stray bone. His eyes are wild, darting around, trying to make sense of the attack before they land on me. Murderous. Disoriented. Pissed.

"If I was an enemy, I could've killed you fifteen fucking times by now," I snarl, voice still raw from screaming my lungs out in the middle of the woods. "What the fuck are you doing here, and more importantly, why the fuck are you sleeping in my bed?"

Tank coughs, rubbing his throat, taking a few deep, painful breaths before croaking, "Jesus Christ, you could've just yelled, not crush my goddamn windpipe."

He gulps in another breath, eyes narrowing as he really looks at me now. My disheveled clothes. My bloody knuckles. The gaping wound in my shoulder.

"I came to check how things were going with Ely. Maybe talk to her myself." He squints. "Judging by the fact that you're half-dead, I'm guessing... not great?"

"She told me to fuck off," I say, deadpan. "Then she shot me."

Tank stares at me. Blinks. "Damn."

"Wait. It's the middle of the night. Did you break into her house?"

"Yeah."

"The fuck were you thinking? Breaking into a woman's home in the middle of the night? A woman, I might add, who went through hell, because of you."

"I wasn't thinking, okay?" I snap, exhaustion weighing down every muscle in my body. "I just... I just wanted to see her. It's been four fucking years."

Tank exhales loudly, shaking his head like I'm the biggest idiot on the planet. And honestly? Right now, I probably am.

"Let me check the wound before you pass out and bleed all over the place," he mutters, already getting up, digging through his duffel bag for supplies. "Needs to be disinfected and stitched up, or else you're gonna rot from the inside out, and Ely won't get the satisfaction of cutting your balls off herself."

"I was lucky," I grunt as he starts working. "Small caliber. Through and through. Didn't hit an artery or a bone."

Tank grumbles under his breath as he cleans the wound, none too gently. "Yeah, mostly figured that out by the fact that you're still standing."

His fingers move efficiently, years of patching up bullet wounds making the process second nature, but he won't shut the fuck up.

"So... what's the plan?" he asks, threading the needle, raising a brow at me. "You do have a plan, right?"

I stare at the ceiling for a second, jaw tight. I do.

"She told me she'd never move back to Driftwood." I take a slow breath. And then I say it.

"I'm moving the mother chapter here."

Tank stops mid-stitch, head snapping up so fast I hear his neck crack.

"What?"

"I'm moving the mother chapter to Silverpine." My voice is calm. Final. "Driftwood will stay as its own chapter. Ghost can take over as Prez. Or Reaper."

"Fuuuuck, Bones." Tank presses the heel of his hand against his forehead like he's physically pained by what I just said. "The logistics alone... Jesus Christ. Never mind that, but the Romanos are gonna lose their shit. They don't want to deal with the club. They want to deal with you. They'll follow, and that means rebuilding the entire operation here. Do you even remember how much that cost last time?"

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