Page 94 of Red's Peril: Part 1

I’m sick of the man. Enraged the cops waiting means I can’t hurt him. But there’s one thing I want. One thing that’s important to every Devil. I demand his cut. The cut that according to Demon, he’d disappeared wearing.

Skull shakes his head. “It’s in evidence.”

“You’re building a fuckin’ case against us?” Pyro’s face is bright red.

Mine is a likewise colour as I work through the implications. Cops waiting or not, I’m about to put my hands on him when there’s a commotion in the room above—shouts of “Put your hands up!” and another yell of, “Jordan, time’s up.”

Skull jerks his head upward as if acknowledging the faceless voice, then looks at Clare apologetically and demands of his ex-old lady, “I want a DNA test, Mel.”

The atmosphere could be cut with a knife. After all he’s done to her, after the pain he’s put her through, he’s now calling her a liar.

I get up into his face. “You don’t trust her? You have the fuckin’ balls to question the woman you raped and impregnated?”

“It wasn’t rape. She consented.”

“I don’t fuckin’ think so,” I tell him. My face is glowing but for once I don’t mind it betraying how angry I am. “We’re going to see you in court, fucker.”

“Bikers taking a cop to court?” He scoffs. He turns to look at one of his colleagues, who’s bravely descended the stairs. “I’ve said all I’m going to. Now I’m taking my wife and we’re both going to walk out of this compound. You’re going to do nothing to stop me.”

He looks toward his wife, gesturing she’s free to go. Which she is. With the heavy presence of cops, our hands are tied. But she doesn’t make a move to go to his side.

I watch her carefully. I’ve only once before seen a woman fall apart while struggling to hold herself together, and that was the night Brick had died. Loss and betrayal war on the features of Clare’s face now, and it would take a harder man than I not to feel sorry for her. In one night, she’s had her world torn asunder. Her defence of the man had been blown wide open by the very words that had come out of his mouth.

He’s a liar, a cheater, and uses women as if they mean nothing. She must now be questioning all that they’d had, and what they’d really meant to each other.

Something drives me to offer her a chance. Putting myself between him and her, I address Clare. “You don’t have to go with him. We’ve got no argument with you. If you need help, we can give it to you.”

Clare looks astonished. Her eyes widen, and her hand goes to her head.

“She’s coming with me,” Skull states angrily.

Clare looks from him to me, then back again, then sighs. She eyes the mob of angry bikers with disdain in her eyes, then again shakes her head and finally steps closer to her man.

She’s made her choice and thrown away the escape route I offered to her. My jaw clenches. Fucking civilians stick together. Skull, Clare, and the cops who came to their rescue, disappear up the stairs. The non-climax leaves us in stunned silence.

But now we’ve got to deal with any possible fallout to the club. “Church in half an hour,” I announce, then my eyes fall on Mel who’s gone completely white. “Pyro, see to your woman.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The aftermath of that incident continues for days. Mel’s distraught and first pushes Pyro away from her, and I spend time trying to give sage advice when what do I know about women? Then, it’s counselling my club and Demon’s about what knowledge Skull could have taken with him.

Were we facing a RICO investigation? The circumstances that first brought me to the Vegas club all come flooding back, with brothers worried we were going to be harassed by the cops. Expecting an imminent raid has all brothers on tenterhooks.

It all hinged on the question, had he found anything to take down the club? That it had been months since he’d left Colorado seemed to suggest he had nothing on us. But having had a plant in one of our chapters hit us all hard.

When Demon and his VP, Beef—a man I knew from my time in Tucson—arrive in Vegas, they’re full of remonstrations about what they could have done to prevent the mess. But when I questioned Demon how Skull had come to them in the first place, I honestly couldn’t see what he’d done wrong. And that’s what I told him.

It was a fraught few days. All my prez’s diplomacy is called into action in the numerous meetings and discussions.

Not one member wants anything other than to see Skull meet Satan, but with his connections, any attempt on his life would fall back on the club. In the end, I persuade them that Mel had the right idea, and that while the legal route was long, it was the right path.

To top it all off, and down to the stress, Mel had a miscarriage. A world of hurt summed up in a few simple words.

It hadn’t mattered to her and Pyro whose baby it was. It was hers. It was theirs. It was already loved and cared for. Skull had murdered that kid just as much as if he’d taken a knife and cut it out of her. We all knew who was responsible.

We had another fucking funeral, this time for a kid that had never known life. Then, it wasn’t my problem any more as Pyro took Melissa home to Colorado, and the clubhouse was back to being ours.

After such an emotional time, it took a while for us to settle and get back to normal. The threat that Skull was only the vanguard for the feds to swoop down on the MC was always on our minds, but as days, then weeks went by, I made a concerted effort to put it behind us.

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