Page 89 of The Fire We Crave

Butcher shrugs. “They fancy themselves smooth criminals. All their expensive wool coats and pin stripe suits. As if the illusion they’re wealthy and civilized makes them not stone-cold killers. I’d rather be raw and real and make no pretenses of who we are than live like imposters every day of the week.”

“Amen to that,” I mutter. All that fancy shit makes me itch. Can’t imagine riding around in a sports car or some fucking high-roller chauffeured shit. Give me a bike, well-worn denim, and the pride of wearing my cut any day of the week.

“Zakharov then went into some long-ass story about his sister and how she looked after him and his family after their mother died, and so he views her husband as his brother, blah-blah-blah.”

“We need to take it seriously, though,” I say, irritated by Zakharov’s bravado. “None of us around this table are related,but if Zakharov took one of us, we’d all come out swinging in a heartbeat too. We might not call it a blood debt. But it’s the same thing. They hurt one of us, we’d hurt one of them. We might not like them, might not agree with what they’re trying to do, but we shouldn’t underestimate how strong their feelings of brotherhood and family are. If we underestimate and dismiss it, we might not come up with the right solution.”

Wraith grins at me across the table. “We missed you too.”

I furrow my brow. “What?”

Wraith shrugs. “Just that it’s good to have your voice of reason back at the table.”

Butcher rolls his neck from side to side. I hear the crack. “Anyway, he says he wants one of us. One of the ones who sit at this table. He says he knows who we all are and will only accept the brother we choose alive, and with their cut, so they can kill the person themselves.”

It reminds me of the scene in a television drama when imprisoned members of a motorcycle club are meant to choose someone to be killed. It’s a brutal and unforgiving death. And depending on how angry they are, the death could be slow and torturous.

Jackal scrunches up his nose. “This is all around fucked up, but…let’s imagine we did some weird rock, paper, scissors for who should die, why on earth would he request they must be alive? Like we’d kill one of our own and deliver a dead body? What kind of mind does a guy have to have to set those kinds of rules?”

Butcher shakes his head. “We wouldn’t be playing rock, paper, scissors. I’d man up and admit I was the one who shot his brother-in-law, and I’d pack a hand grenade or some shit, walk in there, and then blow the fuckers up.”

“Let’s not joke about it.” Grudge leans forward, his knuckles white as he grips the edge of the table. “We don’t make dealswith the devil. We don’t send one of our own unarmed. If we agreed to this, they’d own us. Today, it’s just one body. Who the hell knows what they’d ask for next time. So, let’s not even hypothesize about that shit.”

Atom runs a hand through his hair and tugs on the end. “We need to understand what happens when we say no. They aren’t going to just walk away. We got lucky last time, but the Bratva aren’t going to forget this. I feel like they’re going to try and exact revenge one way or another. They’re requesting this for a brother-in-law. They’ve gone after the women of this town. They don’t have the same moral code we have about not involving families, which is why Ember’s bar and Quinn’s place were set on fire. What do you think, Smoke?”

“I think we’re already dead men walking in their eyes,” I say. “I’m with the rest of you. The question isn’t whether we give them someone. The question is, how will they come for us when we don’t. Because let’s be real, they don’t leave loose ends. What did you say, Butcher?”

Butcher lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. “I told him to go fuck himself. He told me we had a week to decide. That I should sleep on it and realize this is a good fucking deal and a way to end this without more bloodshed.”

“Except for the person if we handed someone over,” Grudge says.

“And the businesses they continue to then extort once we back down,” Jackal adds.

“I told him he had some balls calling me and telling me about blood debts for family after he had his men set fire to Ember’s bar. The guy tried to tell me it wasn’t the same, because Ember was still alive. I managed to keep my shit together until he added the wordsfor nowat the end of it.”

“Motherfucker,” Atom says as he slams the table.

Silence settles in the room as everyone processes what they’ve heard. The club can’t just worry about themselves. They’ve already demonstrated they’re willing to destroy the town, go after club family members, and torch anything they don’t need that’s in their way.

Jackal sighs. “The Bratva have already shown they won’t stop at the men in this room. They’re picking up on everyone’s weakness. The women in your families. And what this ranch and the town mean to you.”

Wraith exhales, shaking his head. “We can’t fight a war without more manpower. We don’t have enough members to protect ourselves and everyone else. We could do lockdown in short bursts, but people will lose their minds, stuck in here for that long. I’m gonna put out a request to six clubs to all send four members each. Fuck knows where we’ll put them.”

Atom leans forward. “I can solve some of that problem. Dad’s house is empty. We could put eight or ten in there. Two to a room. If you’re thinking of patrols, they do twelve-hour shifts. And we could easily convert one of the outbuildings into a temporary bunkhouse. Would need some labor to pull it together, but we install another five bunks in there, we could make it work. Would be warm enough for another month or two if we put a couple of log burners in it.”

Butcher sucks on his cigarette like it’s giving him life, before blowing a stream of smoke into the air. “I like it, but it’s all defensive. I want to take Lev Zakharov, use him as leverage.”

I do a double take at Butcher. “I’m all for keeping the pressure on, but killing another of their family is only going to escalate things.”

Butcher nods. “It does. It’s a game of chicken. And we aren’t going to blink first.”

“Yippee-ki-yay motherfuckers,” Shade says. “I like that backbone, Prez.”

Shade doesn’t usually say much. That might be more words than I’ve heard the guy say since I met him.

“We don’t know what condition Lev’s in,” I say. “I shot him, remember? But he’s obviously still alive.”

Butcher shrugs with a steely glint in his eye. “As Zakharov said to me about Ember…for now.”

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