Page 113 of The Fire We Crave

Yeah. The fucking sofa. I’ve given up trying to keep him off it. He knows just how to look at me with those sad eyes.

“Thinking of asking for a vote on making her my old lady.”

Butcher smiles and slaps my shoulder. “Never thought I’d see the day, but she’s been good for you. Easy yes vote for me. We can do it at the next Church. Just let me know as soon as you make up your mind.”

When my phone rings, the sight of Quinn’s name on the screen does something to the shell of my heart. “Hey, sugar. What’s up?”

“Could you…I mean, I know you’re busy…but are you near the bakery? Can you come here? Now?”

I put the coffee cup down and stand to attention. Bones is barking in the background, and there’s something in her tone. The quaver of fear I heard that first morning when she grabbed the knife at the sound of Atom’s truck on the drive.

“What’s happened?”

“There was a man. He’s scored a giant X into the bakery window. And he stuck a photograph of me and you in the clubhouse rear yard to the front door. Kinsey and I had agreed to come in early to fire up the ovens. I got there first, and when I walked from the kitchen to the front of the store, he was right there on the other side of the glass.”

“I’m on my way.” I tip my head toward the door, so Butcher knows we need to leave. “Are you safe?” I pat my cut pocket to make sure I still have my keys and didn’t put them in my room.

“I’m in your truck with Kinsey and Bones. I was going to let him hang out in the yard with us today. Kinsey told me there’s aphotograph outside the school too. She saw it when she walked to work this morning. It’s a photograph of Catfish and his sister doing yard work at her house. She didn’t think anything of it until now.”

I’ve never been more relieved I talked her into taking my truck, a more reliable vehicle than her car. Sturdier, too. “Okay. Stay where you are. I’ll be there in ten. Stay where there are lots of people. Don’t drive home. Drive towards the club if you need to.”

“Are they watching us, Ronan?”

“Seems like it, sweetheart. Be there soon. Stay with Kinsey.”

Butcher is already by my side as we walk out into the lot. “Trouble?”

“Photographs. Of the women in the town with the brothers. Attached to their workplaces. Me and Quinn on her bakery. Catfish and his sister on the school.”

“Ember and Atom?” Butcher asks.

I shrug. “No idea. But maybe drive past Whiskey Fever to see.”

Wraith storms up the gravel driveway, pulls to a halt in a cloud of dust, and reaches into his cut. He produces a photograph. “Fuckers put this on my mailbox.”

It’s a picture of him and Raven. Fen is on his shoulders.

“They’re fucking cowards,” Butcher says.

“I gotta go. Quinn got one stuck to her bakery.”

Butcher nods. “I’ll rally the rest of the brothers and some of our guests, then join you.”

I don’t care how much pressure it puts on my body—I need to ride fast. Ignoring the twinge of pain every time I move my core, I lean with the road, hugging the white line as it passes in a blur. It’s a struggle to keep the danger Quinn faced in perspective.

Quinn is on Main Street. With Kinsey.

There are other people around.

She has Bones with her.

But the Bratva were at her bakery.

Again.

Assholes.

But this time, it seems as though it is part of a larger message.

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