Page 290 of Fearless

“You brought me out here to kill me?”

“You had to know this would happen, man,” Aidan said. “After you turned on your own club–”

“It wasn’t my club! I never wanted to be one of them. Aidan.” He took a half step forward. “You know I would never try to go back to Jasper. I wouldn’t hurt you guys like that.”

“Jasper’s dead.”

“Good! I don’t care. Aidan, please–”

“How could we ever trust you? You proved that you’re not loyal. I don’t care what kind of shithead Jasper was; he was your president, and you told us his secrets. That’s called being a rat, Greg. Did you think we’d ever patch you? You think we’d knowingly patch a rat?” The words were cruel and he hated them. He hated all of this. He wanted to scream.

“Please,” Greg said in a small voice, his chin beginning to tremble.

“It’s my fault,” Aidan said. “I contacted you. I encouraged you to leave the Carpathians.” He took a deep breath that didn’t bring him the air he needed. “I’m sorry for that. Really I am. I wish I didn’t have to do this, believe me.”

Greg looked like a sacrificial lamb. Some poor, innocent thing that had to fall beneath the churning wheels of the MC machine. A casualty of protocol. He knew too much, had seen too much, had belonged to the enemy side.

Aidan tried not to, but he couldn’t help remembering Greg at sixteen, scrawny and pale, fending off the jabs and towel-snaps of the jocks in the PE locker room. He didn’t want to remember Alex Curtis putting a hand around Greg’s throat and slamming him back against the lockers, the sound of Greg’s head hitting the metal.

Just a nerdy kid with nothing to his name. He didn’t deserve this. He wasn’t some thug, some white trash crusader like Larsen, hell bent on revenge and violence. Greg wasn’t a Carpathian, not in his heart, where it counted. He was just this unlucky kid who’d thought Aidan was cool, and who’d been trying to do the right thing in an unjust world.

“I’m sorry,” Aidan said again. “I’m so sorry.”

Greg shut his eyes, throat quivering as he swallowed, resolved to his fate.

Aidan felt the sweat on his palm, the way his finger slipped against the trigger. This was one of those moments that had the potential to determine his future in the club. One of those situations his president – his overbearing father – had thrown at him on purpose, to test his loyalty and mettle. Killing Greg had nothing to do with Greg. This was about him, about his penchant for leadership and making the hard call.

He thought of his brothers. Dad, Collier, Walsh, Michael, Mercy – they wouldn’t have hesitated. They would have put a round in Greg’s heart and gone back to the truck for the shovel. No second thoughts. No regrets. Hell, he wasn’t sure his stepmother and sister wouldn’t have done it.

But Aidan felt his heart squeeze tight.

Wrong, a voice said, ringing through his head. Not his subconscious, but every fiber of his being:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

His gun fell limp to his side. “Run.”

Greg’s eyes opened. “Wha–”

“Run,” Aidan said. “Get out of here, go. And don’t look back. Get as far away from Knoxville as you can. Go! Run!”

Greg slipped as he spun, feet sliding on the fallen pine needles. But then he took off, sprinting away into the gloomy evening, toward the long stretch of pasture that would eventually take him to the road, and then freedom.

He looked over his shoulder once, and Aidan waved him on with the gun. Then he kept running.

Aidan stood rooted until the chill of the wind overtook him. Until he was shaking, and Greg had receded into nothing, and night had fallen. Then he walked slowly back to the truck.

**

Ghost woke automatically at six the next morning. Maggie’s face was against his throat, her warm breath ruffling across his Adam’s apple, one of her legs between both of his. She was asleep, but the feel of her hand down low against his stomach, even unmoving like this, had the ability to turn his mind to unproductive things if he let his thoughts dwell too long on the shape and heat of it.

He eased away from her and sat up. She murmured something, fingers brushing against his thigh.

“I’ll come back,” he promised, smoothing her hair back off her face. It didn’t matter that she pouted in front of the mirror about the lines around her eyes. She was only thirty-eight, and she’d always look like jailbait to him.

Barefoot, he walked past Ava’s closed door – he could hear Mercy snoring softly – and went through the dark living room by feel, managing not to stub his toe as he made his way to the front door, and then opened it.

There was the morning paper, waiting on the stoop like always. He opened it up, and in the light of the streetlamps, saw the headline on the front page.

Mayor Funds MC War: The Shocking Truth of Mayor Stephens’ Anti-Crime Agenda

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