Page 196 of The Wild Charge

“Yes. I generally do.”

“You know what Phil would say.”

She sighed. “But you’re here, so I guess I’ll have to hear it anyway. Fatherhood’s made a right bore out of you, Kingston.”

“Raven,” he chided.

“Money Man,” she shot back. “You aren’t Phil, and Phil isn’t my father, and my father isn’t worth listening to on any topic. Tell me to go home all you want, and talk about safety – but I wasn’t safe there, either. That’s why I came here, and look how that turned out. Being a part of this family means never having aguaranteeof safety. I’ve always known that and I’ve done the best I can.” When he started to protest, she held up a finger.Wait. “But I’m feeling fairly safenow.

“King,” she went on, posture relaxing, demeanor softening. “I’m not sure you quite realize it yet, but what you’ve done – what the club’s just done – that’shuge.”

“But that’s the thing: we’re not done.”

“Maybe not completely. But look at whatisdone. Girls like Siobhan, and even worse, like those girls you rescued, have been abused by him fordecades. He was untouchable. And the Lean Dogs put an end to him. He’s gone. One of the richest, most powerful, most perverted men in the country – and he’s been taken off the board. Your Lean Dogs did that. And it doesn’t matter what’s left to do, the criminal underbelly of the world knows damn well not to mess with you lot now.” Her smile was proud, to his surprise.

It surprised him, too, to hear her perspective on it all. To take a figurative step back and, for once, stop looking at what lay ahead, and instead evaluate an accomplishment.

Jack Waverly was dead, and the whole world knew it.

Whatever his face was doing, it turned her smile sly. “See? Feels good, doesn’t it? Now come here.” She wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug, and he belatedly hugged her back. “Save travels, and if I’m not back in Tennessee by the time Eden’s due, take lots and lots of video of Charlie flailing at being a dad. I can’t wait to laugh about it.”

Walsh snorted. “Me neither.”

~*~

Fox shifted his duffel higher on his shoulder and offered his left hand in an awkward, wrong-sided shake. His right hand was bound up like a club and immobilized in a sling so he didn’t fuck up the nerve grafts in his palm. “Thanks,” he told Maverick, and earned a firm left-handed shake from the New York president. “For everything.”

Maverick smiled and nodded. “We wouldn’t have missed it after what those bastards did to us. It was our pleasure.”

Fox didn’t offer any platitudes, no cliches about how it would hurt less in the future. Dealing with Maverick’s crew, it was clear that the explosion that had taken their clubhouse and their previous president had left them a stronger chapter, rather than a weaker one.

“I gotta come apprentice with you guys down south,” Pongo said with a too-broad grin. Fox still found him far too sunny, but he’d carried his weight on this op – maybe even more than his share, given the boon Detective Dixon had proved to be. “I wanna learn that spin-kick move you do.”

Fox shrugged. “It can’t be taught.”

“Hey, now, that’s not true–”

“What about those two?” Toly asked, head tilting toward the door. Mercy stood, minding his newest set of ducklings. Grayson Hunter, holding himself awkwardly thanks to his bandaged shoulder, wasn’t restrained in any way, his face that of the overwhelmed child he’d proved to be out from under his father’s influence. Luis, though, wore a bulky hoodie that hid the fact that his wrists were bound together.

Fox said, “Dr. Lécuyer tells me he has plans for both of them.”

Toly lifted a single, skeptical brow. “Any of those plans involve a shovel?”

“Eventually, I’d imagine. But we stopped trying to get him not to play with his food a long time ago.”

~*~

Reese’s pain meds made him sleepy. Tenny had already packed and double-checked both their bags. Done a walk-through of the bathroom and the sitting room to ensure they hadn’t forgotten anything. When it could be put off no longer, he roused Reese, smoothing his hair back off his face until his eyes fluttered open.

In that first moment, before his gaze focused, his eyes were flooded with fear. It was something that happened each time Tenny woke him, and each time it left Tenny wishing he’d been the one to pull the trigger on Hunter. Knowing he was dead was only a partial comfort. He wanted – with a viciousness that left him breathless – to be able to kneel at Reese’s feet with a trophy; to sayit was me. I dispatched him. For you. Giving him his meds, helping him into and out of the bathtub, into bed, didn’t feel like enough.

Then Reese realized that it was Tenny staring down at him, and he relaxed, sinking heavier against the mattress. He smiled, this soft, tender little smile that he’d been smiling since they wheeled him back from his X-rays. Tenny wanted to blame it on the drugs, because it didn’t seem possible that he washappyafter all that had happened. Unthinkable that something like the sight ofTennycould inspire gladness after learning that his father was the monster who’d shaped him, after he’d suffered violence at the hands of his brother.

Tenny hadn’t asked for details, yet, and Reese hadn’t offered them. An elephant in the corner of the room gaining mass all the time, one that might crush them when they were finally back home and properly alone together. In some respects, Tenny dreaded returning to Knoxville, because it wouldn’t, couldn’t ever be the same as it had been.

“It’s just me,” Tenny said around the now-constant lump in his throat.

“Time to go?”

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