Page 5 of The Heart We Guard
Lev Zakharov, son of the Bratva kingpin, has pissed me off one too many times. And his days of planning the demise of my motorcycle club, the Colorado chapter of the Iron Outlaws, is over.
He better breathe deep for the next ten minutes, because he won’t be breathing after that.
I want him dead.
I want him so dead that I can bring him back to life, to then kill him all over again.
Over the last few months, he’s repeatedly fucked with the club and our families.
You don’t get to fuck with my daughter.
You don’t get to fuck with my club.
And you don’t get to fuck with me.
I don’t care if his father is the head of the Bratva—and I don’t just mean some local chapter, I meantheBratva. Lev is leaving this earth tonight, and I’ll see him in hell when I get there to destroy him all over again.
The sky is a solid midnight blue. No moon. A few stars. And some clouds that promise much-needed water. It’s been along, hot summer, but as soon as the calendar clicked over into September, we’ve been teased that rain is on its way.
Perhaps tonight is the night. A downpour would cleanse us all of what we’re about to do.
I walk over to my road captain, Smoke, who was recently injured in a smoke jump gone wrong. I’m worried about his mental health after everything he’s gone through, but he’s assured me he needs this too. He needs to be here with the club, because they’ve attacked Quinn. Too early to say she’s his old lady, but it sure as fuck looks like it’s headed that way.
He’s chatting with Atom, my enforcer, the man who had the balls to go against my hands-off clause and claim my daughter, Ember, as his old lady. I didn’t handle it all that well, and now my relationship with the two of them is tattered and frayed.
Things feel like they’re falling apart. But we need to hold on for just one more night. Get the Bratva out of our town, and then we can breathe. We can rest, regroup, right wrongs, and put things back to the way they’re supposed to be. Reset some boundaries that women don’t come between brothers. That the life isn’t one of domestic bliss where brothers are distracted by pussy, but one where brotherhood and the pursuits of spoils wins.
“Ready?” I ask Atom and Smoke.
“To break into a house with who knows how many assailants with who knows what weapons?” Smoke says. “Absolutely.”
Atom folds his arms across his chest. “If we find Lev, he’s mine.”
I don’t blame him for his anger. After all, Lev kissed Ember. And his men set fire to her bar and almost killed her.
I shake my head. “We find Lev, he’s dead. Doesn’t matter who does it. We’re not taking any chances he could get away while we try to find you.”
I say the words, even though I feel the same way—that I should be the one who gets to take the man down.
Smoke looks to Atom. “I’ll help you find him.”
It irritates me.
He should be helping me. The club. His words are a sign he sides with Atom. That he thinks I was wrong to try kicking Atom out of the club for hooking up with my daughter and going against the hands-off clause I put in place.
Deep down inside, there’s a kernel of worry that I might have gone too far.
But admitting that surely shows weakness.
I lead the men to the property where we know Zakharov is inside. There’s some mumbling behind me. Zimmer, a biker from the Wyoming Chapter who is a wizard with alarms and shit, is assuring Smoke he’s here for the action.
My hope is that if I can pick the locks to get us in, and Zimmer can switch off the alarm, we’ll have a little more time to find the guy before security is alerted.
King, the national president of the Iron Outlaws, arranged for some reinforcements for us from brother clubs to help catch Zakharov. Wyoming, Indiana, Utah, and Nebraska answered the call.
There is no way this ends badly for us. Casualties, maybe. But it’s such a show of force that it doesn’t matter how many people are in that house—there are more of us.
It’s three in the morning. The goal is, despite our large number, this will be a silent entry until it turns into a gunfight. The good news is those who have too much cash tend to splash it on big properties, which mean fewer neighbors and fewer witnesses.
