Page 45 of Ravaged and Ruined
“To start a fucking war.” I spin, grab the bullet from the dresser and storm out of the room with rage boiling hot in my veins.
I charge down the hall, my fist slamming against door after door, deliberate and loud.
“Church. Now.”
Doors snap open. No hesitation. No questions. One by one, brothers spill into the hallway, half-dressed, groggy, but snap out of it the second they see my face. They know my tone. The edge in my voice that says shit’s about to blow.
I take the stairs two at a time, fury coiled tight beneath my skin. Zoey, Midge, and Marianna are in the common room tidying up, whispering to each other so they don’t wake up the brothers asleep down here.
When they hear me, they freeze mid-step. Zoey’s hand goes still on the coffee pot. Midge clutches a towel, wide-eyed. Marianna stiffens with a plate in her hands, like one wrong move will get her caught in the crossfire. Smart girls. They don’t say a word. Even Dog tucks his tail between his legs and scurries under a table with his head in his paws.
I stalk past them and head to where the others are still sleeping. I kick the chair Grizzly is passed out on hard enough to jar him and the others awake.
“Up. Now. Church.”
They wake fast, sleep wiped clean by the fire in my voice. This isn’t a meeting. It’s a reckoning.
By the time I hit my gavel on the table, everyone is there.
Grizzly. Surge. Backdraft. Padre. Tango. Pike. Rancor. Crank. Even Hashtag, half-dressed and blinking through the sleep in his eyes.
I don’t sit.
I slam the bullet down on the center of the table so hard it leaves a dent in the wood.
“This,” I growl, “was given to Lacey as a warning. Courtesy of the Bloody fucking Scorpions.”
Everyone goes still.
“I want names. I want locations. And I want fucking blood.”
The table’s dead silent.
The bullet sits there like a loaded accusation. Nobody moves. Nobody breathes.
Good.
They feel the weight of it. They know what it means. The Bloody Scorpions crossed a fucking line. Not just with me. With all of us.
“I want that son of a bitch who approached her,” I snap, my voice rough enough to scrape bone. “I want a name, a patch, and when we find his ass, it’s fucking mine.”
Grizzly leans forward, eyes hard beneath his heavy eyelids. “When did this happen?”
I meet his gaze and don’t blink. “Yesterday.”
Tango runs a hand through his hair, shaking off the sleep. “That was before we hijacked their shipment. They couldn’t have known we were coming.”
I nod. “Which means they’re confident or desperate. Either way, it’s a mistake.”
“I ran a search before I crashed...” Hashtag has his laptop open, his fingers flying across the keys. “Yup. That’s what I thought. The guns we took last night are an exact match to the ones we found at the warehouse. The Bloody Scorpions must have been using it as a stash house and left a crate behind when they cleared out.”
Backdraft’s twitching, the fire barely banked in his eyes. “I can torch their damn clubhouse tonight.”
“Not yet,” I bark. “We’re not flailing in the dark. We hit smart. We make it count.”
I look to Padre, who’s watching me like he’s ready to give a sermon.
“Scripture says vengeance is the Lord’s,” he mutters. “But I think even He’d understand this kind.”
