Page 14 of Queen of Anarchy (Dirty Broken Savages 2)

Knox laughs. “We haven’t even come close to starting shit,” he says. “Trust me, you’d know if we were.” He looks to the president, who barely spares him a glance in return. “One of your boys here got handsy with our friend just now. We don’t take kindly to that shit.”

“Thank you, Knox,” Gage says firmly, cutting him off before he can launch into the whole thing again. “I’ve got it from here.”

He turns to look back at the president, and seeing Gage like this, I can kind of understand why the others follow him. His commanding, controlled persona makes even Knox bite his tongue, and I would have said it was impossible to shut him up before.

Gage draws himself up and meets the president’s eyes easily. “We were within our rights for what happened with Derrek,” he says. “He came into our club, stepping over all the boundaries to get what he wanted. And then when he couldn’t get a dancer to cooperate with him, he tried to assault her.”

From the look on the president’s face, he already knows all of this, and Gage probably knows that too. He’s just driving the point home.

“He came into our territory when no deal had been agreed upon, and he disrespected us. It had to be punished. We had to retaliate. I don’t know if Derrek was acting on his own or on official orders, but—”

“No one told him to do that,” the president interrupts quickly. “He was acting on his own from the minute he stepped foot into your club.”

I fight the urge to smirk at that. It’s clear this guy doesn’t want to go to war with the Kings, which is funny, considering how the Devils outnumber them. But if they tried to start shit with us right now, they’d have to deal with Knox, whose reputation I’m sure precedes him, as well as Gage and Priest, neither of whom have cracked a smile since we walked in. Ash is probably an unknown quantity, since he doesn’t walk around giving off ‘I’ll fuck you up’ vibes the way the others do, but either way, it’s clearly not a fight the motorcycle gang’s leader wants to start.

“Tell your men to stand down,” Gage says, and the president looks around the room.

The atmosphere is still so tense you could probably cut it with a knife, and aside from Knox, who can’t stop grinning like a psychopath, everyone looks grim and ready to jump into some shit if given the slightest provocation.

I feel a heavy gaze on me as the president looks me over, probably wondering who I am and what I’m doing here—and why the Kings of Chaos are willing to go to bat for me.

Well, he can keep fucking wondering.

The president doesn’t immediately give the order to stand down, and I can see the muscles jumping in Gage’s jaw as he clenches and unclenches it.

“We didn’t start this shit,” Gage tells the president in a hard voice. “What happened just now was because, once again, one of yours disrespected us. That seems to be a trend these days.”

He puts a threat in the words that everyone can hear, and it snaps the club president out of whatever stupid move he might’ve been contemplating in his head.

“Put the guns away,” he tells the club members sharply, and his men comply with some grumbling. The one in front of me doesn’t look away from me as he holsters his gun, his eyes narrowed. There’s still dried blood around his nose from where I elbowed him in it, and I hope like hell that it’s broken.

I should have hit him harder, the fucker.

Gage folds his arms, appearing even more commanding now that we’re not at gunpoint anymore.

“Why are you here?” the president asks, and it’s clear he wants us gone as soon as possible. The feeling is entirely mutual. I’m ready to be done with this fucking place, but we came here for a reason.

“I thought we got a message from you,” Gage says after a moment’s hesitation. It’s a subtle response, trying to get a hint of whether the club had anything to do with Ivan’s body without asking directly.

The president just looks confused, though. “A message? We didn’t send any message.”

“Are you sure?” Gage asks, narrowing his eyes. “Nothing you wanted us to know?”

The lanky man shakes his head. “No. I regret what happened with Derrek, but once you sent him back to us, we had no plans to retaliate. If you got a message you think was from us, then it must’ve been from someone else trying to start trouble.”

It looks like it’s not easy for him to say all of that, probably because he thinks it makes him look weak in front of his people or some other macho bullshit. The rest of the Diamond Devils look just as confused as their leader, and a couple of them break into a whispered conversation, probably wondering if they’re being set up or if someone else in their organization is going rogue.

Shit. If that’s so much of an issue, then their leader needs to get his people in fucking line.

Either the president is a great actor, which doesn’t seem all that likely, or it wasn’t the Diamond Devils who put Ivan’s body out on display. It was a long shot to begin with, I guess.

I don’t know if I feel better or worse knowing we can cross them off our list as a possibility. It means we’re right back at square one.

Gage just nods, seeming to accept the man’s words as the truth. “It must have been a misunderstanding then,” he says. “No harm done.”

That doesn’t do anything to relax the tension in the air. If a car backfired outside right now, it would probably spark a blood bath.

The guns have been put away, but everyone in this place is still on a hair trigger. One wrong move, and this could break bad in a big way.

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