Page 180 of Fury

I wanted more.

I’d demanded to be with her. It was a force I couldn’t control. A base instinct, a reflex that took hold of me sitting there in her beautiful house, watching her, breathing her in. Touching her. I was glad I’d said what I had. Fuck timing, fuck all the reasons.

I wanted another chance with her. We were unfinished business. She was a river that still rushed through my veins, the source undiscovered.

I wanted her. I wanted her back, to try again. To have that life we always wanted together, or maybe to try something new.

Right now, I had to find out from Butler what the hell his intentions were by having Reich’s sister-in-law as his old lady. Was it a ploy set up by Reich? Did the two of them have a secret deal between them and were pulling my chain? I wouldn’t allow Reich access to my territory, no way in this hell or the other, and I’d freeze out the Jacks for good if Butler was double dealing me.

Butler glared at me, his pale blue eyes looking like chunks of glass in the sunlight out in the Jacks’ courtyard.

“I want to talk to you,” I told him. “Let’s take a walk down by the track.”

We walked down the side of the hill to the old go-kart track where two Jacks were testing a rat rod.

“I’ll get straight to the point,” I said.

“You always do.”

“Why are you with that girl?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your old lady. Don’t tell me you fell hard for her and dragged her all the way out here from Ohio ’cause you couldn’t live without her.”

Butler crossed his arms. “Something like that.”

“That something ain’t it.”

He didn’t say a word.

“It’s me you’re talking to, Butler, not Jump. You and me have always been able to put our cards on the table with each other.”

“I went with my gut on this one.”

Just like I thought, no heart involved. Only his strategic brain cells and maybe his dick, but not his heart.

“You went with your brain,” I shot back. “Nina is connected to Reich’s club—one of the strongest charters of my MC—which pushes product from the east into the south. He’s been looking to find his own outlet through the Plains to the west, but that’s my route, and so far, all these years, no one’s fucked with me. Reich, your old lady’s brother-in-law, has been dying to get some play out here. You hooked up with that girl and handed him access to the Jacks on a silver platter while you hooked up with me at the same time?”

“I haven’t handed anybody anything, let alone on a silver platter. And I’m not interested in fucking with you, Finger. I worked for you whenever I was allowed to while I was nomad, even did it on the sly when I shouldn’t have. I respect you, always have, for years now, and you know it.”

“I do know. But don’t tell me Jump let you back on board here at his club ’cause he missed your handsome face and witty personality.”

He let out a dry laugh. “He definitely didn’t miss me.”

“You wanted back into your club. You had to bring something to the table, and you did. That’s good. I understand that.”

Butler explained his deep-seated guilt about having let down his club with his cocaine addiction and subsequent double dealing.

“That’s a huge fuck-up,” I said. “But you do something Reich doesn’t like—let’s say, kick his sister-in-law to the curb now that she cheated on you—he’ll come after you. He’s a possessive shit on all counts—business, family, women. He doesn’t need much in the way of an excuse to drop everything and come calling.” My neck straightened. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

He returned my hard gaze with his own. “Yeah, I know a few things about Reich. A few things I shouldn’t. I did a second job for his chapter last year, a job nobody else would touch. That gave me an in with him. An in I took advantage of.”

I needed to know what Butler had found out. I’d been patiently waiting for years to hang Reich with a noose of his own making. To rally the Flames against him with solid proof. To ring that bell for all to hear—unmistakeable and clear. This was why I’d nudged Butler his way in the first place.

“And the frosting on that cake was hooking up with his old lady’s sister to keep you and him on the same page?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

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