Page 191 of Fury

“Scrib,” came the reply. The reply I didn’t want to hear.

My breath hooked in my chest.

“He told me he’s been watching your club since things got touchy with the Blades months ago,” she said in a rush.

Scrib had been the one watching us.

“He recognized me from when I came to Nebraska with Grace,” Tania said.

“Figured you and I were connected?”

She nodded. “Reich accused me of being Butler’s mistress, and then after I opened my big fat mouth and said that I knew you, he accused me of being your and Butler’s go between. He obviously doesn’t like it that you two are allies.”

Seething bile seeped through my veins polluting my blood.

Scrib was here on my soil, my territory, and Reich had brought him here, the two of them plotting. Together they had tortured an innocent woman for kicks to send me and Butler a message. To fuck with my head.

Fuck that.

Fuck both of them.

Fuck it all.

“I’d overheard them talking when Reich locked me in the bathroom at the cabin,” Tania continued. “Scrib told him how Pick, this Broken Blade guy, was impressed with his offer this time around. Scrib said he was counting on this all to work out. That the Smoking Guns has been looking to stretch this way for a long time now.”

I’ll bet they were.

If I didn’t do something about Reich now, if the Smoking Guns took over the Blades using them as a satellite for their own purposes and resources, it was only a matter of time before they pushed and shoved at my borders and chomped at my business, their ultimate goal and Reich’s.

If they had cut Tania for kicks, what would they do if they found Lenore and realized who she was?

Scrib had been there that last night of my captivity. He’d gone down on Rena, he’d cut me. He’d taken part in the revelry that night, and on many, many other nights. She’d told me about his repeated assaults on her in hallways, while she’d be doing laundry, when he’d take her home after babysitting his own kid. If he found her, I had no doubt he’d be leading the rampage for her blood.

Reich had set this shit in motion, that motherfucker. This was Reich doing what he did best. Setting fires and keeping them blazing, all the while looking out for number one and hitting me where he knew it stung the most.

“You know how he got that name, Tania?” My voice was low, controlled.

“No.”

“He scribbled on my face with his knife.”

“Oh God.”

“There was no God that day.”

She put a hand on my arm, and I refocused on her big, emotion-filled eyes.

“Finger, Scrib boasted to me about when they’d taken you prisoner. That later you’d stolen from them and he’d wanted to go after you, but because of the truce between your clubs he hadn’t. He said ‘Maybe it’s time that truce expired.’”

Screw that fucking truce.

Cold venom seeped through my chest. “Anything else I should know?”

“Yes, one more thing.” She let out a heavy breath. “Reich admitted to me he was the one who set the bomb in Nina’s car because Butler and Nina deserved it for fucking with him. That Butler took something of his, and he didn’t mean Nina. That the two of them thought they were smarter than him, but he was going to put an end to it once and for all.”

“Is he now?” I said under my breath.

Butler and Nina had taken something of Reich’s that he was desperate to get back. So desperate that he’d even tried to kill his Goldilocks to get his point across and get it back. That explained Nina and Butler together—she’d helped him get some kind of hard core evidence, and he’d gotten her out from under Reich. He was protecting her. Why the hell hadn’t he told me? And what the hell had they stolen from him?

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