Page 201 of Fury

Two more of my men stopped him in his tracks, yanking him back.

“Never trusted you! Never!” Led shouted, bucking in their hold.

“Oh, don’t get me started with you, asshole!” Butler replied. “You always wanted a piece of my woman from the very beginning.” He gestured at Nina. “You tried so hard, but she never wanted your crooked dick, did she?”

My hand itched. My heartbeat slowed, every sense loaded, primed.

“You!” Reich yelled. “You didn’t deserve her, you son of a bitch!” He lunged toward Butler, a gun in his hand.

I slid my Smith & Wesson 1911 from the back of my jeans, released the safety, and fired. Reich’s head knocked back, and he crumpled to the floor, the thud the only sound in a sudden, tremendous silence. Blood spouted from the raw opening my bullet had gouged in his forehead. Led fell to his side, a moan on his lips, his hands on Reich’s lifeless chest.

For injustices of our past, our present. My future.

“You did good, Kid.”My father’s shadow passed through me.

That euphoria colored my vision, filling me with clarity, calm. Washing me with satisfaction.

Rena’s eyes lit up at me from across that wild, rowdy smoke-filled room, through men’s laughter and howls, through chains scraping and pulling, through the slice and chop of blades. Her growing smile lit me up, and I took in a slow, long breath on its blaze, my heartbeat steadying once more.

I shot Butler a look. “That good for you, Jack? Cause that’s good for me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s good for me,” Butler muttered, shifting away from the carnage.

I pushed the safety back up and tucked my gun behind my back. “Get out of my club.”

57

“That’s everything I know,” mumbledReich’s old lady, Deanna.

She’d been uptight and snappy when my men first brought her in from the hotel in Deadwood where she’d been holed up waiting for Reich and Nina. When she stepped into the clubroom, her eyes had followed the prospects who’d been scrubbing the floor with bleach and mopping it over with ammonia. She’d slowed down, but she’d kept moving. She knew. I’d bet she’d been prepared for years now.

After sitting in a hard wooden chair in my office with me, Catch, and Drac as we went over every detail of Reich’s financials with her, she’d relented, bit by sour bit. Money stashed in dummy corporations, in her kitchen pantry in boxes where cookies, macaroni, and cereal ought to be. In winter comforter covers packed in her closets. In hollowed out speakers, stereo components, DVD players, fake books in her living room. In taped up packets in her attic walls, in an old rusted hot water heater, a broken vacuum cleaner in her basement

Catch got off his phone. “They’re here.”

I glanced at the bank of security monitors to my left. Each national officer of the Flames of Hell was on my property. President, Treasurer, Secretary, Sergeant at Arms. Their eyes flicked over the large room. Beers were put in their hands.

“They’re here?” Deanna said, her voice thin.

“They came to see what your old man’s been up to. It’s time for them to face facts.” I slanted my head at her. “We’re done. You spend some time with your sister. Two of my men will be taking you home to Ohio and getting the cash from your house. I’ll leave you with this amount.” I slid a piece of paper towards her. Her eyebrows lifted. Was she pleased or disappointed?

“How’s that look to you?”

She squirmed in her chair. “That’s, uh, very fair.”

“Fair? Pretty fucking generous is what that is. What do you say?” said Drac, his tone as sharp as his fanged teeth now showing.

A frown passed over her already pinched face. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s more like it. Now move.” Drac motioned for her to get up quickly.

“Get her out of here from the back,” I said.

Catch led Deanna by the arm out of my office, and handed her off to another one of my men for safekeeping and transport to Catch’s house, where Nina waited for her.

I headed into the meeting room, Catch and Drac at my sides. Four hardened faces looked up at me. They were on my turf now. The elite. The elders. The select elect. The higher ups of the Flames of Hell.

My captive audience.

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