Page 44 of Running on Empty

“I screwed up? You—”

“Should never have listened to you. Should never have let you convince us to stay away from Stevie.” My voice broke on that, all that pain we’d suffered, thinking it was the right thing… No, I wasn’t going down that path, not now. “For her own good.” I repeated his words back to him with as much venom as I could muster. “Except it wasn’t, was it? You knew that and I…” Some of the tension released from my body. “And I did too. Ronan was the only one who really understood what she actually needed.’

“When he killed her fucking mother?” Ash snapped, getting back onto his feet but preserving his distance. I watched his fists rise slightly, as if in preparation for another attack. “That was what she needed?”

“Wasn’t it? You want to think you’re better than the dads.” Our fathers had been long time ‘associates’ of some of the bigger MCs in our area. When a prez didn’t want to get their hands dirty or have a hit tracked back to them, they called our dads and the job was done fast and with little fuss. Mum, of course, hated it. “What do you think they would’ve done about the fuck Stevie’s mother had brought into the house?”

Our dads were indirectly responsible for Ronan’s actions. They’d come back from the pub full of piss and vinegar, plotting Phil’s demise, because they’d caught Stevie’s mother’s boyfriend skiting about his hot little omega stepdaughter to the guys at the pub. They’d discussed intercepting him on the way to work or next time Phil went out drinking by himself, making clear he needed to turn around and not come back to Stevie’s house.

But Ronan had moved like he always did. Silently, without a word or back up, he’d methodically and expertly taken both Phil and Stevie’s mother out when he was twenty one years old, eradicating all barriers between her and us.

Until Ash erected more.

“Ash is like your mother,” Blue, one of my dads, told me not long after it happened. “But Ronan?” He winked at me, with that same larrikin energy he always did, but the green in his hazel eyes glittered brighter. “Well, he’s much more like your dads.” He looked me up and down then. “Like us, maybe. Still trying to work you out.”

Me too,Dad,I thought furiously.Me too.

But as I stared at Ash, I realised I had something my other brothers didn’t. Ash couldn’t help being who he was, and neither could Ronan, leaving me between a rock and a hard place.

Until I chose my own path.

“What do you think the dads would do if they found out about the Spencers?” I asked him and the look on his face told me everything.

“We keep them out of this.” Ash stabbed his finger into the air. “We’ve always run this business clean.”

“Except we haven’t.” God, it felt like such a relief to admit this shit. “When we discovered that paedophile ring and every one of those fucks died.”

“We nearly went to fucking jail for that!” Ash snapped. “You can’t see that as a win. What would have happened to Stevie if we were all locked up?”

“And when we did surveillance on that guy who kept his wife and daughter under lock and key?”

He’d died too, under mysterious circumstances, something the police officer at the time had informed us with a considered look. He was itching to ask if we knew how, but didn’t, knowing he’d have to use anything we said as a confession to a crime.

And he didn’t want that after he saw what the man was up to.

“You think your hands are clean because you’re not the one killing people,” I said, feeling like I saw my brother for the first time. “But you know what Ronan’s like. He’s got no time for the law and its limitations, just like the dads.”

And that’s what had me jerking my phone out of my pocket and tapping on a contact.

“Don’t, Jax…” Ash said, holding a hand out. “Don’t get them involved. Mum—”

“What’s going on, son?” My dad’s voice was almost a purr down the line, like he’d been waiting for just this moment, not willing to step in until he and the others were invited. “Is your girl safe?”

“For now,” I admitted. “What do you know about Rush?”

“Dirty fucking stuff,” came his reply. “The MCs are pissed as the suppliers won’t sell them any. Seems to be confined to just one area of the city currently, all high-end clubs.”

“Stevie went out with another pack.” I heard his hiss down the phone line. “She went for a good time and they drugged her with that shit instead.” Dad’s cigarette crackled as he took a drag from it. “They assaulted her over and over and—”

“And what’re you gonna do about it, son?” The challenge was apparent in Blue’s voice. It cracked harder than any whip. “Or rather, what’rewegonna do about it?”

“You know what Ronan wants,” I replied.

“‘Course I do. He’s my boy. And I’m betting Ash has all of his evidence tagged and bagged, ready to be handed over to the police. Question is, where are you on this?”

“If he does, the police will try and charge them, but the pack that did it, they’re the sons of the Spencers. One of the richest fucking families in this city.”

“No one’s touching them for long,” Blue agreed. “But we can. So what’s it gonna be, boy? You were always going to have to make this decision one way or the other. We’ll bring your mother with us, set her up so she’s safe in that hideout of yours and then…”

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