Page 48 of Running on Empty

“No problems.” Ronan had been mostly silent during this whole meeting, but he pulled his phone out now and then tapped on a contact to put a call through.

“Ronan…” Ash started to growl, but Ronan changed the audio over to speaker, the whole room filling with the sound of the phone ringing.

“James Spencer,” came the clipped reply.

“Hello James Spencer,” Ronan said, leaning forward and I caught the moment when his voice grew rougher. “This is Ronan Kelly.”

“Who the fuck are you? How’d you get the number?” James replied.

“That doesn’t really matter, because you’ll find out soon enough, though I’m told we need to give you a chance to do the right thing.”

James snorted in disdain. “So you’re some petty little blackmailer? Nice try—”

“This is about the omega your sons are fighting so hard to find. Throwing around a lot of money, they are.”

James went silent for a moment, time feeling like it stood still before he answered.

“And you have a reliable lead? You’ll need to inform my sons of—”

“I’m not talking to your stinking brats. I’m talking to you, mate.” Ronan didn’t talk now, but growled, the menace clear in his voice. “That omega they dared to lay hands on, the one they want back so badly? She’s my mate.” His eyes flicked to meet mine. “And my brothers.”

“And you let her get into a car with my son and go out to one of our clubs?” James laughed then, a harsh bark of a thing. “More fool you. So what’s this? An attempt to keep my sons away from what you consider your turf? I don’t know how you got this number—”

“I’m not delivering a warning.” Ronan took long, deep breaths, his spine curving, almost as if his wolf was about to push through as he bent over the phone. “I’m giving you a chance to reduce the collateral damage. We have all the video files your sons have been taking of their exploits.”

“So this is about blackmail.” The man seemed somehow reassured by that, as if he was back on common ground.

“And we’ve decided each one of your boys needs to go down screaming for what they’ve done. Hope your mate is still fertile, because you’re gonna need new kids if you want to preserve any kind of legacy.”

No response from James. Apparently Ronan had stunned him to silence. And my mate? He turned towards me, staring into my eyes when he delivered the last of his message.

“You can make this hard or you can make this easy. Hand over those fucking pieces of shit your mate shat out and let justice take its course—”

“If you think that’s going to happen, you’re madder than I thought.” James’ voice was full of crisp command, his scorn obvious.

“You want to do this the hard way?” Ronan’s vicious smile spread. “Just the way we like it. We’ll be in touch real soon.”

He tapped the screen to end the call, then claws formed at the end of his fingers, before he used them to stab into the phone screen, shattering it and the mechanisms that powered it, then pulled out the SIM card before crushing it.

“Good enough?” Ronan asked the table, every member of his family staring at him, including me. But they just looked at him like they’d never really seen him before, even his dads, so I slid my hand across his cheek, something he held there.

“So who do we hit first?” Rusty said finally, nodding to Ronan before turning back to Ash.

“Snake,” Ash replied without thought. He tapped the screen, the photo having captured the man’s smug smile perfectly. “There’s lower hanging fruit.” He pointed to Rock. “But Snake looks after the tech side of things, badly, but still, he’s the one posting the job to retrieve Stevie on the message boards. I get the feeling that a lot of the information about how Rush was stolen and the manufacturing process can be found in his compound.”

“Well, everyone needs to get some sleep,” Donk said, getting to his feet with Lois in his arms. “I know I need a bed, stat.”

“John, the kids—” Lois protested, using Donk’s government name, one most of us forgot.

“Are old enough and ugly enough to look after themselves.” Donk nodded to the rest of us before sweeping her out of the room. “See you fresh and early in the morning.”

“Real early,” Rusty told us. “We’ll want to hit them in the early hours of the morning—”

“Under cover of dark,” Jax said with a sigh, as if he’d heard this too many times. “Less witnesses and their guard will be down, if it was ever up at all. We know.”

“I’ll sit here with Ash, get a sense of the lay of the land,” Blue said, nodding to his son as Ash navigated through his files, bringing up a blueprint of a massive looking house.

So what did that leave us to do?

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