Page 3 of Agony

I hung up the phone and took off on foot to where I knew I could get some help. Help that would have to be paid back, but no cost was too high when it came to protecting Ace.

I would do anything in the world for him.

I just hoped Konrad and Shaw would, too.

“This isa call I was never expecting,” Konrad drawled over the line. I sighed. Yeah, it wasn’t one I was ever expecting to makeeither. They’d kept their word and got the hell out of town and cut ties with me, just as I asked. Now, I was back in a hole I’d worked hard to keep myself out of. Had I kept my contacts? Fuck yes, especially since some of them had me do discreet hits in prison. It gave me the opportunity to have cash in my pocket when I got out.

“I didn’t expect to make it, either,” I told him honestly. I sank onto the motel room bed, cringing at the squeaky mattress. Fuck, this place was a dump. “Ace needs help.”

“Ace?” Konrad asked incredulously. I heard Shaw in the background, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “What the fuck is going on with Ace, Jax?”

“Group home is about to get shut down. He’s going to get shuffled to another home when it does, and it could be anywhere, Konrad. I don’t want him to age out too far away from anyone who can help him.”

“Fuck,” Konrad swore. He relayed what was going on to Shaw. “Look… Shaw and I were about to re-up, but we won’t. We’ll come home, and we’ll figure out a way to gain guardianship of Ace… But on one condition.”

Oh, fucking boy.

“Can’t wait to hear what thisconditionis,” I grumbled.

“You have to come home with us. We’re family, Jax, and it’s about time we started fucking acting like it.”

“The four of us aren’t the only ones,” I weakly argued. “That’s a big family to be trying to take care of.”

A light shuffle happened, the phone making a sort of staticky noise, and then Shaw came on the line. “I don’t give a fuck ifwe were a whole goddamn army, Jax,” he growled. “If we come home, you have to stick with us. We’ll handle Arlo and Cameron. But this separation shit? No more.”

“Who died and made you boss?” I snapped, getting irritated. I wasn’t the kind of man they wanted around. Their lives were on the straight and narrow. Wasn’t a damn thing a felon like me could offer them.

“I made myself boss,” he retorted. “Keep this number and stay the fuck out of trouble. We’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead. I brought the flip phone down from my ear and stared at it, blinking.

What the fuck had just happened?

CHAPTER TWO

Jax

PRESENT DAY

“You would think you’d learn by now to keep a log of your spending and earnings so I wouldn’t have to slave over your desk all day,” Cameron griped, giving me a flat, annoyed stare from across the desk.

I sighed. “I don’t have time to organize everything in my office into pretty little stacks for you and still work on these damn cars, Cam,” I told him, annoyance creeping into my tone. We went through this every fucking week when he came in to work my books and filter my portion of the club money and part of his through my garage. But I wasnotan organized person by any means. The guys were lucky I even folded my clothes and put them in my dresser when I did laundry.

It’d only been a few months since we’d all come together and Konrad took guardianship of Ace. There were still some kinks towork out, but we were doing alright for ourselves. For the most part.

I owned the garage since I couldn’t find a job as a felon. Konrad did some kind of government work that he couldn’t tell us about. Cameron managed all of our finances since his smart ass went to college and got two damn degrees; he majored in business and minored in accounting. We’d nicknamed him GOAT, as in “greatest of all time”, as a running joke between the six of us, and it stuck so well, it became his road name.

Arlo apparently had already owned a construction company, and he just moved his headquarters and started work here. But considering all of his “business” work was done either at the clubhouse or in the little trailer he moved from job site to job site, he didn’t really need an actual “headquarters”.

Shaw just opened InkLore a few months ago. Apparently, while he’d been in the service, he’d done some apprentice work at some tattoo shops, so he felt comfortable enough to open up his own shop. Ace, who was still in high school, was on his payroll as an artist. Our boy didn’t touch anyone’s skin, but he did draw up tattoos for people. Shaw could do it—he was artistic enough—but Ace was better.

“You need a woman,” Cam griped.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need any damn thing,” I bit back at him. Reaching up, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Were you this annoying as a kid?”

Cameron smirked at me as he reached up to undo the small bun his dark hair was in, only to put it right back up. The pieces of hair that had fallen out were now properly back in place. “Make my job a little easier, Jax, and I wouldn’t be so annoying.”

I grunted and turned on my heel, heading back into the garage. I had little patience these days, and Cameron loved to push my buttons. Pretty sure it was punishment for abandoning him, even though he’d never say it out loud.

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