“Thanks,” I said with a soft smile.

“Chelsea, isn’t it?” he confirmed, still holding my hand in his.

I nodded. “Yeah, um…”

“Mix.”

“Sorry Mix. My brain is a bit fried at the moment.”

He just grinned before walking around the car and pulling my bags from the trunk. “Come on, Harmony is waiting for you.”

I was excited to see my friend. It had been strange going from seeing her every day to not seeing her at all.

“I thought she’d have been part of the welcoming committee,” I said as I followed him toward the massive industrial styled building.

He laughed. “She would have been, but Kit wouldn’t let her out of her lesson.”

I frowned. “Lesson?”

He just laughed, not telling me anything else as he dropped my bags in front of the doors and instead of taking me inside, gestured for me to follow him around the building.

We walked past some roller doors where men hustled and bustled around cars. Their overalls were stained with grease and among the sounds of clattering tools there was loud music booming. The sign above the doors read ‘Oz’s Auto Shop.’

Mix stopped at two double doors a little further down the building and pulled them open, gesturing his hand for me to go through before him. I looked at him skeptically but shuffled through.

“Just hit me already!” A male voice prompted.

“No. What if I hurt you?”

“You’re not going to hurt me, pretty girl.”

My eyes took a moment to adjust to the change in light, but I soon made out two figures standing in the middle of a makeshift boxing ring. The room wasn’t big but had crazy tall ceilings along with a litter of boxing bags, mats and weights scattered around.

“If I give you a black eye, I’m going to have to look at that for days,” Harmony groaned as she stood toe to toe with Kit in the middle of the ring.

I grinned.

“Come on, Harm. You’re the one who wanted to learn this self-defense shit.”

I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Come on! Hit him!”

Harmony’s head flicked to me and a smile spread across her face. She started to walk toward me, but Kit grabbed her around the waist. “We aren’t done yet.”

Harmony swiftly lifted her arm and drove her elbow back into Kit’s stomach. He released her, bending over and groaning in pain. Mix and I both burst out laughing as Harmony climbed from the ring, grinning triumphantly. She ran over to me, throwing her arms around my neck. We both laughed as we hugged each other, rocking back and forth.

“It’s so good to see you,” Harmony muttered in my ear.

“Hell yes,” I told her, not able to wipe the smile off my face.

She pulled back, holding her hands on my shoulders and her face reflecting my own.

“I would’ve invited you sooner had I known that’s what it would take for her to finally hit me,” Kit said as he walked over to us, still holding his stomach but with a gorgeous smirk on his face.

“If I’d known that, I would have come sooner too,” I shot back.

He chuckled, wrapping his other arm around my shoulder and giving me a squeeze. “It’s good to see you.”

Harmony grasped my hand and pulled me away, dragging me toward the doors. “We have catching up to do. We’ll catch you boys later,” she called over her shoulder as we walked out.

I noticed my bags were gone from where Mix had dropped them, but Harmony didn’t stop. She pulled me through the doors to what I assumed was the brothers’ clubhouse. I got a quick glimpse of a bar and some pool tables before we climbed a staircase off to the left.

She finally slowed as we reached the next floor, the doors had names on each of them, some with officers rankings, others not. The room at the end was labeled President and Harmony pushed through the doors, slamming them shut behind us and flicking the lock.

The room was big, a lot larger than the rooms the brothers had back in Athens, even Optimus’. It had room for a sofa and television area, as well as a reasonably sized desk, a king sized bed and a small bathroom off to the side.

“Wow, this is awesome,” I said, wandering around as Harmony ducked into the bathroom.

“Yeah, it’s pretty great, huh?” Harmony called. She ducked back out a moment later, changed out of her workout outfit and now wearing a tight pair of jeans and cute pink babydoll style shirt.

Harmony took a seat on the sofa and picked up her guitar. “So, how are you feeling?” She plucked at the strings softly even as she looked at me. I was used to it by now. For her, it was like an unconscious thing. Harmony felt the most comfortable when she had her guitar in her hands. It was just part of who she was, like an extension of her body.

I sighed, taking a seat next to her and letting my head hang back against the back of the sofa. “I don’t even know.”

“Have you talked to him?”

I cringed. “Sort of.”

She rolled her eyes. “You flipped out, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

She shook her head and I knew shit was about to get serious as she placed her guitar back in its stand and turned to face me fully. “Chelsea, Optimus cares about you.” I opened my mouth to talk, but she cut me off with her hand. “No. Listen. He’s holding back, and I get that it’s frustrating. But don’t you think in your heart that he’s worth fighting for?”

I looked down at my hands. “I don’t know. What if I fight and in the end he still turns around and says he doesn’t want me to be his?”

“But what if you walk away without knowing? Are you willing to spend the rest of your life wondering what could have happened?”

I pushed off the sofa and started to pace. “I’m scared, Harm. I’m scared that I’m going to throw myself out there and get nothing back. I’m scared that he has the power to absolutely destroy me. And that’s not something I’ve ever given to anyone.”

She nodded in understanding, her eyes drifting to the bedside table where there was a picture of her and Kit propped up. “Chel, it wouldn’t be love if it didn’t have the power to cause your world to come to a complete end. But sometimes it’s worth the risk.”

We sat in silence for a long time.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe it was time I told Optimus what I really wanted and stopped letting him dictate my emotions with his back and forth shit.

Was I ready to throw it all on the table and risk my heart being ripped to shreds?

I wasn’t sure. But what I did know was the pain that I was feeling right now was draining me and eventually something was going to have to give. I just hoped that when it did, I’d be able to pick myself up and move on because I had been through too much heartache already in my life to let it stop me now.

“All right, where are we at?” I asked as I banged my wooden gavel against the church table.

All my brothers were present bar the prospects who weren’t allowed to join church until they earned their full patch.

Wrench slid me a folder across the table as he began to talk. “Anthony DePalma, fifty-eight years old, took over the family business when his father passed away about ten years ago. Two brothers, one older, one younger—”

“Wait,” Kev interrupted. Kev used to be a police officer, he knew the ins and outs of organized crime. He joined the force young, thinking that it would be a tight unit that he could rely on and trust, but opted to leave due to the amount of corruption he saw. He found what he needed with us, and while it had taken a little longer for him to be accepted into the ranks, we didn’t judge him on his past. He’d done more than enough to prove to us over the last eight or so years that he was loyal to a fault. “The mafia is like the royal family, the crown is always passed onto the oldest child. How did he end up with it?”