“What?”
“Where is her fucking head, man?” Keeler’s voice is nothing more than a whisper, yet his eyes are screaming with rage. He’s about to flip his shit.
“We don’t know. We’ll find out, though. We’ll make this right.” God, I really hope I’m not lying to this kid.
As predicted, Keeler explodes. Cade and I sit back and watch as he trashes the shop, punching a fist through the door to the back room, throwing the sterilizing equipment, destroying anything and everything he can get his hands on. We let him rage.
By the time he collapses into a heap on the floor, sobbing silently, shoulders jerking up and down as he weeps, there’s barely a stick of furniture in the place that remains unbroken.
“Take him back to the compound,” I tell Cade. Keep him away from everyone until I get back. No one leaves today, though. Tell the rest of the club they’re on lockdown. Tell anyone with friends or family living here in town to make sure they pull everyone in. I’m not having his happen again.”
Cade says he’ll get it done and then leaves. As soon as he’s managed to half carry, half drag Keeler out of the shop, I double over and clutch my side, breathing through the white hot, burning pain that’s tearing through me. “Fuck.” Breathing is hard again. I don’t know if that’s from the pain or from Keeler’s complete devastation. He deserved better. He deserved for his girlfriend to be safe while he was out of town. I should have fucking known this was going to happen. Hector Ramirez is a sociopath. He’s clinically insane. The life of an innocent bystander means nothing to him. He’d murder the entire town if he thought it would make his point. So I should have known.
“Well, that was quite the display.”
My head snaps up at the sound of the voice, already knowing who it is. Already assessing how I’m going to proceed. Hector Ramirez stands in the open doorway of the shop, one hand braced against the frame, the other hand casually in the pocket of his suit pants. He looks mildly amused, like the scene of destruction before him is entertaining. His gaze settles on my side, my hand still pressing against my wound, and his eyebrows slowly rise. Taking his hand out of his pants, he places something small into his mouth and bites down on it, crunching.
“You know,” he says. “It really is a shame you snuck up on my guards the other night. They’re very jumpy men. They tend to react without thinking sometimes. If you’d simply have made your presence known to them and told them you wished to see me, I’m sure they would have treated you in a far more…civilized manner.”
I grind my teeth together, mentally scanning the shop for a concealed weapon, something to do some serious damage to the evil piece of shit that is strolling into my property like he owns the damn place. Problem is, we don’t keep guns or knives here. The shop’s raided by the cops on a fairly frequent basis, and precautions have been necessary in the past.
With a slight grunt of distaste, Hector steps over the smashed coffee table between he and I, his leather shoes crunching as he treads on shards of glass. “I imagine you found my little gift this morning?” he says. “I worried that you might not see her. Raphi suggested we leave our present to you right on your doorstep where you wouldn’t miss it, however that seemed a little too obvious. I didn’t want the police arresting you for murder because there was a mutilated corpse propped up against your boundary wall. Where would the fun have been in that?” He puts something into his mouth again and chews—candied almonds. The bastard always has a pocket full of them. Makes him smell like an old woman.
I curl my fingers to make a fist, hate charging through my veins, seeping into my pores, infecting every last part of me with a rage that won’t go unanswered. Can’t go unanswered. I tried to do this the legal way, I really did. I wanted Ramirez and his men in jail for what they did to my uncle. I wanted them to suffer every horrifying, dark, awful violation possible while they served their time, knowing they were going to die as incarcerated men, never to walk free again. The time for that has past now, though. Now, I just want them all dead. Preferably in the most painful manner possible.
“You shouldn’t have killed Leah. You should never have stepped foot on my father’s property in Alabama. You should never have followed us back here, and you really shouldn’t have harmed a hair on Bron’s head, Hector. You think there won’t be consequences?”
Hector Ramirez shrugs, pulling a fat cigar from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, apparently done with his almonds. He bites the end off the cigar and spits it onto the ground, then proceeds to light it with an engraved silver lighter. “From where I’m standing, the Widow Makers aren’t the formidable force I assumed them to be when I undertook this little adventure to New Mexico, Jamie. When Raphi dealt with your uncle back in Seattle and your second in command made grand gestures, inciting war between our people, I thought to myself, ‘well, okay now. This might be interesting. Something to distract you from the tedium of every day life, Hector. Thank the lord.’ But no. I arrive here to this dust bowl you call home, and I find a rag-tag group of misfits living out in the desert, sticking their dicks into the locals, tattooing people for money.” He gestures at the trashed shop, disgust warping his features. “I have to admit, I’m more than a little disappointed.”
He makes it to the counter where I’m still bent double, trying to remain calm. Trying not to give away the fact that my right hand is resting on the one weapon we do keep in the shop—a prime maple Louisville slugger. I’m in a shit load of pain and my head is spinning, so I have to wait for the perfect moment. If I launch myself at him too early, I’m going down hard and I won’t be getting back up again. That means I need him close. Closer than he is now, anyway. And that means I have to keep him talking.
“You made a huge mistake in coming here, Hector.”
“Ahh, you think so?” He pouts, pulling on his cigar, holding the smoke in his mouth before he blows it out in a thick cloud. The smell reminds me of my father—he always smokes after dinner, ever the traditional southern gentleman. It takes me a mere second to connect the dots when I see the familiar Havana Red paper seal of my father’s favorite brand wrapped around the rolled tobacco leaves in Hector’s hand. He is literally smoking one of my father’s cigars. This is an action designed to piss me off, to drive me crazy, but all he’s succeeding in doing is distilling my anger into clarity. I don’t see red. I don’t react. My recklessness the other night, the recklessness that got me stabbed, isn’t normally how I operate. Push me to the edge and I get smart. Poke and prod at my buttons and I come up with new and interesting ways to return the fucking favor. I’ve got my shit handled now, but then Hector Ramirez doesn’t know that about me. He knows nothing about me whatsoever. He’s massively underestimated both me and my club if he thinks he’s going to succeed in baiting me into stupidity twice.
He comes closer, standing on the other side of the counter. “You know…I believe I recognized the woman with you at your father’s home, Jamie. Can it be that you arranged for Julio Perez to purchase my little One Eighty-One on your behalf?”
One Eighty-One, the number he assigned to Sophia in order to sell her. Motherfucker. I glare at him, willing him dead. It’s the only way I can maintain my relative calm. If he says her name…if he so much as mentions her again…
“That was very underhanded, you know. I can’t say that I like you tricking me out of her like that. Bad business. My good friend Raphael has aired his concerns about her association with the Widow Makers. He’s…worried about her safety. Normally, I’m careful to ignore Raphi’s council, however in this particular instance I think he may have a point. I want her back, Jamie.”