"Benicio's men will clean up the mess, make sure none of it blows back on us. They're good."
"So you can leave," she whispered.
"Blaze would run the club," he said. "We could walk away."
"Do you want to walk away?"
Six months ago, I'd have said never. No matter what, I would be loyal to the club.
Of course, six months ago, I'd had my head buried in a bottle so deep I couldn't see out. Six months ago, I didn't give a shit what happened to me. Back then, I might have hated Mad Dog, but I wasn't about to leave the club, the people who had taken me in when I was displaced from my military family.
Now? That so-called family had betrayed me, in the most unimaginable way. I didn't know who was with Mad Dog, and I didn't care. They were all traitors.
Blaze tried to convince me otherwise, tried to reason with me, tell me he didn't believe that the treachery spread throughout the club. I didn't want to hear it. But in the end, Crunch sided with him, agreed that Mad Dog should be brought to the club.
I no longer considered the club my family. The only reason I agreed to bring Mad Dog in front of the club tomorrow is because I wanted to see the looks on their faces when I cut his throat.
The next day was church. June kissed me on the forehead, smoothed her hands across the front of the leather cut I wore, not because I considered myself part of the Inferno MC any longer, but because today when I meted out justice on Mad Dog, I would do it as the Sergeant-at-Arms for the club.
I still held the title, and today I would act in the truest sense as the club's enforcer.
Regardless of the club vote.
I wondered if June understood that I might get killed in the process.
"Be careful," she said.
"You have nothing to worry about," I lied.
"You're not a very good liar." She kissed me. "But I love you anyway."
Mad Dog was in Benicio's vehicle outside, bound and gagged, beaten and bloody from the night before. Blaze thought it was prudent to bring the facts to the club before bringing Mad Dog inside. I didn't give a shit what the club decided, as long as I killed Mad Dog right there, in front of all of them. It was suicidal. But then, wasn't all of this? The entire thing was insanity, bringing Mad Dog to church. Doing this in the clubhouse. It was madness.
The entire club was there, expecting a regular church meeting.
This was about to be the most irregular church meeting in the history of them.
There we were, Crunch and I, back from the dead.
You could have heard a pin drop when we walked through the door. Before voices erupted everywhere.
Blaze stood in the front of the room. "I know - " he said, holding a hand up, waiting for the room to return to silence again. "I know that this is not what you expected, to see Crunch and Axe here today."
"No shit," someone said.
"What the fuck is going on?"
The murmurs rippled through the group again, and Blaze held his hand up, his face weary. "We need to explain some things, and the club needs to make a decision today, about where we go from here, about who we are. What kind of a club we are going to be. The decisions we make today are about loyalty. Brotherhood. Family."
Then he began his explanation, let Crunch present his evidence that Mad Dog was stealing from Benicio, stealing from the club. He got one joking comment almost immediately when he started to talk numbers and the books, and shut it down.
"You think it's no big deal, this shit?" he asked. "That it's a fucking joke or something? My wife died over this shit. Mad Dog had my wife killed over this shit."
After that, no one in the room moved a muscle.
We took the club through everything.
It was the longest club meeting I'd been present at.
And when we were finally finished, and Mad Dog's fate came up for vote, I was filled with this sense of inevitability. Finality.
The vote was unanimous.
Mad Dog would die.
When Benicio's men brought him inside, bound, and stood him before the club, the air seemed charged with electricity. I stood, facing him, ripped off the tape from his mouth. "They all know what you've done. Who you are."
Mad Dog looked at me, then spit on the floor.
I smiled. I would have no remorse when I did what I was going to do.
"Do you have any last words?" I asked.
"See you in hell," he said.
I unsheathed my knife. The blade I'd saved for Mad Dog. Then I stepped in front of him. "I'll see you there," I agreed. "But not today."
I stabbed him, right above the stomach, and pulled out the knife, slick with blood. I handed it to Crunch, like it was a goddamned ceremony.
Passing the torch.
Crunch did the same.
Then Blaze stabbed him.
And then one by one, the brothers followed suit, even after Mad Dog was on the floor, each of them plunging the knife into the man who had betrayed the club, who had betrayed us. It wasn't something I expected or planned, and I just stood there, not even looking at Mad Dog, but watching them, this parade of men willing to be a part of this, not just stand by and watch while we killed him.
And in that moment, I didn't feel blank.