Silas had been doing a great job of keeping my existence a secret, but that night, Sebastian had learned that I wasn’t dead.
Lucky for me, he’d gotten all the way home, six hours away, before he’d decided that my face needed to meet with his fist.
But as I looked at him across the table from me, I realized that his anger hadn’t lessened in all of that time.
In fact, if I was a guessing man, I’d say it’d gotten worse.
The rest of the men hadn’t realized who I was yet.
That, I could tell.
Otherwise they would all be up in arms, collectively and individually trying to beat the shit out of me.
It was the face.
Not to mention I’d put on about thirty pounds in muscle since they’d last seen me. Oh, and let’s not forget to mention that they all thought that I was dead.
I was no longer that na?ve twenty-one-year-old kid. I was now a grown ass man who had the last six years of his life ripped away from him in the most savage way possible. I’d been tortured for a year of it, and the next five were spent living as half a man. I’d survived only on the promise of one day having revenge while I watched everyone else live their lives around me.
“What are we even doing here?” asked Torren. “My wife wasn’t happy about the short notice. We had to bow out of a dentist appointment for the kids because I couldn’t be there to help take them.”
Sterling looked at him like he was crazy. “You had to bow out of a dentist appointment?” he jeered. “Poor baby. I had to bow out of a fucking practice. They fined me eighteen thousand dollars.”
Sterling was a professional baseball player. Ever since he’d made it to the major leagues, he’d been on a hot streak, and I loved to watch him on TV. I’d been so fuckin’ proud of him, too. I’d always wanted to tell him that.
“You can afford it,” Kettle rumbled. “I had to call in sick.”
Sebastian grunted. “Me, too. It worked out because I threw up on our last shift.”
He did look a little green.
“Don’t you fuckin’ give that shit to us, either,” Kettle grumbled. “I do not want to take that shit home. If I catch it, then that means Adeline will catch it. Then the fucking kids will. Then they’ll give it right back to me once it’s all over and done with. I do not want to deal with throw up.”
I chuckled under my breath, drawing the attention of the one man who’d been eyeing me all night, besides Sebastian, who knew exactly who I was.
He was practically quivering in his seat, staring at me surreptitiously every chance he got.
I knew he was dying to talk to me. The only thing that’d kept him in check was Silas, and since he was in the hallway talking to Lynn, I knew that it was only a matter of time before he broke.
I looked away from Cleo’s penetrating gaze.
Though my face was different, the structure of it was not. I had scars now where I didn’t before, and my entire face looked like it’d been pieced back together after the fire.
The only real things that were left unchanged about my face were the color of my eyes and the shape of my mouth.
Everything else was different.
My pieced-back-together face, like Frankenstein’s, was hard to look at sometimes. I was no longer that same handsome man that my wife had fallen for, and it made it hard for me to understand what my wife saw in me. She’d never once commented on the change, she just traced her fingers along my scars as if she was committing each and every one to memory.
“God, I’m fucking starving.”
That was Truth.
I looked over at where he was sitting next to me. “Do you want me to order you a pizza, Truth?”
Truth tapped his lip. “Can we?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“Pizza doesn’t deliver here,” Trance, another member, said. His eyes were shrewd, and now they were on me, too. “We’re too far out of the city limits.”
I swallowed worriedly, turning my gaze away before he could read too much into my expression.
Jesus, this was about to get sticky.
I knew these men were going to be happy that I was alive, but I’d also let them think the unthinkable—that I was dead.
And it was going to go over like a cat turd in a sand box.
I kept my mouth shut after that, but the next ten minutes I could feel the tension rising in the room.
I’d stayed out of the limelight since I’d become a Dixie Warden. When there were club-wide celebrations each year, I’d skipped them. When there was any chance at all that I might see them, I purposefully went the other way.
But my gravesite rendezvous with Silas were being interrupted by my former club members, I’d had to watch them mourn me over and over again.
They were still mourning me, as a matter of fact.
God, this was a fucking mess.
Fuck. My fucking parents.
“Goddammit,” Sebastian got up then hauled ass out of the room.
I winced.
“Fucker’s gonna give us all the shits and pukes by the time we’re done here,” Cleo muttered darkly.
I looked at him, and his eyes were still on me.
His narrowed, and I steeled myself, letting him study me straight on.
He took his time, and it was a few long, uneasy moments for me.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” Cleo exclaimed.
Lynn walked in with Silas behind him.
The minute that Lynn sat down, the entire room quieted. Conversations that the others were having quieted, and I tensed. But not because this was about to go down, but because Cleo was now standing.
He leaned over the table, his hands steepled on top of it, only a few feet separating us.
“I can see you’ve figured it out,” Silas drawled.
The tension didn’t break.
“What out?” Kettle asked, looking at Silas.
“Tunnel, you mother. Fucker.”
Every head in the room swiveled around at that, and I scooted my seat away from the table and stood up.
“Everybody, sit the fuck down.”
Nobody listened.
“I said sit down!” Silas bellowed.
Cleo was halfway around the table now.
I was turned to face him, waiting.
And the others in the room from the Benton Dixie Wardens were now standing as well.
“Fuck me.”
That came from Torren.
Cleo didn’t stop until a clearly just-puked-his-guts-out Sebastian came back in.
The moment he realized what was going on, he stepped in the middle of Cleo and me, all the while hugging a trashcan.
Cleo’s hands were fisted tightly at his sides, and he was staring at me with such betrayal on his face that it was hard to watch.
I held his glare, though.
I deserved the hate.
A gunshot rang out, and I looked over at Silas, who was standing with his gun in his hand.
Above his head was a forty-five caliber hole in the drywall.
We all stared.
“I said sit. The. Fuck. Down,” he repeated, this time his tone clearly allowing no room for argument.
I didn’t sit until everyone else did, but this time, it was with my back to the wall, and nowhere near the goddamn table.
If I was within reaching distance of any of these boys, they were going to fucking stab me, likely with the pen or pencils that were gathered in a cup in the middle of the table.
God, this goddamn room was giving me heartburn.