Raiden (Satan’s Angels MC #2)

Chapter 4

Raiden

G ray stops me outside in the compound a few days later as I’m mounting my bike. Bullet and Smoke are heading to the range seeing as Smoke was fuming about missing it the other morning. For an outsider, he’s not so bad, so I was going to tag along. I may or may not need as many outings as I can get. As of late, the clubhouse—my always home away from home when my parents disowned me and even before—has felt stifling.

Gray takes his phone out of his pocket and the look on his face says that this isn’t going to be a quick conversation, and he’d like it to be private. I wave Smoke and Bullet on ahead and watch with jealousy as they get let out of the sliding chain link fence. Jonathan, the prospect I’ve been mentoring, trying to get him ready to take his GED is on guard duty.

“What’s up?” I lean against my bike, casual for what I’m sure is not going to be a casual conversation.

“What’s going on with Widow?”

“What do you mean?’ We’ve known each other since we were six and we’re pretty good at having whole conversations in silence. I didn’t say anything to her, if that’s what you’re asking. Didn’t do anything either.

He frowns. I wasn’t saying that and would never think you did.

I let out a long sigh,” Fuck, okay, maybe we had some heated words. I might have laid into her thick about what happened to you and informed her I was none too pleased about being banged up for five years either. Might have called her a spawn of the devil.”

“And how’d she take that?” Gray asks with interest.

“I think it came as a surprise, I’m guessing the version of events your father told her was way different.”

“Everyone’s going to be sitting in for church soon.” Everyone, as in our four new club members. They’re not patched in and probably never will be, but Gray wants one meeting with everyone assembled together. Having those Berserkers spend time with us was one of Zale Grand’s conditions for peace. Gray continues, “It’s important that both parties feel like there’s going to be a future worth living for. There needs to be a base level of trust. The men are establishing it, rough as they are, though we’re rough too, but Widow’s pulling back. Everyone knows she’s their unofficial leader out here since she has her father’s ear. She’s important. A single word from her could start a war.”

I plunge my fingers into my eyes and rub hard. I already know this, but here we are, me getting a scolding like I’m a kid. “Fuck.”

“Lark and Seer tried to get her to do some shit with the women the other day, but she wouldn’t come out of her room. I went to talk to her through the door, but she told me to leave her the fuck alone.’”

Gray’s jaw tenses and I hang my head, rubbing the knots at the back of my neck. Stress . It hasn’t gone away for… years. Gray’s still healing. He has more than enough shit right now, worrying about his family, the whole club, the entire city. I fucked up and I need to fix it.

“I’m sorry Prez, I agreed to this. You said make it work or don’t do it at all.” I’d do anything for the club, except keep my mouth shut, apparently.

My prez’s huge hand lands on my shoulder and squeezes hard. He’s been doing that forever and I know the exact shape of it. Never forgot it in all those years I was gone. “Nah, brother, relationships are tough. Especially when you don’t want to be in one at all.”

I want to respond, but I see that he’s not finished. I should learn how to shut up anyway. If Widow’s really been hiding out in her room for days because of me… that feels like a boot to the gut. It makes me feel like less than a fucking piece of shit. A man who abuses women. Verbally. There’s no excuse. What I said was still mean and it was more than intended to gut her. My own wife. Christ .

“I’ve been thinking about buying that land,” Gray starts after a pause. “I’ve contacted the landowner, but he wants a crazy price for it. Not saying I won’t pay it, but I’d like you to go up there and check it out for me. Not the cabin. I spent plenty enough time there.”

I see the amusement on his face, and I wonder how the hell he can joke about being tortured or why he’d ever want to see that shithole trapper’s cabin again.

He answers that for me too. “Taking back what my father tried to steal from me is one less thing he’s going to have to hold over me, in his head or in mine.”

I respond carefully, thinking it through. “You want me to take Widow up there? Just the two of us?”

“She proved the other day at the range that what she told us about being highly trained and deadly in her own right is true. She carries a knife strapped on her leg, I’ve noticed, and I have no doubt she knows how to use it. She took some kind of martial arts for years when she was younger. I think that sending more men with you will only draw attention.”

“This isn’t about the land, really.”

Gray’s scarred lips twitch. He got that scar the night he put his father to ground. Except… he didn’t. Why the scar? Did Zale leave it as a parting gift? Gray’s never said, no matter how hard I’ve pressed him. “It is and it isn’t. I want the land. With threats cropping up and a war we’re trying to avoid, we need a place to put the bodies.”

“Fuck, Gray.”

Our prez is a huge man. A behemoth and I’m not much smaller. A little leaner, I guess, thanks to genetics. I’m just as tall and tattooed. He looks more like a biker with his long hair and beard while I look more like an ex-con or a cage fighter. For all his size, I’ve never met such a gentle man, but even he’s taken a life. Not his father’s. A predator who tried to hurt my sister while I was locked up.

He shrugs his big shoulders, “Maybe I could build a new house out there. A clubhouse is no place to raise a family. Anyway, Widow needs some air. She probably feels like a noose has been placed around her neck. She and the men she came with left their club and home. We’re supposed to be amalgamating, not tearing worse divides between ourselves.”

I’ve only tightened that rope. I took all the heavy burdens we’ve been struggling to bear and loaded them up on her even though she had nothing to do with any of it.

“I’ll convince her to go.”

Gray pounds my back. “Good man. You give me a list and I’ll make sure you have everything you need for camping out.”

“Camping out?” What the fuck?

“You’ll be gone overnight. Inspecting a hundred acres? That’s going to take some time.”