Their Queenpin (The Ridge MC #6)

Chapter 2Rafe

Chapter Two

Rafe

After that kind of conversation with Mass, I understood why Adelina wanted to break something. She’d been under his protection before, but when he delivered her to the MC, she officially became an adult. Someone who had to forge steel into her bones to deal with her father’s mercurial swings.

Not to mention her new husband’s.

Breaking shit might be the only way to rid herself of the fury that surely raged inside, but it likely would do her no good. I’d been there with my brother, destroying plenty of nice things in my frustration. It wasn’t a pretty place.

“Come here, tesoro.” I pulled her to me, not caring what others thought about my comforting her. This was a good excuse to hold her. So, I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “You’ll be okay, and so will Sas.”

I didn’t care much for the VP, but Adelina did, and I had vowed long ago to protect her and everything she cared about. She trembled in my grip, not from weakness, but with the sparks Massimo lit in her blood.

“I’m going to murder him, Rafe,” she said in a low, deadly voice.

“I’ve been there, tesoro,” I replied, knowing she likely wanted to destroy the pews in the church and rip the doors from their hinges. “But you won’t.”

I would do it for her if it came to that. What she would do was adapt. She would learn how to deal with her father and worse, because she had Parisi blood flowing like lava in her veins. And if our family was one thing, it was resilient.

“Why?” she asked.

“The police are here, watching.”

“I didn’t say now, Rafe.”

I inhaled her berry-scented shampoo and kept my voice as level as possible. And as quiet. “You don’t want the police here seeing you out of control. And you don’t want the consequences that go with patricide...” I switched to shaky Italian. “O con l’eliminazione del capofamiglia? 1 .”

But we shouldn’t do this here. If they’d really found five kilos of coke on Sas’s bike, they’d be looking to hang the rest of us too. The police milled around, watching all the bikers as well as Adelina. I couldn’t blame them for the latter. It was hard not to stare at her breath-taking beauty—and massive white wedding dress with delicate pink flowers—but she was drawing too much attention.

The police might want to bring her in because she was Sas’s new wife.

Aside from that, I didn’t want my cell phone smashed to bits.

I pried it from her fingers but kept her near me, shielding her as much as possible. Like always, I was the only one who could protect her. When she had been a girl, I appointed myself as her guard, and my brother had made the job official when I separated from the Marines. I would continue to watch over her for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short.

When I looked down at the screen, I already had a message. One word from the Prez in a group chat: “ Church.”

“We need to go now,” I said, pulling on Adelina.

“But,” she began, but I cut her off with a squeeze to her hand.

I did, however, turn around to keep our conversation private. “I understand, but we can’t stay here.”

Willing my meaning at her, I moved my eyes toward the police near the bikes.

Adelina glanced over, took a deep breath, and then nodded. Her lips were set in a determined line and her eyes had turned to coal. That was the woman I’d always known she would become. Intelligent. Dangerous.

“Come on,” I said, holding onto her, and she came with me.

One handed, I shot a text back off to the group: “ Where?”

The reply came from Graff: “Hotel. Suite 4402.”

They’d put Wilde up in a suite next door to the family’s private rooms while everyone else in the MC had been staying on the forty-second floor. Apparently, Wilde’s partnership was the most important thing to Massimo in this whole fucked-up situation.

They had the door propped open when we arrived, so I pushed inside with Adelina right behind me. In the living room of the suite, two prospects—Merry and Pip—were sprawled out on the oversized sectional, watching an old movie. When we’d left LA, three prospects had ridden with the group to Vegas.

“Yo, Rafe!” Pip raised his chip bag in greeting.

“Where’s Ghost?” I asked, scanning the room like he might pop out from hiding at any moment.

Merry popped a handful of popcorn in his mouth, nodded toward the powder room near the entry, and mumbled, “Shitter.”

Adelina scoffed. “Yeah. Exactly where my entire life just went.”

As though paged, Ghost came strolling out. “Don’t recommend going in there for a while.”

“Are all prospects so disgusting?” Adelina muttered, moving to my other side.

Merry and Pip both wailed and laughed at something on the massive TV as Ghost palmed a longneck from the fridge, seemingly not noticing us. When he finally turned, he halted in his tracks and sheepishly dragged a hand through his hair. Then he crossed the room to stand in front of Adelina.

The muscles in my thighs and back coiled to jump between them if he dared lay a hand on her, but that didn’t look like his intent.

The man stared at his boots, his long black beard scratching across his chest. With one hand in his pocket, he drew his shoulders up and stammered, “I, um, yeah...”

Adelina’s brows lifted expectantly as she stared up at the man.

“That’s a, um”—he cleared his throat—“a raw deal your ol’ man got.”

“No shit?” drawled Adelina, but her body was tense, like she wanted to rail at him, beat on his chest—or anyone’s who dared to stand in front of her right now.

“If there’s anything I can?—”

I stepped between them, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder and pushing him a few steps back. “Where’s Wilde?”

Ghost’s chest puffed up, the way any man does when he senses danger. But the prospect surely wasn’t going to pick a fight with an MC officer. One he’d definitely lose right now.

Merry kept his eyes on the action in Ghost Rider , shoveling popcorn in his mouth.

Pip threw an arm over the back of the couch toward a door off the side of the kitchen. “In the conference room, chatting up Ward and Angel.”

“Go on, Adelina,” I said over my shoulder, then waited for Ghost to join his friends.

When she moved away, I immediately missed the warmth of her body close to mine.

Ghost raised the bottle and his empty hand in the air. “Sorry man. Just here to help. No insult intended.”

I jutted my chin toward the others. A silent dismissal. “We’ll figure it out. Unless you’ve got an in with the cops to spring the veep, just wait for orders, soldier.”

A twinge ran down my spine at the word that slipped. Not the military, Rafe. Not your soldiers. And I wasn’t so sure Ghost could be called a soldier, anyway.

He saluted me with an oddly competent motion, then swaggered over and threw himself down on the third couch in front of the movie.

Stripping the tie from my neck, I turned and marched between the island and the counter, listening to the mumbled conversation. Something about the uptight Mafia and a hotel room with an actual conference room included.

The lights in the room weren’t on, and two MC officers lurked in the shadows on opposite sides of a moderately sized conference table while Graff sat on the windowsill.

“Wilde. Teller,” I greeted, then murmured, “Graff,” as heated blood crawled up my neck toward my cheeks.

Embarrassment was quite foreign, far different from the shame I’d always experienced under Adelina’s nonna’s scrutiny. This was different, though. Something Graff, Adelina, and I had shared earlier today that I hadn’t wrapped my head around yet.

And I freaking felt like everyone who looked my way knew what’d happened.

Although . . . I wondered.

What meaning did the incident in Adelina’s dressing room have to Graff? He was one of the MC, and I didn’t know him well enough to tell. Had he been putting on a show? Following orders? Or was I still the enemy in the MC’s figurative bed?

I was Massimo Parisi’s little brother.

A spy, they would rightly think.

It’s what I would think if I were in their shoes.

And since we faced a new and undefined threat, I needed to put that aside for now. Fortunately, I was an expert when it came to compartmentalizing, or so many therapists had told me.

Focusing on the three men in the room, I considered how there were too few of the MC here to deal with a crisis. Wilde, though, had a video call up and running. On the screen, the Warden’s face stared back from the divided window. The scarred mug of the VP from Park Ridge, Angel, occupied the other half.

Placing herself at the head of the table, Adelina leaned onto both her palms. “What are you doing to get Sas out of this?”

“You shouldn’t be at church,” said Wilde, his voice cool but firm.

“You allow Bou in,” snarled Adelina.

“Bou is patched,” said Wilde.

I moved to her side, placing a hand under her elbow. “It might be better if?—”

“No, Rafe.” She yanked her arm out of my grip.

“Get her out of here, Rafe,” Wilde ordered.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Adelina pulled over a chair and made herself comfortable at the head of the table. “He’s my husband, and I have every right to be involved in getting him free.”

She had sound arguments, but Bou wasn’t there. And the Prez’s ol’ lady wore a patch, so she had every right to attend church. Even the Marines allowed women into their strategy sessions. And Adelina had been raised in the Parisi family to be as bull headed as the most staunch Marine.

She wouldn’t go unless someone manhandled her out of the room. And I couldn’t blame her.

To Wilde, I argued, “She’s Sas’s property now.”

I chose my words carefully to show I was part of the club first and foremost. The word property slithered through me, and Adelina’s eyes bored into me as it fell from my lips. But it was the club’s terminology for an ol’ lady.

“She has got a goddamn right to be here for her husband,” I continued.

I didn’t care for the taste of the word husband on my tongue, either, but it was reality. He would have what I never could with Adelina.

The Prez shifted, as did Teller. And Graff. I kept my stance wide and my upper body loose, in case I had to prepare for a fight. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but the silence lingered long enough that I grew uncomfortable.

“Think of her as your boy Sas,” I added with a shrug. “And besides, Adelina’s sharp as a fucking whip. You’ll be smart to use her where you can.”

Wilde and the others waited, the in-person eyes as well as those on the screen scrutinized both Adelina and me, and I felt sure they were waiting for me to relent. But maybe they were just waiting on the final decision maker. Regardless, they were the ones wasting time.

I settled my gaze on Wilde, because his word would be the final one. The Prez.

Adelina wasn’t going anywhere, that much I knew with clear certainty. They—not me—would have to drag her out of here kicking and screaming.

There was nothing funny about this, but I smirked because it would be a sight to see. Of course, that was assuming they could get past me to touch her.

And if that’s the path Wilde chose, I rued the day when Sas found out. Prez or not, Adelina’s husband would come after the man for touching his wife.

“Fine,” growled Wilde, relenting. “Let’s get this shit sorted.”

1 ? Translation: Or with taking out the head of the family