Vicious Heart (Desert Kings MC #2)

8. Cam

eight

Cam

The desire to smash my fist into Preacher’s smug face was almost as strong as the drive to protect Riley. From him, from everyone. Whatever it took, even if that meant reining in the violence that came with my temper.

That savagery raged, clawing at the inside of my chest. Just touching her didn’t quiet it. But that beast inside craved two things: violence and Riley Bowman.

Taking her when I felt like this, when I couldn’t control myself… would it be too much? Scare her away? Hurt her? I couldn’t be sure. So I focused on the other side, the gnawing, growling part that craved blood.

How many times had I been in handcuffs because of this? But then I’d never had something worth fighting for.

She had me so flipped around I couldn’t tell which end was up.

“I didn’t tell anyone, Cam. The only people who knew Kimbrell called me were you and him, maybe the receptionist. No one else.”

“I believe you.” I rubbed the back of my neck to keep from jerking her pants off and bending her over the nearest surface. “We need to get you a burner phone. I’ll switch mine again, make sure he’s not tracking them.”

“Were we followed?” Her hazel eyes were big.

“Nah, I’d have noticed. Especially since the shit with the peckerwoods.” But someone had noticed we were there. Or had overheard us talking about it. The pitch in my stomach brought bile up the back of my throat.

I trusted very few people. One of those would have been the only person to overhear. Ro.

“Think it had anything to do with this?” She sat on the bed, her legs tucked under her, and pulled a piece of paper out of a large manila envelope. “The lawyer said it came from Archer.”

She busied herself dumping out the rest of the contents. I focused on the note she’d handed me. The handwriting was so familiar it was like being smacked in the face by a ghost. The heat of anger leveled off to a simmer, chilled by the cold rush of grief.

On the outside of paper Preacher’s name was scrawled. I unfolded the crumpled piece of paper, the one Riley had held in the kitchen.

“He wrote it,” I confirmed for her, before unfolding it.

You lose .

But what had Preacher lost? So far, he had the table and the power. Sounded like what the bastard would count as a win.

He’d never have Riley . I’d die first.

“Things were tense for a while before Archer died.” Between the two of them. Preacher pushing and Archer throwing up a damn cement wall.

“As openly hostile as you and Preacher are now?” She had a way of asking questions that made people want to answer them. And left little room to squirrel your way around the answer. She was already a damn good lawyer.

I snorted. “I haven’t smashed his face in yet.”

“That would be all out war, not hostility.”

I didn’t disagree. “Which is why I haven’t done it… yet .”

Club business wasn’t something I should be talking about, not to her or anyone outside of the table. But with this, Riley was the only person I trusted outside of Merc. Hell, maybe even more.

She was quiet for a while. I laid across the foot of the bed, staring at the grooves in the paper left behind by Archer’s pen. The gentle sound of Riley riffling through the paperwork Kimbrell had given her the only sound aside from my breathing.

When I couldn’t stand the stillness. I stood and prowled the bedroom that used to be mine. She’d slowly expanded in that space, and it was now filled with things that would forever remind me of her. Sexy little boots in the corner, a pink hairbrush on the nightstand. Her perfumes and lotions on the dresser, her jacket hanging on the back of the chair.

And the one that made me sick if I thought about it too long—her suitcases in the corner near the closet.

“Do you really think Preacher killed him?” Her voice broke through my thoughts.

“Before? I wouldn’t have thought he had the balls. But now, yeah.” I stopped at the foot of the bed.

“Are you sure, or is that just easier to believe than the alternative?” The concern in her eyes made my heart stutter.

“Archer damn sure didn’t kill himself.” It was important to me that she knew that. That Riley understood he had too much to live for, even her. Would he have reached out now that her mom was gone? Definitely. I knew it in my soul. Just like I knew he was betting on my protecting her until this was over.

“Who’d have the most to gain?”

“On paper,” I swore as soon as I thought about it. “Me.”

I couldn’t even look at her then. She’d come to that conclusion herself, eventually. And this was the real reason I didn’t go after Preacher without all the facts. Because he was going to come for me first.

Riley scoffed. “And you think I’d believe that?”

“I get the house, I get the bikes, I get you, I get a bigger position in the MC. That’s more than anyone else.” Turning to face her, I leaned down on the bed, arms out, resting all my weight on the hands I’d balled into fists. “Darlin’, if I go for Preach, he’s going to make that sound real convincing.”

“And it kills you, every day.” She crawled to me, on her hands and knees, nose to nose. “I can see it, feel it. Because I know what that loneliness feels like. Looking at your life and seeing the future empty is scary as fuck. No, you had nothing to do with his death. You loved him too much.” There was a conviction in her voice that only Archer could have held for me.

But there was something else too, a pain. The understanding we had for each other was because we both knew what it was like to face that dark, lonely road.

God, I was in love with her.

She’d glanced down to where my fists pitted the comforter. “Look at me, darlin’.” I cradled her cheek and brought her gaze to. “You’re not alone anymore.”

I laid my forehead against hers and closed my eyes, willing her to understand, to feel what I was feeling. Because I couldn’t say it, not yet. Not when she was leaving me soon.

I’d never given anyone that much power to hurt me, to control me.

“Neither are you.” She whispered.

And I was giving it to her, all wrapped up in barbed wire and razor blades.

“Fuck.” I stood back from her, needing to breathe on my own for a minute before telling her.

“Here, this one is for you.” She rocked back on her haunches and handed me an envelope. My full first name was written across the stark white paper in Archer’s printed scrawl. The envelope was thick, as if he’d stuffed multiple pages into it.

Emotion choked me so hard, I had to force a swallow and step back. I shoved the letter in my back pocket. I’d read it later. Or not, I wasn’t sure.

***

Most of my adult life I’d spent every night at the clubhouse until late, often sleeping in the room upstairs that I’d fucked Riley in. A lot of times I didn’t stay up there alone. Home had been a depressing place, cold and lonely. I hadn’t even called Archer’s place or my apartment home, hadn’t ever called anywhere home.

Then there was Riley.

I didn’t want to share her, didn’t want to keep her all night at the club house and party. I didn’t want to drink and smoke weed until the darkness didn’t matter.

I wanted to come home to her, lose myself inside her, and sleep with her pressed against me. Then wake up and do it all again.

Because I’d always done what the fuck I wanted, I’d done just that every goddamned day. I didn’t stroll into the clubhouse until almost noon the day of the Dry Valley Desert Lights. Security was mine and Puck’s gig had been before Archer and still was.

Preacher wasn’t there. My job or not, he should have been. AP was there and marked that absence.

“You piss El Presidente off, son?”

“Man…” Jester trailed off with a half laugh, hitting a blunt and passing it to me. “Fucking Preach’s got a hard-on for Cam’s ole lady. All up her ass at Archer’s last night, Cam smacked him down a few pegs.”

AP frowned, his dark eyebrows coming together, drawing more attention to the silver threading his hair. “What did you say?”

“Not shit.” I took a long hit and passed it to Merc, who was sitting by his dad.

“Watch yourself.” But that was the only warning I got. Archer would have pulled me to the side, laid it all out. AP wasn’t that way; he expected me to know.

I did. We all did.

Drop Top waddled in not long after, looking like either his hemorrhoids or his ole lady’s bitching had kept him up all night. He smacked a roll of paper onto the large table in Chapel, unrolling it and stretching it out. “Here’s your map, brother. I marked off all the stages and entrances. Where they want our main station set up.” He pointed to each place.

“Show me where you want me putting people.”

I did so, working it to keep the guys that could best handle themselves with those who couldn’t, and dispersing the other men from the other charters in with our guys. Desert Lights was too big just for us, I had Kings coming in from several states. All shit I’d set up with Archer before he died.

I made one change. I stuck Preacher and his cronies as far away from me as I could. My adrenaline would already be high, didn’t need to be worried about him all night.

“Here we go boys.” Jester dropped a black backpack on the free end of the table, unzipped it, and tossed out bags of blue and purple pills. Then a few bags of white powder. “Preacher’s boy, Ghost, has the weed.” Then he grinned. “Wouldn’t fit in my backpack, made the little fucker drive Preacher’s old beater car.”

It wasn’t just the fee we charged to run security. This would be the only club sanctioned event where we openly provided the party favors. We knew where it came from and could control how much came in and to who it went to. Plus, the Kings made a killing. Might have been one of Preacher’s only good ideas in the past few decades.

, Ghost was sitting at the bar, likely waiting on Preacher. His sponsor hadn’t managed to make any of the meeting—leaving texted excuses. The other guys wondered why—I didn’t.

He was avoiding me.

The information Kenna gave me burned in my chest. Ghost was no criminal mastermind. Kid could barely shake out a quarter pound of weed. Nah, Preacher had been the one to do that. But had he done it to prove a point to me about Riley? Or was it something else?

My anger over the danger he’d put her in boiled over into irritation for the little bitch’s hand in it. Preacher might have put him up to hiring the peckerwoods to come for me—but he’d still done it.

Ghost could have made the same move Kenna did. He didn’t.

I’d never been a bully, but I was a cocky son of a bitch. I lit a cigarette and let my attitude roll free as I approached the bar. The clubhouse was filling up, guys rolling in from other charters for the weekend.

With this many eyes on us, I couldn’t strike at Preacher. Ghost’s bitch ass was fair game. Chin up, ready for a fight, I forced a grin with as much arrogance as I could muster.

Nothing about Ghost was intimidating. The scrawny bastard had gone for it with the short mohawk and ghost flame tattoos on each side of his head. He’d missed.

He was a skinny prick in oversized clothes that hadn’t ever done shit. I could whip it out and piss on his leg and he wouldn’t say a word. Nothing about him was Desert King material.

Preacher’s need to control people was the only reason this weaselly punk was a probie.

He was Preacher’s bitch.

“Didn’t you grow up in the Bends?” I slapped a hard hand on his shoulder, all chummy and fake.

“Yeah.” He turned to me, happy and smiling, but a little nervous. “When I was a kid, met Kenna there.” He slapped her on the ass when she breezed by.

I gave her credit; she had one hell of a poker face.

“Bet you spent time with Wanda’s boys while you were there too, right?” Ghost and Kenna were a few years younger than me. I’d went to school with the middle Haynes bastard.

The Bends was the collection of trailer parks and little shitholes that were tucked away in the bend of the dry riverbed. “Her youngest is about your age, isn’t he? What’s his name…Trent?”

I knew damn well that was the wrong name.

“Trey.” Too late he realized his mistake and squirmed, the bar stool squeaking a little as he did. “I mean, we were in some of the same classes. Didn’t hang out with him or nothing.”

“Cool.” I had him where I wanted him. He needed to squirm, and he needed to know that I knew .

His next move would give me ammunition to fire at Preacher. I caught Puck as he walked by… if anyone could keep Kenna out of that crossfire, it was him.