I knew when to stop negotiating. “When can I take the oath?”
Dad shook his head with a chuckle. “There’s an initiation of four boys in a month, or if you want to be initiated by yourself, then—”
“No, I want to be initiated with the men.”
Dad nodded once. “You’ve chosen a very difficult path. I’m glad you won’t be burdened with White in addition.”
It took me two days and a few thousand dollars of bribe money to find out where Gray was. My old contacts had been leery of me, as expected, and hadn’t been willing to hand over information as a favor. I’d barely left the last biker bar alive but at least with information about Gunnar’s newest hiding place. Word about me becoming a traitor had made the rounds far quicker than I’d anticipated.
And not just that, people knew that I had killed Earl. That was information only very few people had, and one of them had obviously spilled the beans gladly, probably in the hopes to have me killed soon.
I had my suspicions. Luca might have let me go because Marcella asked him to, but he’d prefer it if I never returned to her. He wanted me dead. I had no doubt about it. I wouldn’t have pegged him the sneaky type, but desperate times…
Of course, he wasn’t the only one who knew about me killing Earl. Matteo, Amo, Marcella, and Growl at least… maybe more of Luca’s soldiers. Except for Marcella, each of them could have let the information slip to dispose of me.
The hut where Gunnar hid with a few other bikers wasn’t surrounded by a fence like our last clubhouse had been but that didn’t mean it was less protected. Gunnar had a penchant for booby traps. Something he’d learned in his time in the military and later refined as part of the prepper scene. I parked my bike down the dirt road that led up to the hut. There were three tire tracks, deep grooves that had been forced into the ground over time. It only made sense that people kept to the tracks if there was danger around them. The problem was I didn’t trust all three tracks to be equally safe. I had a feeling one of them at least was a trap and hid several bombs waiting to tear me apart. I scanned the ground left and right of the dirt road, hoping for a sign that it was safe there. But the grass hid possible tracks and bombs from the eye. Not to mention that I had never been good at track work. That had been Gray’s thing. My best bet was to choose one of the tracks on the dirt road and hope for the best.
I stood on my tiptoes to get a better view of the hut. After a few seconds, I spotted the roof of a truck. If Gunnar and his friends used the truck, they might use this track to get up there, then only the outer tracks would be safe. Unless they used a back road I didn’t know anything about or didn’t use the truck at all… from my vantage point, I couldn’t even see if the thing was still in working condition.
Taking a deep breath, I started my bike again and was about to ride in the outer left track when a voice called, “I wouldn’t pick that track if I were you.”
My head shot up, my eyes going wide then my lips pulled into a smile as I spotted Gray. He didn’t look happy in the slightest to see me. He was still in his Tartarus cut. Seeing it tightened my chest. Until recently, I’d gone nowhere without my cut, only taking it off for sleep, and occasionally sex, though most ladies loved to see me in it.
Behind him, Gunnar appeared too, looking even unhappier. Even from a distance, I could see the fat lump on his forehead, close to his temple, where I’d hit him. “What ya doing here, Maddox? You aren’t welcome here.”
“I come in peace. We need to talk.”
Gray shook his head. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t believe that I came in peace or if he didn’t want to talk to me.
“Word is you’re one of Vitiello’s henchmen now, Mad. Killing bikers is your new job. Not sure I want you anywhere near me and my friends,” Gray shouted, crossing his arms over his chest.
“If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it in the clubhouse. I don’t want either of you dead, and I’m not one of Vitiello’s henchmen, all right?”
They didn’t need to know that my future job description entailed hunting down Earl supporters.
Gray shook his head again, muttering something to Gunnar. It was driving me crazy that he was too far away to hear what he was going on about.
“Can I come up to talk?”
Gunnar pointed a warning finger at me. “Drop your weapons, and don’t try to fuck us up, Mad. I used to like you but I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
“I’m dropping my guns now.” I removed the gun and the knife from my boot and my belt and put them down on the ground in a very obvious way. Despite what had happened, I still felt a certain amount of trust in these two. Maybe it was foolish nostalgia. “Done.”
“Our friends inside the hut have a very nervous trigger finger—”
“I get it,” I interrupted Gunnar. “I mess up and you kill me. I’ll behave, I swear.”
“What’s your swear even worth?” Gray shouted. “You’re a liar and a cheat.”
“You can pick the left track,” Gunnar said. “The middle’s a bad idea.”
I glanced to Gray who had warned me about the left track, then back to Gunnar.
“The kid’s a bit pissed at you for killing his old man,” Gunnar explained.
Gray turned around and stalked away, leaving me with the choice of whom to trust. Gunnar and I had been on many runs. I liked him, more than all the others. But Gray was my brother, and a hotheaded teenager who’d lost his dad and club.
“Fuck,” I muttered. Taking another deep breath, I picked the left track and started my bike. My heart galloped like a wild horse when my tire touched the track and I practically held my breath all the way up to the driveway where Gunnar waited for me with a gun in hand.
I let out a laugh when I came to a stop, overwhelmed with relief that I hadn’t been torn into tiny pieces.
“Turn off the engine,” Gunnar ordered, still the gun pointed at my head.
I did as he said and raised my hands over my head with a wry smile. “Come on, Gunnar. We aren’t enemies. I have nothing against you. I didn’t kill you. And you didn’t kill me. I call that even.”
“You destroyed the club,” Gunnar muttered, jabbing a finger at the Tartarus emblem over his chest. “Or have you forgotten?”
“I didn’t destroy anything. Earl did when he started torturing Marcella. That was messed up. He got off track. You know it, and many of the Nomads know it too. It’s why they left in the first place.”
Gunnar eyed me. “I won’t say you should have talked to Earl because we both know how that would have ended. But you could have put yourself up for vote as the new prez.”
“Most of the men who remained in the club were loyal to Earl. It’s why they stayed and didn’t become Nomads. I wouldn’t have won and Earl would have definitely killed me then. He wanted me dead in the end. He tried killing me first, so I’m not sad I killed him.”
Gunnar shrugged. “The chapter’s dead too.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You and the other Nomads could build it up again, with the ideals it used to have. Brotherhood, and freedom. Not money, revenge, and drugs.”