The next morning found the meeting room packed with hungover and still drunk Saints. Prosper’s hollering went a long way to sobering them up.
“You wanna tell me again how it fucking happened that we let Valentina Abruzzi on to the property!?” Prosper was pacing like a caged tiger—back and forth—back and forth. He stomped across the club’s scarred wooden floor all the while gesticulating wildly with his hands flexed into hard fists, and the veins in his neck popping out into thick road maps.
He had been hollering at ear-splitting decibels for close to an hour, and it didn’t appear that he was going to be losing steam any time soon. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars of goddamn—GODDAMN—surveillance equipment and nobody—NO-FUCKING-BODY—picked up the little fact that the new play thing that this fucking genius brought to the party”—Prosper swiveled on his heels and stabbed the air forcefully around Riker’s head—“just happened to be Abruzzi’s blood?”
“For the record, it was her cous…” Riker began.
“Brother,” Gunner muttered the low warning from beside him, while Diego signaled him with a silencing motion from across the table.
Prosper went wild.
WILD.
“Which brings me to my next fucking point! MY NEXT FUCKIN’ POINT, which is—how does it happen that —NOT ONE— but TWO—TWO— Abruzzi women were brought onto this compound? And not just on any night, but a night when we were entertaining brothers from all over the damn country. Unless this damn club has turned into the Boy Scouts, every brother in this room knows what pussy at a party like that means.” The president of the Hells Saints MC roared, he flayed, he reached into the back of his, thankfully empty, waistband for his gun while he focused on Riker. “And by the way—YOU DUMB, STUPID FUCK— you think that Abruzzi is a pain in the ass to deal with? You don’t even want to meet his goddamn sister. The mother of the girl you brought here to bone. Audrina Abruzzi makes that murderous piece of shit, Luisa Sievas, look like Mother Theresa when it comes to protecting her young!”
“Protecting her young? Jesus, they’re grown women in their twenties, boss. Not exactly babes in the woods or—” Riker muttered unwisely.
One-minute Riker was spouting off his bullshit, and the next minute he was being held two feet off the floor by his president’s huge forearm. Prosper’s elbow pressed effectively against Riker’s larynx while his fist crashed into Riker’s ribs, and his knee slammed hard into the crotch of Riker’s pants.
Twenty hardened men sitting around the large table grimaced and cupped their own balls reflexively. They watched on as their brother’s face turned from white to red to eggplant in a matter of seconds.
He’s gonna kill him. He’s gonna crush his larynx and push his balls up into his throat. Boss is gonna kill Riker right before our damn eyes. Hal had risen half out of his chair when he felt Diego’s hand clamp hard on his shoulder, pushing him down. The Saints’ VP shook his head once in warning, but then he got up himself and was immediately joined by Prosper’s nephew, Reno McCabe. In one swift, simultaneous move, Diego pulled Prosper off Riker while Reno stood protectively in front of him.
“With respect, Boss. One more second, and you would have killed the brother.” Diego immediately dropped the strong hold he had on his president.
“Whiskey!” Prosper glared with murderous intent at Diego, but he didn’t go after Riker again. Hal got up from the table and sprinted over to the small bar, poured Prosper a double, and shoved it hard into his waiting hand. Prosper shot it back while Riker writhed on the floor and struggled to catch his breath.
“Pick up that dumb-ass, bad-decision making piece of shit, and get him outta my sight before I take his patch!” Prosper ordered. Then he glared again at Riker, who was now leaning heavily against Gunner. “And get that asswipe to the clinic to get his ribs taped up. I felt at least two of ‘em crack under my fist. Jules ain’t here, but you can handle that, yeah?”
“Yeah, boss. I got this,” Gunner said and led his best buddy, stumbling, and wheezing out the door.
“Any reason why the rest of you fuckers are still sitting here?” Prosper roared out the question and a millisecond later, the thunder of boot heels could be heard making their way to the door.
Diego, Reno, and Hal stayed behind and poured themselves a shot from the whiskey bottle. Each of them surreptitiously kept an eye on their president, who, by order of his cardiologist, should not be drinking, smoking, or otherwise putting a stress on his nervous system by losing his goddamn mind.
Prosper himself seemed to know that he had blown out a hole in his stress meter, because he shoved the shot glass aside, reached into the bar fridge and pulled out a cold bottle of water. Then he sat himself down in a chair and took some long cleansing breaths.
“Dumb fucks,” he muttered. “I hope we’ve got some smart prospects waiting to patch in ‘cause the boys we got now ain’t got shit for brains! I should take away all their cuts and replace ‘em with round rubber noses and big red shoes — ‘cause what we got here now is a bunch of goddamn clowns! They couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the fucking heel!
While the men couldn’t help but grin at the Bozo reference, a tense silence filled the room because Prosper was not wrong. Hal had to agree that Riker had been thinking with his dick when he let the Abruzzi women onto the compound during an all-out, no holds barred Saints party.
But shouldn’t the women have known better too?
What the hell ever happened to personal responsibility?
Last thing Hal thought to find when he ran out of the clubhouse with guns-a-blazing was a totally freaked-out, Valentina Abruzzi.
Riker fessed up to the club about how he had put the moves on Gia at the reception hall and had convinced the cousin, who, in turn, convinced Valentina to show up at the Hells Saints MC party.
And since every man in that room had seen Riker’s Rico Suave act no one was exactly surprised. Even Hal had to admit that the brother had game. Bitches didn’t seem to stand a chance when Riker turned on his bad boy charm. So while Hal could understand why Gia went for it, for some reason he thought Valentina should have known better.
Dumb-ass move for who he had thought was a smart woman.
But still it was hard not to feel for her, because Valentina sure as hell paid the price for that bad decision.
Jesus, she had looked so pale and small. Hal scowled at the thought. So lost, terrified, and pathetic standing there, caught in the grips of her own private hell…
He was brought back to the present with a thundering force as he felt the chair pushed hard from under him.
“Hey, what the fu…?”
“Room is cleared, brother,” Diego told him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, ‘course I am. Where did everyone go?” Hal forced himself to focus.
“Boss went to calm his ass down before he put in a call to Gianni. You know that conversation is gonna be damn special. Reno went home to take his dog out or do some other domestic duty bullshit. My woman’s tied up with the kids today, so I was gonna take a nice long ride up into the hills. Maybe grab some lunch. You down?” Diego snubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray.
“Let’s go,” Hal said in quick response.
It was a beautiful day. Perfect for riding. Nothing but blue skies and big, puffy white clouds for as far as the eye could see. Cool wind in his face and warm sunshine on his back, Hal put all thoughts behind him and concentrated on the open road. After the fresh air and adrenalin rush of the ride had built up an appetite, the brothers stopped at a small fish fry place and had themselves a serious chow-down. Then—because why the hell not—Diego and Hal tried their hand at the batting cage situated behind the small restaurant. The two men took a longer route back home and rode peacefully through rolling hills and long winding roads littered with fields of corn and wild flowers.
It was a damned good way to relax and burn off some steam.
Later, Hal would look back on that ride and think of it as the calm that came before the storm—the storm that broke all of hell loose.