Women.

Fuck.

Dealing with them was fast becoming the norm in my life. And after all these years of not having to deal with them, it was doing my fucking head in.

For what felt like the fiftieth fucking time that day, I checked my phone for a text from Tenille. It had been over twenty-four hours since I’d left Melbourne, and I was yet to hear from her. My natural instinct was to call and demand to know what was happening with Charlie, but the rational side of me won out, so I shoved my phone back into my pocket and blew out a long, frustrated breath.

“Fucking women,” I muttered under my breath. I was sitting at the bar in the clubhouse waiting for King. Being mid-afternoon Thursday, it wasn’t busy, but the few guys there were fucking noisy. I turned to face them and called out, “Can you assholes keep the fucking noise down?”

They scowled at me. I wasn’t anyone’s favourite person, but at least when I wanted something it was usually given. As they quietened, I turned back to my drink and took a swig, my eyes meeting Kree’s.

“Rough day?”

I didn’t like many people. Not easily, anyway. But Kree was someone I did like. Probably because she knew when to involve herself in something and when to back off. She was smart as hell, too, a trait I valued in a person.

I drained my glass, the second whisky I’d had that afternoon after returning from Monroe’s shop. “Tell me something, Kree. You’ve got kids, right?”

She stopped what she was doing and put down the glasses she was clearing away. Kree had this way of giving her full attention when she had a conversation. You knew she was fully in it, and that was another thing I liked about her. “Yes.”

“If you had a teen daughter who hadn’t seen her father since she was a toddler, how do you think she’d take the news that he was back?”

“My daughter is only young, so I have no experience with teens yet, but I can tell you how I reacted when my dad came back into my life when I was fifteen. I desperately wanted him around, but he’d walked out on us when I was five, so I was angry with him. Ten years without him built enough anger to cause some explosive fights. And fifteen was an age where I liked to express my anger a lot. So I took it out on him.” She rested her elbows on the bar and leant closer to me. “I’ll tell you this, though—if he’d been man enough to stick that anger out, I would have forgiven him and accepted him. But he didn’t. We haven’t seen each other since.”

“And your mum? How did she deal with all that?”

She straightened. “She hated him more than I did, so it wasn’t pretty. Maybe if she hadn’t shared that anger with me, it might have been different with my dad. I may not have been so mad at him. But at the end of the day, my father was a weak man. A child—especially a teen—needs strength from their parents.” She paused for a beat before adding, “I presume we’re talking about your daughter here. You show her even a fraction of the grit I’ve seen in you, and you’ll get through to her. But you may need to curb that temper of yours. Teens don’t respond well to your kind of impatience and moods.”

I gripped the empty glass in front of me and then slid it towards her. A headache screamed at me, and I did my best to ignore it. Depending on what King had on my agenda for the rest of the day, whisky would do the trick.

Kree took the glass. “The same?”

I nodded, and she left me to my thoughts. It was only a few moments, though, before I was interrupted.

“You get anything out of Monroe?”

I glanced up to find King taking a seat next to me. He jerked his chin at Kree, indicating he wanted a drink, and then looked back at me.

Did I get anything out of Monroe? The answer to that was nothing but hell, and a hard-on that she’d never wrap her lips around. She’d fired up at me fast earlier and given me a tongue-lashing that had tripped my own temper. The surprise in it all, though, was that she’d managed to ease my mood swing almost as fast. That wasn’t something that happened often, if ever.

I’d had a foul temper for as long as I could remember. Apparently it ran in my family. Over the years, I’d just accepted it, but it had dragged me into some shitty situations. Tenille and I had spent half our marriage fighting over shit because of our temper clashes, and I often found myself in fights I usually refused to back down from with my brothers. Backing down wasn’t in my personality, so it had surprised me when I did so with Monroe.

“She’s a fucking handful, King, but yeah, her guy called me this afternoon and gave me some info. Not sure that it’s useful, though. Turns out the kid he buys the drugs from has a dad who forces him to sell them. I’ve got his address, but he’s out of town for a few days. Fox thinks he’ll be back either Saturday or Sunday.”

“Get one of the prospects to watch the address and let us know when he returns. I talked with Max James and Calvin Ryan today. Neither seems to know anything about Jacko’s murder. I would have thought if anyone would know something, it’d be one of them. Whoever is behind this, is keeping a low fucking profile.” Max and Calvin had their fingers in a lot of pies. It surprised me, too, that they didn’t know anything.

King’s phone rang, and he was silent for a few moments while he listened to what was being said. His face morphed into a scowl before he said, “Let him in. I’ll deal with him.” After he had shoved his phone back in his pocket, he said, “Ryland’s here. Wants a chat.”

“Has Bronze heard any more about the investigation?” The last I knew, he was having trouble digging up any info for us as to what Ryland had on the club. Unusual for Bronze, which made me think the feds were working hard to keep shit under wraps.

King shook his head. “Haven’t heard from him for days. I’ll call him after I hear what Ryland has to say.”

The detective entered the bar, drawing our attention to him. King’s body tensed as he watched Ryland walk towards us. With everything going on in the club and with Jen, he was wound tighter than I’d ever seen him.

“Ryland,” King greeted him, “What the fuck do you want now? I’d have thought keeping your eyes on me twenty-four-fucking-seven would be enough for you.”

Ryland was good at his job. I’d give him that. His face remained blank, not registering any reaction to what King said. “I thought we had a deal, King.”

“I don’t make deals with cops.”

“Yeah well, you did with this one.” He waited for King to reply, but when King simply stared at him in silence, he added, “I want your guys off Gambarro.”

King crossed his arms. “No.”

Ryland’s carefully controlled composure finally cracked a little. “No? You do realise what will happen to you if you don’t comply, right?”

King’s jaw clenched. “How about you waste your breath and tell me again.”

Ryland stepped closer to King in what appeared to be an effort to intimidate him. He shouldn’t have bothered; nothing intimidated King. It would only piss him off more than he already was. “You’re playing with fire here, King. You remove the men you’ve got watching Gambarro, otherwise I’ll be stepping up my investigation of your club. And I think we both know how that will end up. I’ll also find a way to take over the investigation of Jacko’s murder, which will only increase my surveillance of your members.”

King’s nostrils flared as he looked at Ryland with every ounce of contempt he felt towards the man. I didn’t know what had happened to King when he was younger, but I would have put money on him having an altercation with the cops, because I didn’t know anyone to hate them as much as he did. “You do whatever the fuck you have to, Ryland, and leave me to do whatever the fuck I need to. Investigate the shit out of Storm. You won’t find anything that others haven’t been able to find over the years. But let me be crystal fucking clear—you’re the one playing with fire here, not me. And when that fire gets hotter than you ever realised it could, you’ll be wishing you never knew me or threatened me.”

Neither moved for a good few moments, each staring the other one down. Ryland was the first to move, taking a step back. “I’ve warned you. Let the chips fall where they may.” He stalked out of the clubhouse after that, leaving King to track his movements with disgust as he left.

“You think he’s got much on us?” I asked.

“He’s got something. But whether or not he can back it with evidence is another story. I’m not fucking removing our eyes off Gambarro, though, so Bronze better come through with something soon.”

We were dangerously close to the kind of shit we’d managed to avoid for a long time. Bronze had kept us off the cop radar most of the time, and whenever we’d hit it, he’d dragged us off it fast. But this time felt different; this time I was actually concerned about where it would all end up. Where we’d end up.