He looked back at me with those blank, stupid eyes. “What, Lou?”

I sighed. “This ain’t gonna be fun to hear, kid.”

His face twisted up with fear and confusion. “What is it?”

“While you were away, I started asking around, talking to some of the other dancers. It…”

I made a face like it was torture for me to go on.

“What’d they say?!” Benjy demanded, already angry, already riled up.

This was going to be easier than I thought.

“They said Venus’s been fucking other guys behind your back.”

Benjy’s face crumpled, and his eyes filled with tears. “No… no, that ain’t true…”

“I’m sorry, kid, but that’s what they said.”

“WHO? WHO SAID THAT?!” he yelled as he stood up.

“Calm down,” I snapped.

He collapsed back in the chair. “Who? Who said it, Lou?”

“Never you mind. I don’t want you goin’ near any of my dancers, you hear me?”

“They’re lyin’, Lou – they’re fuckin’ lyin’!”

“I don’t think they are. They didn’t want to tell me, and they felt real bad about it ‘cause they all like you, but… yeah, she’s been fuckin’ around on you ever since you two started up.”

“No,” he whimpered, tears running down his cheeks. “No…”

Time to twist the knife.

“She said she was just fucking you for the drugs. She said you were dumb as shit, and you never even knew she was cheatin’ on you.”

He started to bawl. “No, no, no…”

“She said she couldn’t stand fuckin’ you. Said you had the smallest pecker she’d ever seen.” My voice became angrier the more I went on, as though I was outraged a woman would ever say these things about a friend of mine. “She said you didn’t do a thing for her… said she needed a real man with a real dick to fuck her, ‘cause you sure as hell couldn’t.”

Benjy hunched over and howled like a dying animal.

“And… Jesus… I don’t want to tell you this, kid, but…”

He looked up at me through his tears. “What?!”

“…there was more than one. She was fuckin’ this guy AND his friends. She’d let ‘em pull a gangbang on her. Said she fuckin’ loved it – how they fucked her two and three at a time. How dirty they made her feel. How she enjoyed it a million times more than fucking you.”

Now, if you were a little smarter than a five-year-old, you might start asking questions like, When the hell did she have time to fuck all these guys if I was with her every day, morning noon and night? In fact, when the hell did she have time to fuck ONE other guy?

Benjy wasn’t smarter than a five-year-old, though, so he didn’t ask questions. He just swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker.

The idea of his little angel being a total slut? With not just one, but multiple dudes doin’ her at the same time? It sent him over the fuckin’ edge.

“WHO?!” he yelled. “WHO ARE THEY?!”

“Benjy,” I snarled, “I’m not gonna tell you again: keep your fuckin’ voice down.”

He cowed like a whipped dog, but only for a second. “Who are they, Lou? Who are they?”

I hesitated for a second.

Do I tell him Jack? Throw in Kade for good measure?

No. Much as I wanted Jack out of my hair, the chances of Benjy being able to kill him were slim to none. He might be able to take him down if he caught Pollari by surprise, but there was no way in hell he’d get Kade, too. And odds were either one of them would see Benjy coming from a mile away and shoot him before he even got the chance to aim.

And if Benjy lived… even if it was only long enough to talk… that would be very, very bad for me.

First and foremost, I needed the bitch gone. And I was confident Benjy could do that, if I could overcome a few barriers.

“It was that guy she told you about – her ex-boyfriend,” I said. “That guy from that other biker gang. That’s why she went to Vegas – to fuck him and his buddies. And not only that, she went there to give him the information he wanted about us. The Midnight Riders.”

I saw the surprise in his face as he remembered what he’d told me and suddenly put two and two together. Even though in reality there was no fuckin’ way it added up to four.

“Remember her bein’ so upset?” I asked him, my voice getting angrier. “She said her ex wanted her to betray us – and she did. She betrayed us, Benjy. She fuckin’ betrayed every single one of us. Not just you – she stabbed the whole goddamn club in the back.”

Strictly speaking, none of that woulda been true even if she had done it. Benjy wasn’t a member of the MC. He wasn’t a brother. He wasn’t patched in. He was a fuckin’ mascot, a joke.

But those sort of subtleties kind of escaped him at the moment.

“And you wanna know why she did it?” I hissed. “Because she’s a whore. A goddamn, low-down, no-good, cokehead bitch who cheated on you and laughed at you behind your back. She’s a thief, and a liar, and a traitor, and she deserves to fuckin’ die.”

I watched the emotions play out on his face. First his anger at the ex and the bikers, then fury at her – how DARE she fuck over my friends!

But when I said she deserved to die, it all turned to fear. He looked like a scared rabbit.

Suddenly it was touch-and-go. I might lose him right here.

“If Eyeball was a traitor and betrayed the club, what do you think we should do to him?” I asked.

The answer was easy. Benjy hated Eyeball.

“Kill him,” he said, his face darkening with spite.

“And if Roach was a traitor, and got everybody killed – what do you think we should do to him?”

He didn’t hate Roach, only disliked him. Roach laughed at him a lot, but that was the extent of it.

Didn’t matter. After handing down sentence on Eyeball, Benjy was still in the mood for blood.

“Kill him,” he said.

“And if one of my dancers sold us out – told all our secrets, and stole all our money, and let another gang come in here and shoot us all to hell – what should we do to her?”

“Kill her,” he said angrily.

I was pretty damn sure he had no idea where I was going next, even though it was obvious.

“Venus cheated on you. She lied to you. She humiliated you. She told all the other girls you got a tiny dick and you can’t fuck worth shit. She banged a whole buncha guys behind your back, and she only fucked you for your drugs. She basically stole that coke from you. That was yours – I gave it to you. In fact, she basically stole it from me.

“Not only that, but she’s working with that same guy she fucked behind your back to bring down the entire club. She’s going to destroy the Midnight Riders, and she’s going to laugh about it when she does, just like she laughed at you while she was takin’ it up the ass from her stud and all his buddies. So – knowin’ all that – what do you think you should do to Venus?”

His lower lip trembled. “…Lou?”

I leaned forward in anticipation. “Yeah?”

“Her name is Ali,” he said softly, his voice sad.

Fuck.

At first I thought it was over, that all was lost. There was no way he was going to pull a gun on this girl, much less shoot her.

But I had another one of my genius flashes, and I saw my way in.

And it was all about her name.

“No, Benjy. Ali’s that nice girl you fell in love with… but she ain’t here no more. She’s gone. She started down the wrong path, buddy, and her mind and her soul got took over by a demon. Ali got replaced by a lying, cheating whore who’d do anything to get high. Venus took over. Ali’s gone, and Venus is all that’s left. You wouldn’t be killing Ali… you’d be killin’ Venus.”

He looked at me for a second, then asked in a child-like voice, “Like Anakin?”

The fuck?

“Huh?”

“Like Anakin. He went bad and turned to the Dark Side, and then he turned into Darth Vader.”

I didn’t know who the fuck this Anakin cat was, but everybody knew Darth Vader, so I just played along.

“Yes. That is exactly right,” I said, pointing my finger at him. “Exactly like that.”

“But… Darth Vader turned good at the end,” he whimpered.

Shit.

“That was a movie, Benjy. This is real fuckin’ life. You listen, and you listen good: Ali’s gone. That traitor Venus took her place. Venus is the one who fucked you over. Venus is the one who made fun of you behind your back. Venus is the one who made a laughingstock out of you and betrayed the entire fuckin’ MC.”

I could tell I had him… almost.

So I kept going.

“And if that traitor does destroy the club, you know whose fault it’s gonna be? Yours. Because you coulda stopped her. You coulda done something to protect me, and Jack, and Kade, and all the other guys in the club… but you didn’t. All for some chick who banged a bunch of assholes behind your back, and laughed at you while she did it. Not Ali – Venus.”

I could see it in his eyes. He was almost there. Just one more inch…

“You know how you want us to patch you in, but we haven’t yet?” I asked.

He raised his eyes to mine. “Yeah?”

“We don’t patch in just anybody. We make ‘em do brave things for the club. Unpleasant shit, but shit that’s got to be done. This… this is some bad shit. This is gonna hurt. But you’re gonna save the MC, man. You’re gonna save the Midnight Riders. If you do this, you’re gonna be my hero. And we need heroes in this club. I’ll make sure Jack patches you in the very next day.”

His eyes gave him away. No matter how much it hurt, he was sold.

“So what’s it gonna be, Benjy? Are you gonna take down the evil bitch who cheated on you, and lied to you, and humiliated you? The traitor who’s gonna destroy the Midnight Riders? Are you gonna be a hero, or are you gonna be a coward and turn your back on your brothers and walk away while we all die?”

His lips trembled, and tears spilled down his cheeks.

“…how should I do it, Lou?” he whispered.