An old slaughterhouse on the godforsaken outskirts of town. Lind couldn’t believe the clichés, the lack of originality. He couldn’t believe this was where Jacob had taken Eve. And yet, he supposed he should have expected it. After all, the whole situation was a cliché.
As they walked, he shot a sideways glance at Alec. His best friend and president of the Diamondbacks MC walked proudly and confident at his side. He wondered how Alec did it, and he envied him. He envied him that confidence, because for the first time in a very long time Lind did not feel confident at all. He had no doubt that Jacob would meet his end tonight, one way or another, but he also was very afraid that he wouldn’t be able to avoid somebody else getting hurt. Lind could not fathom the thought of losing either Eve or Alec, but he had the sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be able to protect them both tonight.
“Relax, will you?” Alec said as they walked. “You’re making me nervous.”
Lind grunted. He checked his gun, just in case. As if he could ever forget to have it set up properly. As if he could ever leave something to chance, tonight of all nights.
The building was silent and still when they reached it. Following the instructions that Jacob had texted them, they entered and headed down the corridors. They found the room fairly easily. The door was unlocked, as Jacob had told them it would be.
“Let yourselves in,” he had written in his text.
They did. Lind knew that he should probably take in the surroundings first, but his gaze zeroed in on Eve, bound and gagged to a chair in the center of the room. He made to fly to her, but Alec reached out and grabbed his arm, effectively stopping him.
Reining in his instincts, Lind held back. They threw careful, calculating looks around. There wasn’t much to see. A bare room with a metal table and metal shelves, all of which were empty.
Satisfied that hidden dangers weren’t lurking around for the time being, Alec released him.
Lind ran up to Eve, who was watching him with her chocolate eyes wide. He fumbled with her gag and freed her mouth, crushing his lips to hers before she even could draw a breath. He didn’t care what anybody would think; he was too relieved to see her alive and relatively unscathed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, frantically cupping her face with both hands.
She nodded. “I’m fine.” She appeared shaken, but also determined to get out of there as soon as possible. He could hardly blame her.
Alec walked up to them and looked down at Eve, gauging her with his eyes. “She’s pretty,” he said then.
Lind rolled his eyes. “Yeah, thanks. I’m glad you approve,” he said sarcastically.
“Get me out of here?” Eve said, nodding to her binds.
Lind cursed himself for having wasted even one moment. “Sure.”
“Not yet,” a woman’s voice said from behind them.
They spun around to find Jacob and a woman that Lind recognized as Jessica from the file he and Eve had put together over the past few weeks standing past the doorway.
“So you’re the club mole,” he said. “I gotta say, I’m impressed.”
She half-bowed in mockery. “Thank you.”
She had her gun fixed on them, as had Jacob.
“Step away from the girl,” Jacob said. “Ge out your weapons and lay them on the floor. Slowly.”
“This is very, very stupid of you, Jake,” Alec said. His voice was a low growl, his whole frame was taught with tension and anger.
“Perhaps,” Jacob said. “But don’t worry, soon you’ll be too dead to worry about my stupidity.”
They stood still for a very long moment. Finally, both Lind and Alec took out their guns and lay them at their feet on the floor. At gunpoint, they stepped away from Eve, which Lind was happy to do. If bullets started flying, he didn’t want her in the line of fire.
“The cartel is bigger than you, Jacob,” Alec said. “It’s bigger than anybody. You’ll kill the MC if you do business with them.”
“You’re killing the club by not doing business with them,” Jacob argued. “The cartel represents a new era.”
“The cartel represents death. We do things on our own. We don’t get mixed up with criminal organizations. We thrive because our kingdom is small.”
“It’s too small!” Jacob snapped. “Don’t you see? As it is, we are basically scavengers! I can bring the Diamondbacks more. Make a name for ourselves.”
Alec shook his head. “You’re a stupid, stupid man. And you’re a coward.”
“Perhaps,” Jacob said. “But you won’t be around to judge me much longer, will you?”
Alec stood his ground. “And how to you plan to become President, Jacob?” he asked. He sounded genuinely curious. “Do you really think you will have their vote after you kill me?”
“They won’t know it was me,” Jacob said. “They will never know.”
“And who, pray tell, will you tell them it was?” Alec asked.
“The Cobra’s traitor, of course.”
“What?”
Jessica barely had the time to let her confusion show before Jacob turned to her and fired. Shock registered on her face as blood blossomed on her chest and she crashed to the floor.
Behind them, Eve screamed.
“Poor stupid whore,” Jacob muttered to himself.
“You’re a madman, Jacob,” Lind said quietly.
He was only realizing it now. Jacob didn’t have the reins of this. He thought he did, but he had just killed off his only ally. Did he really think he could handle the cartel, the Diamondbacks, and the Cobra, all by himself?
Jacob ignored the comment. “It’ll be an easy story to pass,” he said. “And Lind here surely won’t breathe a word to anybody, unless he wants his pretty little secret to become one more skeleton in his closet.”
Lind bit his lip fiercely.
“Fuck you,” Alec growled.
“No,” Jacob said sweetly, with a smile to chill the blood in one’s veins. “Fuck you.”
One more shot was fired. Alec crumbled.