Motherfucker, that’s the word that enters my brain when Nicole starts screaming. I look down at the box and immediately know what that twisted fuck has done. It’s been done so many fucking times it’s cliché, but I guess that doesn’t matter to a psychopath. Worse, the fact that it’s a woman’s finger. No, scratch that, it’s Dani’s finger. I’m not stupid. I take the box from Nicole and close it quick. I know that doesn’t help, what has been seen can never be unseen.

Her beautiful blue eyes are looking at me so wounded. Tears are pouring down her face, but even through them, I can see the accusing glare. She asked me to postpone the wedding. She begged me, and I didn’t listen. I should have. I thought I could control things. I need to fix this, but for the life of me I don’t know how. Chances are Dani is dead. If she’s not, she probably wishes she was. I still believe she’d be that way, even if Nicole and I had called the wedding off. I expected Kavanagh to go off the deep end. I just thought he would strike back at me instead of a woman.

I want to take Nicole in my arms, but I have the damn box. So instead, I just stand there.

“Mama, stop. I’ll get him. He’s starting to lose control. That’s what we need,” I say, but my words sound hollow to me.

“Lose control?” she screams. “He cut off her finger. He did exactly what he threatened! We shouldn’t have gone through with this! I told you! I begged you to listen to me. This is our fault, Dragon. Ours!”

“No, Nicole. He would have done something like this either way, he feeds off fear. We can’t give in. We just have to make him get sloppy now.”

“I’m done listening to you,” she says, and the pain in her voice alone could bring me to my knees.

I’m trying to explain. I can see it’s not helping. I’m at a loss. I can do nothing, but watch her walk away. Watch as the woman I love leaves me standing by her bouquet. The bouquet it took her a fucking month to pick out is now thrown down like garbage. It lays there on the broken sidewalk, mocking me. Nicole leaves me standing, without a backwards glance.

“Fuck, Boss, what’s going on?” Freak asks, as Bull, Frog, Dancer, and Hawk come running.

I look at Bull. He’s club enforcer I know, but he’s also the one Nicole trusts the most, besides me and Crusher.

“I need you to go after Nicole, get the other women and take them all to the club. Get Six and the prospects, and put the club on lockdown. Don’t let her leave, Bull, she’s going to want to. You can’t let that happen.”

“Boss…,” Bull starts to argue. I just shake my head no.

“Please man, she’s not thinking with her head right now.” I’ve never said please to one of my brothers before. Fuck, other than it having to do with Nicole and sex, I don’t think the word is in my vocabulary.

Bull must understand how desperate I am. He nods, slapping me on the shoulder. I toss him my keys to the Tahoe I drove this morning.

“Take Frog with you.”

He nods and starts to turn away.

“Bull?”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Keep her safe.” He gives me a grim smile, takes the keys and tosses them to Frog.

“I got my truck. I’ll pick Nic up. You get the other girls and get them to the club,” Bull tells Frog, and I agree. I need everyone safe and accounted for.

“I’ll go help Hawk settle the crowd and have the girls meet me out front. We’ll be there in thirty or forty minutes at the most,” Frog says. Bull waves in acknowledgment and then takes off.

“I want Kavanagh found, and I want him found like yesterday. You feel me?” I tell the other men. They nod in agreement. “Freak, you’re in charge, do whatever you have to do, call in any marker, make a deal with the fucking devil himself! I do not care, but I want the fucker under surveillance by nightfall. Hawk, go with Frog, shut the wedding down and make sure the women are back at the club, safe. Dance, you’re with me.” I turn away ignoring everyone else, still clutching the box in my hand.

“Drag, man, what the fuck happened?”

I shove the box at him.

“He sent Nicole a present! Dani’s motherfucking finger! I want him found, then I’m going to kill him!”

“Fuck…”

“Yeah.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I got a plan. He thinks he has brought us down and has Nicole and Dani where he wants them. I’m going to let him think he’s won.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’ll explain on the way back to the club. Any luck finding Crusher yet?”

“No, man. Freak has a few of the new prospects out searching for him in the usual haunts, he’ll show soon.”

“Let’s hope so. I need him, but only if his head is clear.”

“Well, that box ain’t going to help.”

I don’t argue. I know it won’t.

“Where’s your ride?” I ask. “You can drive while I fill you in on what I want to do to trap this fuck-wad.”

“Parked beside yours, man.”

I let him lead and glance over my shoulder, one last time, in the direction that Nicole disappeared to. I hope Bull can keep her from leaving the compound. I know she has it in her head to go to Kavanagh, and that can’t happen.

We pile into the Tahoe. I watch through the windshield, as Freak, Hawk and Frog walk back towards the main chapel. The sight of the church hurts me. Fuck, Nicole may never talk to me again.

My phone rings, and I look at the number on the display. Shit. I wonder what other fuck-ups happened today.

“Yeah motherfucker, want to tell me where you’ve been?”

“Drag, listen quick man.”

Crush’s voice comes over my phone, there are pops and crackling in the line, and I can barely make him out.

“Where in fuck are you? Do you know what went down today?”

“Do…. Use… today…”

“What are you saying asshole, I can barely hear you?”

“Man… Car… Just now… got Dani but …”

“You got Dani? Fuck, man your signal sucks. Where’d you find her? We’ll…”

“Listen can’t…. you got to…use it today…get Freak to…”

The phone goes dead with me holding it in my hand.

What the fuck?

Dancer starts the vehicle up, and Frog walks by with a slap on our hood. He climbs into my vehicle as I turn back to Dancer.

“What was that?”

“Crusher, I couldn’t make out what he said, he said he had Dani… but he was trying to tell me something. Shit man, I couldn’t make a…”

I don’t get the chance to finish my sentence. The world erupts as pain hits me everywhere all at once and in all directions. An explosion blasts, and heat rocks through the air.