Great, this pat-down is a little less sexual, but no less involved as a Los Diablos feels me up from ankle to ass to shoulder. I cuss and whine when the guy shoves a hand near my ribs a little too hard. I don’t move although it’d be my pleasure to clock the guy in the jaw. Which just shows my willpower. Now, if only I can get my head in the game. I trail behind the rest of my brothers and sit at the opposite end of a long, gnarled wooden table.

“How’s this meeting going to go down? Are we supposed to smoke a joint and make peace?” I sit back in my chair and light up a cig, arching a brow.

“You’ll have to excuse this cranky fucker over here,” Silas addresses Antonio Vasquez, the Los Diablos’ MC president, yanking out a cigarette of his own, and playing with it between his teeth. He gives me a glare to warn me that I’d best be keeping my mouth shut. It’s not my place to talk at these meetings. “We don’t want any trouble. I think we all know that, right?”

“That’s all fucking well and good, boss,” Vasquez replies. “You already know we didn’t attack your MC for the heck of it. We had a backer who paid handsomely for the work done. It wasn’t personal, and we won’t take your visit to our compound personally either. You get my drift?”

He cocks his head and casually rubs his light brown beard. It’s not easy to keep quiet after hearing the attack on the Satan’s Saints headquarters was just about money to him.

“You think it’s that simple?” Silas barks.

I’m ready to speak up as I blow smoke out through my nostrils. I hate this diplomatic bullshit. But Silas gave an order. I keep my mouth shut.

“You fuckers think you’re slick,” Silas continues.

Vasquez leans forward and folds his hands. Silas isn’t afraid of him. Neither am I. No one can intimidate me right now, not with this Molly situation hanging over my head. I’ll fight if and when Silas gives the order.

But he doesn’t.

No one gets to say another word.

All hell breaks loose.

A single shot rings out in the warehouse, then a blast goes off nearby, and the men around the table are thrown out of their seats from the force of the explosion.

With all the precautions both sides took, it makes no sense that there'd be chaos this quickly.

I drop my cigarette, shoving my boot on it as I duck under the table for cover like most everyone in the room. What the hell? Fuck, I knew we should’ve kept our weapons. We’re all unarmed and useless, Satan’s Saints and Los Diablos alike. Neither clubs would attack now, with our presidents in here. A quick peek over the table edge, and I see the Los Diablos president in a bleeding heap on the floor. His guys drag him to safety on the other side of the warehouse behind a huge ass storage container. It looks like the fucker has been hit through the side of his neck.

Great. Fucking fantastic. We’ve been so careful to keep our meeting safe and secret that no one secured the building? This is why the Saints should’ve had a part in setting up our own perimeter security team. To round out this fuckery. I glance over at all my brothers. None of us is hit, but so far, there’s only been one shot fired. Someone wants to send a clear message. We just don’t know who the bullet was meant for.

Silas signals for us to start checking the area now. Cole, Axe and I go off to sweep the upper parts of the warehouse. We have nothing to defend ourselves.

We also find nothing, and return to the meeting room where we left Silas and the rest of the Los Diablos.

“You planned this, didn’t you,” Francisco Garcia, the Los Diablos’ VP thunders out and shoves Silas backward. “This was supposed to be a conversation about a fucking truce!”

“Back the fuck up! We had nothing to do with this. All of my guys are accounted for right here. You can stand here and wait for someone else to get shot or help weed out these fuckers. But we need to get your President some medical help in the meantime. Anytime now, before he bleeds out.”

Garcia gets the hint and takes a step back. “All right, fuckers.”

“We need our weapons back,” Silas demands and turns to us. “I need two of you to sweep the second floor again.”

“I’m in. I’ve got nothing to lose,” I say, and as soon as I do, Molly’s face flashes through my mind. She’s pregnant. Hell yes, I have shit to lose now.

“Okay everyone,” Silas booms out. “I’m the fucking alpha dog in here, and this is how it’s gonna go. Garcia, your men need to get Vasquez some medical care. Someone needs to check anyone who was hurt from whatever exploded outside. And I need a few of your men to team up with my men and check the place.”

Garcia nods to his men and everyone goes about their orders. I join the team that’ll check every inch of this sprawling warehouse. What I wouldn’t give for a fucking gun. It would be handy with unknown shooters on the loose. But we fucking agreed to show up for a sit-down with no weapons and became sitting ducks in the process. And now we’re moving through a warehouse with hiding places everywhere, looking for guys who are probably still aiming their sniper rifles at any fucking one of us.

Brilliant.

I ignore the boom sound in my ear from the crackling of all the shit that’s burning outside the warehouse due to the explosion. Adrenaline floods my veins as I try to make sense of the attack. From the neck wound on Antonio Vasquez, the sniper’s vantage point has to be on the main floor. I split off from everyone and go back there, confident that if it really did come from the main floor, the shooter will not have stuck around long enough to get discovered. Chances are we aren’t going to find the sniper, but maybe he left a trail behind.

I pivot around a corner and look around. There’s shuffling off to my right a few minutes later. A small ping from above. I glance up with my heart clogging my throat. No shadows. Not a damn thing. And there is no noise from the other guys either, all is quiet except for the tread of sneakers on concrete. I circle the suspected quadrant of the warehouse again, tracing and retracing my steps, looking for some kind of evidence the assassin has left behind.

Then I feel the wind knocked from me. A burning blaze of pain. I barely have the breath to shout as I fall to the floor. Everything goes fuzzy. It’s too late.

* * *

In and out. In and out. In and out.

Small bits of the world flashes back and forth into my brain. Every now and then, a jolt of fresh fucking pain spreads through my body. It feels like my lungs are cannibalizing themselves and there’s just not enough strength to breathe before everything goes black again, sending me into unconsciousness before it starts again.

In and out.

“…almost there, bro. Hang on…”

Snippets of conversation.

Phone static.

Blinding white lights.

I smell medicine. Or some kind of alcohol. There’s something bad about that…something I can’t put my finger on yet. There are hands all over me. A lot of hands. Crisp night air rushing across my chilled skin like jumping in a river in the middle of winter on a dare. My teeth rattle in my head.

“Lay him out here…”

“Fuck, is he…”

“Quick…we need to be quick with this bullet wound.”

“No! Don’t. The bullet’s still in there. It wasn’t a through and through…”

“Fuck…”

Out again.