Kaci

 

The next afternoon, we rolled into Club Hades. Despite my realization the night before, my mind was still set. Efraim Petrov needed to pay in blood for what his business had done to my family.

 

Gov was there waiting for us when we arrived, and we slipped into the meeting room to maintain secrecy. I'm sure everyone in the MC knew something was brewing, but Micah and I hoped that this would all roll into the event we had planned for the biker rally.

 

“He'll meet,” Gov said, his movements a little twitchier than normal, like he'd just come back from dealing with Sauron or Smaug, “but he won't do it at the hotel. Public place only, so he can be sure there won't be any surveillance or bugs.”

 

Micah nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Probably thinks the authorities will be less like to bust us up in a park, too. Too many bystanders.”

 

I clenched my teeth and almost spat a few choice words at this chance of plans. The hotel would've been so much simpler. No civilians or innocents around, no one else to accidentally get caught up in this fucking mess. Now I was going to be out in a place with kids. Great! Even if I didn't accidentally hit one of them in the crossfire, I'd end up scarring them for the rest of their poor lives.

 

“We got the time and place,” Gov said. “Should be easy for us to prepare.”

 

Micah looked at Gov, his face blank. “Yeah,” Micah said. “About that . . .”

 

Gov looked from him to me, then back again. “What?”

 

“Change of plans,” Micah said, his eyes glancing to me just barely.

 

“Yeah,” I added, shifting in my seat so I could lean forward and better assert myself. “I'm going with him. Figure I'll be more of a distraction to Efraim than another guy would be.”

 

“Also,” Micah added, “I want you with Avery, keeping our side of the deal in check. You know those kinds of people, understand how they work, and you can't help me with that if you're by my side.”

 

Gov took a breath, held it, seemed to consider whether or not he'd win this fight. He just shook his head and slapped a hand on the table with finality. “Fine, Don,” he said, shaking his head. “Whatever.”

 

I smiled a little knowing smile, but was careful not to let either of them see it. That was two wins for me.

 

# # #

Micah

 

Agent Brumfield called a couple hours after I'd spoken to Gov.

 

“We need to kill the deal,” she said when I told her about the change in venue of the meeting.

 

“Wait,” I yelled into the phone, surprise and anger fighting it out like two dogs in my head, “what? Go fuck yourself, Brumfield, this deal's going on.”

 

“This is my op,” the FBI agent snapped back, “and I say we kill it.”

 

I took a deep breath, exhaled through my nose, counted to five. I'd have counted to ten, but I didn't think I'd have that much time before my window of winning her over closed forever. “Look,” I said. “Sorry for snapping. This is important to me, and it needs to go down. Look, like you said, Efraim's a careful man, that's why he's been around so damned long, right?”

 

“Right,” she tentatively agreed. I could hear the wariness in her voice, though.

 

“You see,” I explained, “this actually works in our favor. He thinks I'm not only a pushover by just agreeing to the change, but he also thinks that he's completely in control by throwing me off my game. He'll be even more likely to talk about his plans, now, since he doesn't think someone like me will be wired.”

 

I could almost hear her eyes shifting around as she tried to come up with a refutation of my plan, or a better one of her own. We all knew Efraim had to go down, we just weren't all in agreement on how that was supposed to happen. I imagined her shifting in her seat, practically chewing her nails down to nubs.

 

The truth was, though, I was ready for this shit to be over. The last couple weeks had proven to me what I needed to do. I needed to leave the club, to disassociate myself from it. Kaci was my life, now. She was what I wanted to be focused on. But, without the FBI taking me off to Witpro, I knew I'd never be free. If I tried to leave normally, I'd always be a liability to the club. Some guy may come along some day and decide, despite Gov and Grin's objections, that I needed to be silenced.

 

I was just ready. Ready to be out of the game. I loved Kaci. Loved her more than anything else, including my club. Didn't mean I couldn't do right by God’s Hellfire, of course. But she was more important. And I was just ready to start over.

 

Besides, I owed Efraim to Kaci. I'd promised her that night at the dining room table that we'd take him down, one way or another. I owed her that much for what Abram Ivanovich had done to Romeo Sizemore.

 

And I keep my word.

 

“Fine,” Agent Brumfield said, her voice filled with worry and uncertainty. “But, we're still doing it by my rules, Micah.”

 

“I know, Avery. I know.”