Jake
When I woke up to see Emilio Alvarez standing over my bed, I thought at first that he was a figment of my imagination—that maybe I was dreaming that he was there. But no matter how many times I blinked, he was still there, unwavering, and I was finally forced to accept the fact that he was really there. I swallowed hard, trying to find my voice and trying to ignore just how vulnerable I was, lying there in the hospital bed, barely able to move with all the things the doctors had me connected to.
I cleared my throat. “You've come to kill me, just like you killed Frank?” I asked, my voice rough.
Emilio frowned at me, but he didn't move. “No,” he said. After a long moment, he sighed, shaking his head, and sat down in the seat at my bedside. “You have to understand, Frank's death had nothing to do with me. I didn't order it, I didn't want it. Maybe for some of you younger guys, there isn't the same sense of honor that there used to be. But when I first joined the Flames, we would never have just gone out and executed our competition. That's just not how these things work.”
I frowned right back at him, my brain feeling sluggish. Maybe it was from all the drugs that they were pumping into me—painkillers and whatever else. But I just couldn't seem to make sense of things. “What do you mean, you didn't kill him?” I asked. “If you didn't kill him, who did?”
“That's Max's doing,” Emilio said, his tone flat. “I'm actually surprised that he hasn't arranged for another hit on you just yet, but I guess he must be biding his time, waiting until the suspicion over all of this has gone down a little. Also, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to kill you once you're out of here. He may be stupid, but he doesn't want to deal with a mess of security footage, nurses, and bribes.”
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. God, if only I wasn't so groggy! Then I could make sense of all of this. “Are you trying to tell me that Max arranged the whole thing just so that his own father would be gunned down?” I remembered Max's ashen face back in the building, remembered the way he had refused to go help out any of the others. He had known, I realized, disbelief coloring my realization. He had known that they were going to kill his father, and he still hadn't done a god-damned thing about it.
And that was probably what Max wanted even; that was the part that was sickening. He probably thought that if the Flames killed Frank and I, maybe he could take over as leader of the Devil's Route, and then he could have everything that he'd ever wanted.
There was just one problem, and that was that I was still alive. Although with the way things were going, it might not be that way for long.
I eyed Emilio. “Why are you here, if not to kill me?” I finally queried.
Emilio shrugged a little. “To offer you a choice,” he said. “I don't feel that we owe you a debt, per se, but I do know that it was a member of the Flames who killed Frank, whoever's orders they might have been operating on. So rather than just tell you how things are going to go from here on out, I'm going to let you decide the fate of your club.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “And my choices are?”
“I assume you want to be the one to avenge Frank's death, by killing Max,” Emilio said. I nodded curtly, and he smiled. “So, do that, then. And once that's done, you will formally disband the Devil's Route MC, and that will be the end of all of our troubles with you.”
“I could never disband the club!” I snapped. “That's absurd. Frank worked his whole life building it up, and the guys deserve better than that.”
“Your other option, then, is to allow yourselves to be absorbed into the Holy Flames MC peacefully. We don't really want to go to war with you, we just want to take over all your areas, all your people, and most importantly, all of your revenue. It's been too long that we've been fighting over territory here. Better that we—”
“You know that's never going to happen,” I interrupted, scowling at him. “I'm offended that you think I would even consider—”
“Oh, you'll do more than consider,” Emilio said, smirking at me. He leaned in close. “Because you know what will happen if you don't do either of those things?” he asked. “We know about your girlfriend and your son, and although I stop short of killing innocents to get what I want, that doesn't mean I couldn't make your life a living hell.”
I swallowed hard, hands clenching into fists against the sheets. “You wouldn't dare,” I snarled, but inwardly … well, I didn't really know what the man might or might not do. There was a reason he was losing more and more men recently: he was becoming dangerously impulsive, just like Max. There was no telling where those impulses might lead him.
I wished Halley was there in the hospital with me, where I could keep an eye on her and keep her safe. I wished I were healed and healthy and strong and that I could look out for both her and Cole, outside of the hospital. But unfortunately, at the moment…
Emilio stood up, his business with me finished. “Think long and hard about it,” he told me in parting.