Bocca
I was going to make that woman mine. Permanently. I was going to show the world that I loved her beyond reason and that I was never going to let her go.
Only, I had shit to take care of first.
I wouldn’t officially ask her until the stuff with the club was settled. I mean, I’d already claimed her as my old lady and that was pretty much like laying down a permanent commitment.
Even if she didn’t know the details about what was going on, she was smart enough to pick up on the tension and slight anxiety of the clubhouse. The best thing was, at night when it was just the two of us, she did her best to take my mind off of it all. I was completely in love with her and there wasn’t a single second that I doubted that.
I wouldn’t ever say it out loud, but the decision to keep the whole Keften Jugovac thing in-house was perhaps the wrong move, even if I understood the reason for it. We were good about keeping it quiet too, so none of the other chapters knew. It might have helped that there was so much going on other than the Keften shit.
Even with Chris moving to the coast a few months after it happened, it still seemed like they were clueless. Yes, Chris didn’t know anything about what had gone on, but he’d been around the club enough to know when shit was going on. He’d been around the brothers enough to see the shift in the air. But he was also…well, I couldn’t currently think of the right word. Smart. Aware. Caring. Loyal. Any and all of those. So he wouldn’t go running his mouth when we’d asked him not to. It wasn’t a question in my mind, no matter how close he was with Brand, I believed he wouldn’t let anything slip.
With Axe now at the helm, a lot of things were changing. It was slow at first and I started to question what the hell it was that he was doing.
Then it all started to click.
Hey, maybe I didn’t give the guy the credit he deserved. Once I figured it out, I was all on board. And if I had a moment to breathe that wasn’t filled with chaos, then I would have been fucking happy.
Well, it seemed that the time had come and we could no longer keep what we knew about Keften to ourselves. We needed to bring everyone else in for a multitude of reasons.
Keften had gone deep underground. I’d been searching. Lucy had been digging. Hell, she had contacts all over that were on high alert for him. But months slipped by and there was nothing.
If I were a hopeful man, I would have said that somehow we’d shut him down for good. But I was too smart to live in that daydream. I knew guys like him, organizations like his. As long as he was alive then he would always strive for bigger and better. Bigger operation. Better connections. The only thing on his mind was to rise to the top and have all the power and money. For guys like him, there were only minor setbacks. Which was what we gave him when I walked into that warehouse that night and later when Silas and Hunt took out that house full of his men.
Just when everything seemed lost, Keften started popping up in the strangest of places. It felt like he was taunting us. Like he was calling us out. Like he was standing there mocking us.
We all agreed that something needed to be done. The first step was to fill everyone else in on the problem.
So that was what we were currently doing.
I woke up this morning, with my woman in my arms. The same woman that put a smile on my face the moment I saw her. The very same one that my heart beat for. I started this day off exactly how I wanted to start the rest of my days for eternity. I held her thinking that there wasn’t a single thing that I wouldn’t do to keep her happy. That there wasn’t a single thing I’d give up if needed.
A few hours later, I was mounting my bike and taking off, riding alongside Axe as we made our way down to the coast. This time, it had nothing to do with checking on things. It had nothing to do with running guns or filling them in on the new pipeline. It had nothing to do with the slew of new connections we had been gathering.
I stood behind Axe as he addressed the newest chapter that was filled with familiar faces. I took note that Ky and Lake had been brought in to listen to this meeting. I studied Iron, thinking that he knew just what he was doing. And if I really thought about it, I could have seen that he was ahead of the game. That he could tell there was something going on and he was making strategic moves to insure that his club was strong as possible.
I took in the men that had stood by my side for so many things.
I noticed how Brand was older and a little hardened.
I saw the weight of how being a second generation Paragon sat heavy on the shoulders as I watched Knight, B-ry, and Mouse.
I looked around this room and saw the strengths each person brought to the table. I saw how they’d each stepped up and taken their place in this club. It made me proud and it made me realize that there was nothing to worry about.
As I stepped forward and told the story of what happened to me that night, what I mostly saw was loyalty in the faces of the men that surrounded me. I saw a band of brothers that were angry for what had happened to me. I saw men that were ready to step up and fight beside me when the time came.
This wasn’t a war we could rush in and fight. This was a game of cat-and-mouse that we would have to outsmart. It was about gathering all of our strengths and stepping in to fill up someone’s weaknesses. It was about creating a chain so strong that no one could break through it.
I had no idea what was to come but I knew that as long as I was surrounded by my brothers, I had no reason to fear it. Not one fucking bit.
And that was the moment I saw the future so clearly.
I had an amazing woman by my side and a strong family at my back. Nothing could bring me down ever again.
The End