My mind was pacing like a lion in a cage, waiting to give me the signal to strike. Every breath I inhaled was like fuel to my rage as I tried to control my emotions. The second I’d stepped outside, Slater told me that Sutton had flown off just moments before with his blue and reds flashing as the station had radioed him saying he was needed urgently.

Just our fucking luck.

I didn’t have time to wait.

Jacob had to pay…

Now.

I was leaning over my bike, one arm resting over the handles while the other was resting its elbow on the seat as I combed the scruff on my chin with my fingers. Bent over, I could control my breathing more. My thoughts, however, were fucked.

Deeks soon appeared through the door of the diner, guiding an agitated Jacob out into the cool night air with as much force as he could get away with. Deeks wasn’t an angry person by nature. Causing people pain wasn’t his default setting like it was mine, but right then with that little piece of Babylon scum in his grip, he looked like he could do some serious damage.

When our eyes met, Deeks released Jacob at the top of the steps and gave me a nod. Jacob turned back to face him, his body swaying as the balls of his feet balanced on the edge.

“Why would anyone want to see your bike, old man?” he sneered.

Deeks hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and shrugged casually. “Just trying to be friendly.” He smirked.

Jacob swayed some more. “Newsflash. You Hounds can try to become a part of Babylon, and you might believe it’s happening now and then, but the reality is that no one round here likes any of you. No one wants the MC to be a part of this neighborhood any more than we want the fucking mafia.” He pointed a finger in Deeks’ face, his body rolling forward. “And I’m going to make sure you’re all gone soon enough.”

Deeks stared Jacob in the eye, and I saw his next move playing out in his eyes before he reached out and pressed a single finger to Jacob’s chest, applying the smallest amount of pressure that sent him toppling down the stairs in a heap. Jacob rolled back, his neck and spine bending as he curled over on himself and fell in a heap at the bottom of the steps.

The entire parking lot erupted into laughter, while I straightened myself up and began to walk backward, disappearing into the shadows where no one could see me, but I could see them.

Come closer, you son of a bitch.

Jacob stood on shaky legs, his beer bottle now smashed at his feet and crunching beneath his boots as he straightened himself up. I had to give the kid his due… he had balls. A whole pack of Hounds was staring at him, laughing, and offering him a silent challenge to start something he most definitely wouldn’t be able to finish. He should have been cowering. Instead, he raised his chin defiantly, dusted off his shoulders and scoffed at their intimidation.

“Laugh it up, Hounds. You won’t be around soon.”

“Oh, yeah?” Slater asked as he took a controlled step closer, his brow raised.

“You’ll see,” Jacob sneered before he turned on his heels and began to walk away from them all, flipping them the bird over his shoulder as he went. “Lame ass party fucking sucked anyway.”

I didn’t know if Slater had seen me in the shadows, hiding on the edge of the corner behind Rusty’s, but his eyes seemed to turn in my direction, and I swear I saw a hint of a go for it in his half smile.

The lion roared in my head, ready to break through the cage he’d been pacing in since the moment I’d seen Jacob touch Sloane.

Sloane.

Stepping back, I sucked in a breath and waited for Jacob to round the corner. His eyes were on the ground as he took clunky steps forward that sent him on a zigzag path away from the streetlights, and in the very direction I had been hiding.

I watched as he cursed under his breath.

I watched as he looked back over his shoulder and mouthed something to my brothers.

I watched as he reached inside his pocket and pulled out his cell.

I watched as the screen lit up his tweaking face.

I watched as he brought it to his ear, getting closer… closer… closer…

Until he’d slipped into the darkness of the path that cut through the back of Rusty’s leading out into an open space where all the waste and storage units for the diner were sitting.

His feet crunched the gravel beneath his feet, and he was just about to open his mouth and speak to whoever the hell was on the end of the phone when I made my move.

“Hey. Yeah—” Slam!

Jacob’s phone clattered to the ground the second I grabbed the back of his shirt before I smacked his whole body into the closest brick wall, face forward. He sagged against it instantly, his body crumpling in on itself as a grunt of pain escaped the back of his throat and disappeared into the gargling of the blood that was already collecting in his mouth.

His phone was still lit on the ground, and I crouched down, holding him in place, and reached for it to end the call. The sound of a woman on the other end of the phone calling his name disappeared the second I hit the red button and placed the phone into the depths of my jeans pocket. Then all my attention was on the piece of shit pressed against the wall in front of me.

Play time.

Pushing his face into the harsh brick, I applied some pressure with one hand, my other hand collecting both his wrists and pinning them behind his back.

“S… st… op,” he tried to choke out.

My jaw was tight, my nostrils flaring as I let the power surge through my muscles and hold him in place.

“Please,” he whimpered.

“Now you want to be polite to me,” I growled in his ear, so close that my angry, dry lips brushed against him, every word I spoke smacking his skin with venom.

As soon as he heard my voice, his eyes popped wide open, and he started to struggle. Really struggle. His feet tried to gain traction against the ground. His shoulders wiggled and danced around to try and escape my grip, but he was too fucking high and I was too goddamn angry to let him play. He didn’t deserve a fight. He’d never given Sloane one.

Just the thought of her had me pulling Jacob’s hair back harshly, gripping and twisting the ends of it as far back as I could before I used all my power to drive his head into the wall again. The crunching of his nose lit up the air, and the sound that escaped the back of his throat was filled with pain. His body buckled in my grip, his knees giving way and forcing me to push my knee in between them to keep him standing.

“You still with me, Jakey,” I whispered through a menacing smile. The smell of his blood was drifting under my nose, spurring me forward. Nothing smelled sweeter than the stench of your enemy’s weakness while you grew stronger and stronger from the high of it all.

He grunted, his head rolling as I let go of his hair and curled my hand around his neck, squeezing it tightly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The hand holding his wrists together applied more pressure before I began to twist his arms around as uncomfortably as I could, attempting to make a contortionist out of him.

“I’ll admit, this ain’t usually my style,” I began to tell him, manipulating his body so he felt pain in multiple places. “I prefer to look a man in the eyes when I’m handing him his punishment. But let’s see how you dirty predators like it when you’re cornered and slammed up against a wall with nowhere to go, shall we?”

Jacob sucked in a rough breath, his chest rising as he tried to blink his eyes open furiously. His lips parted slightly, and a trickle of blood fell from them, dangling down like a loose ruby red thread that couldn’t be cut free.

“That’s right,” I huffed out through a sadistic laugh. “I know what you did to Sloane Sutton.”

“You…” he gasped, inhaling sharply. The sound of it stuck in the blood in his throat. “Don’t know… shit.”

“You touched our girl, Hove.”

“She’s… lying.”

I squeezed his wrists tighter, turning them around in a half circle. It caused him to cry out as it pulled on his already bruised shoulders.

“You know what’s worse than a rapist?” I paused, squeezing my fingers into his neck and feeling his frantic pulse beneath my touch. “A rapist who can’t admit he’s a fucking rapist.”

He gargled on his phlegm as I held him. “She’s dead,” he eventually pushed out, spitting everywhere as he spoke.

“Excuse me?” I asked in disbelief, leaning in.

“Y’all are dead.”

I watched him as he tried to hold his last threads of arrogance and fight together. He’d make a good soldier one day. He didn’t give in easily, that much was clear to see… but he’d never had me as an enemy before.

“Oh, Jacob,” I huffed, laughing before I stepped back, releasing him from my grip altogether. His body sagged against the wall in an instant, and I watched as his knees shook, his head rolled, and his arms struggled to bear the weight he was putting on them as he tried his fucking hardest to stay standing.

He was like a wounded animal, trying to escape the jaws of a wild beast, believing he had a small chance of escaping this the same way he came into it.

My arms folded over my chest as I watched him turn, slam his palms and back against the wall, look up at the sky and try to breathe. His legs were fucked.

Jacob’s eyes eventually fell to mine. One was cut, the skin split straight down from his eyebrow to the top of his cheekbone. He was a man of two faces as he waited for me to strike.

I took a step closer, looking up at him through heavy eyes.

“What did she do wrong?” I asked quietly. “Did she turn you down like everyone else in Babylon?”

“Fuck you,” he spat.

“Did the thought of you pressed against her make her gag, and you took offense to that?”

Jacob huffed, pushing out more blood.

“Had you already been rejected by everyone old enough to suck your dick, you decided to go for the little girls who couldn’t put up much of a fight?”

“She’s not just any little girl.” He snarled. “She’s Sutton’s daughter.”

I took another step closer, all humor draining from my face. “And you hate Sutton because?”

“He’s got into bed with you fucking assholes.” Jacob’s body sagged again before he managed to press his hands against the wall and push himself back up.

By the time I took the final step, I was nose to nose with him again, staring down into his unapologetic eyes and pouring all my darkness on to his naive little face.

“That’s right,” I spat back, pushing my chin forward until he could taste my breaths, taste my hatred. “He got into bed with us fucking assholes. And the biggest mistake you could ever have made is to fuck with us, little boy. We protect what’s ours. We protect it to the death. By hurting Sloane, you signed the deal on your own death.”

“You won’t kill me,” he breathed back out, and even though his mouth said the right words, his eyes gave away his uncertainty and his fear.

“No. Probably not.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

I scoffed and raised a hand to his cheek, dragging two fingers down it before I pushed them under his chin, making a finger gun that was pressing against his airways.

“Dare?” I raised a brow. “There’s nothing I daren’t do, Jacob. Am I fearless? No. Everyone has something in life they fear losing. Am I afraid to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done? Hell, boy. Let’s find out shall we?”

I flared my nostrils and glared at him.

“Do you want to know what we do to men like you in prison?” I growled.

Jacob swallowed, the hard lump of his fear pushing against my two fingers.

“First of all,” I whispered as I searched his eyes. “We get them to apologize.”

“I ain’t…”

I pushed the two fingers harder into his throat, making his eyes pop wide and his mouth drop open as he tried to breathe. One hand came up to hit my arm, but I batted it down with my free hand and grabbed hold of his wrist, squeezing it hard and crushing it in my grip.

“I’ll repeat that bit for you.” I raised a brow. “We get them to apologize.”

My fingers twisted, pushing harder and cutting off his air supply.

“And when they don’t apologize of their own free will, we press harder, encouraging them to seek any drop forgiveness we might have to offer.”

I could feel every lump in his throat as I crippled his airways. He gargled and choked out his next words.

“I’m… sorry…”

I relieved the pressure instantly, giving him just enough freedom to drag in some harsh breaths and choke up more blood.

“Good boy,” I started, bringing the hand I was holding up between us. “Do you know what we do next?”

“S-stop…” he wheezed, his eyes popping wide open.

“Not exactly. Next, we make sure they can’t ever touch another a girl again without remembering something.”

“Drew…” He gasped for air as his eyes studied mine with fear.

Without even blinking, I manipulated his hand, pulling two fingers back on his right hand until I heard the snap of the bones being broken in my grip. His eyes bulged, and his scream was just about to break free from his throat when I shoved those two fingers back into his Adam’s apple, causing him to choke on his own agony as he gargled and spat and suffered in the same silence he’d forced upon Sloane Sutton.

His eyes turned bloodshot. The veins in his neck popped. His nose began to bleed, the sweet dark crimson path of his misery pouring down over his top lip so he could taste it on his tongue.

“We break off the thing that touched the girl without permission. Whether that’s a dick, a finger, a tongue, a thumb, we don’t care. Then we shove it up their ass or their mouths, and we make them understand how it felt when they forced themselves on someone with something they didn’t want. Do you understand me, Hove? I’m about to fuck up your whole life. You’ll never move on from this, just like she can’t.”

Revenge felt good when it was served to those deserving.

That night, I preferred to call it retribution, and I was nowhere near done.

The second I pulled away, freeing him from my grip all at once, he fell to the ground in a crumpled heap and sobbed like the wounded lamb he’d become. I turned my back on him and paced, walking in a slow circle and straightening the cut on my shoulders. I took a breath, inhaling so deeply, I had to tip my chin up to the sky, close my eyes and appreciate the beauty and the calm I felt when I became this man. Jacob was high on some kind of drug. I was high on his pain.

When I turned back to face him, all I saw was a coward. A boy. A disgusting excuse for a man who’d used his power over a sweet girl whose innocence had forever been ruined because of his arrogance.

And I suddenly wanted to smash every part of his face in.

For everything he’d done to her.

For everything he’d done to Ayda.

For the disrespect he’d shown my brothers and my club.

All restraint had gone. Within a heartbeat, I was charging toward him, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and making him stand on his weak ass legs again.

“This is for Sutton,” I growled, driving a powerful right fist into his stomach.

“This is for Sloane.” I did the same again.

“This is for Ayda.” I drove that one into his ribs making sure that stung the most.

“And this one is…”

The cock of the gun at my head had me freezing.

“I dare you to finish that sentence, Tucker,” a familiar voice said behind me. An all too familiar voice, and as the goosebumps of disbelief rippled across every fucking inch of my skin, I glanced up at Jacob’s bleeding, bust up face and found his eyes. The blood dangled from his nose and mouth as he smirked at me, his arrogance returning.

“Hey, Travis,” Jacob pushed out roughly. “Nice to see you… brother.”

Brother. Travis?

“Travis Gatlin,” Jacob squeaked through a painful, cruel laugh. “My half-brother. Good old TG. Of course... you won’t know him as anything other than Trigger, right? The toughest bastard in all of Texas.” He offered me a paralyzed wink before his head slumped forward and he fell asleep in my grip.

And there I was, with a boy in my hands in front of me.

And one of the most influential Navarro Riflemen behind my back.

Trigger.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection before. I closed my eyes and let Jacob’s body fall, not even flinching as he landed across my feet, heavy and unmoving while Trigger pushed the cold metal to my head with the sole intention of firing his first bullet into my skull.

The president of The Navarro Rifles was in Babylon, and I’d just beat his little brother to within an inch of his life.

I was a dead man standing.