After the week he’d had cleaning up the mess Lee had caused, Hade figured he deserved a drink and some distraction so he headed to Wilde’s. The bar was blissfully empty. Lucky, because he had a sore head, a sore hand, and if he was honest with himself, his heart wasn’t exactly pain-free.

“You did good. Still haven’t had a call from the police,” Briony said to him as he sank onto the torn leather bar stool.

“Not sure good is the right word for it,” he said, taking a sip of the cold beer she put in front of him.

“You give yourself so much shit, it’s a wonder no one has called the public works on you,” she said. “Could pretty much package you as a sewerage plant this week.”

“Whatever,” he said. “I came here to be distracted. So distract me.”

“I don’t do patched members,” she said with a grin.

“You know I don’t mean that sort of distraction. Jeez, I had enough of that with Lee.”

Briony cocked her head at him. “Yeah. I gathered. What happened? I thought for a moment you’d gotten over your stupid thing about not having a woman, being alone at the top, blah blah blah, so you could get on with shaking Hell’s up a bit. God knows they need it.”

Hade sat back. “What do you mean? She’s the one that got the ice. Used money from the car wash, for fuck’s sake.”

Briony pursed her lips and seemed to be carefully selecting her words. “Not what I heard. I did wonder where she got the money for the girls.”

“She didn’t buy the crystal?”

“I don’t reckon. What’d you do? Send her packing ’cause you got the guilts over your brother again? Fuck, Hade, how many times do people have to tell you that wasn’t your fault? And neither was Kenny. Stupid prick shouldn’t have snorted enough ice to make a snowstorm look sunny.”

Hade’s mouth opened but nothing came out.

“Oh shit, you did, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, no one heads up Hell’s with a woman in tow, doesn’t happen.”

“That’s bullshit. Rocco’s cranky and as butt ugly as a snake without its skin.”

“We’re not talking about Rocco.”

“No, we’re talking about you. No woman in her right mind would have Rocco if he paid them. Doesn’t mean you have to be the same, although given your bitchy tongue this week, I figure you might be on the right track if you want to take after him.”

“Hey, hold on Bri—”

“Sorry, but no one else is going to lay it out for you, are they? They’re all too shit-scared of you.”

Hade sighed and the anger went out of him. He’d known Briony since they were kids and she was right, she was about the only one who could tell it to him straight and get away with it.

“You know Jason was supposed to be the one that took over,” he said. “And he was always on about it: no distractions, no disappointments. He made me swear I’d follow the line, give the whole leadership thing everything I had.”

“That was Jason’s dream. Not yours.”

“But he was he was right. Lee was a distraction; look what happened when I let her in. I have to head up the gang so I need to be alone. End of discussion.”

Briony huffed at him. “What happened when you let her in was you raised almost seven grand for the school and you got a whole bunch of Hell’s Boys excited that life wasn’t all going to be about patch wars and the size of each other’s dicks for a change.”

Hade snorted into his beer.

“I’m serious. You are not your brother. If leadership is about being a big macho prick, then it’s not for you. It doesn’t suit you and you’ll hate it in the end.”

“Leading the gang is about doing what has to be done.”

“Ugh!” She threw up her hands and the thick sludge of darkness that had started forming in his chest since he’d thrown Lee out moved, squeezing his heart and making him doubt everything.

“Whatever you said to her, fix it. You’ve been a bitch all week and it’s getting boring. Be different. Live a little. And for the record, your girl was trying to make more money. Had a cover charge on the door. Here.” She pulled an envelope from under the cash drawer in the till. “Been trying to give you this all week. It’s to add to the school fund.”

Hade’s mouth dropped and the darkness around his heart thickened into a messy, suffocating ooze. Someone had told him it was a fund-raiser. That she was trying to raise more money for the school. But when Lee had said she’d organized a party he’d cut her off . . . the heat of the moment had wiped the intent from his mind. He’d only seen the result: drugs, a wild party, and a dead body.

“For the record,” Briony continued, ignoring his discomfort. “I loved your brother, too, you know that. But he was all about heading up Hell’s. If it’s not something you really want to do, don’t do it.”

The thought of that, of just walking away, struck Hade like a cold bucket of water. “Simple as that, huh?”

“Pretty much,” she said and went off to serve another customer.

Hade took another long drag of beer. Nothing was that simple. Was it? But as he looked around the bar with money that Lee had raised for his project, receiving nods here and there from the few Hell’s Boys out on the stormy Wednesday night, he realized that it could be. What had Lee said as she was leaving? That he didn’t understand family? Well, that’s where she was dead wrong.

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong now?” Briony walked back up the bar toward him.

“How do I find her?”