I’m a miserable sack of shit.

For the past week, I’ve watched the beautiful life shining out of Presley drain, and it’s my own fucking fault.

She wanted so badly to contact Beauregard. I had given her the perfect opportunity to make that decision, when I purposely left the box with every single kind of charger I could find for her to choose from. It was a psychological game, and one she didn’t even know she was playing. That box was a test.

If she took the charger, she lost.

If she asked for the charger, she lost.

If she didn’t take it, I won.

Except instead of being shocked by an electric jolt for making the wrong decision, I was the person who was being punished. That shock hit me like a bolt of lightning.

It hurt more than I thought it would, when I peeked into that box, with her standing so innocently there in front of me, and found them tucked away. The pain only increased, when she blew me off to go back to her room and wait for her phone to charge.

You could say that I was just guessing at what she was doing, but I knew for a fact that’s what she did from the cameras. She paced the floor, constantly going back and forth to the bathroom.

I watched her excitement of connecting with him again, and as soon as the tone went off on my burner phone, I hit rock bottom.

Why couldn’t I be enough for her? I had tried my damnedest to go out of my way to make her happy. Breakfast, the movie, video game night, and giving her more breathing room than I should have, with the level of danger we were waiting on to show up at our doorstep at any minute.

But it ate away at me.

It ate away at me because I never responded back to her. Message after message from all hours of the night went unanswered. With each passing day of continued silence, a darker shadow settled over her. She was disappearing in front of me, and it was all because of me. She just didn’t know it. Listening to her cry last night almost broke me. The phone was cradled in my hand with an “I miss you too” typed onto the screen, ready to send. But I couldn’t do it.

I was a chicken shit because I was still clinging onto hope that she would pick me over him. The playful banter that we had prior was gone. Her one-word answers were proof of that.

I had to fix this because my plan of having Beauregard ghost on her wasn’t working. As I listened to my brother’s discussion in Church, I made another promise to myself to handle this situation, as soon as Church was over. It was time to nut up or shut up.

Ratchet stands, and directs our attention to a news report pulled up on the big screen behind Raze, that I had installed just this morning.

“Local police are reporting the recovery of the body of a local woman tonight,” the news anchor begins. “Sabrina Townsend was found early this morning by San Bernardino police alongside I-10 near the Ontario exit. Townsend was reported missing just three days ago, when an eye witness saw three masked men at a convenience store throw her into a black van. She is the third woman in the last week that has been kidnapped and dumped.”

The news reporter continues on with a map of where the bodies of the victims were taken and found, over the course of the last week. Each dot was inching closer and closer to us. The Zezza’s knew the girls were in California. That much was true, but whether or not they knew they were with us, was still a dangerous unknown.

Each of my brothers looks around the room. We are all thinking the same thing. The devil that’s coming for Ginny and Presley is closing in on them and us.

Ratchet pauses the video and sets down the wireless remote on the table.

“You all know what this means,” he declares. “The Zezza’s are moving in.”

Ratchet pauses for a brief moment, before continuing, “All of the women who have been kidnapped are similar ages, builds, and have physical characteristics to either Presley or Ginny.”

I can literally feel my blood boiling, as it courses through my veins. The threat to Presley is circling like a fucking vulture, and I have been more distracted by a fucking fake identity crisis, instead of doing my damn job. Fucking stupid. I have never let a woman get into my head like this before, and it could cost Presley her life, if I don’t get my shit straightened out.

“We need to double security,” Hero adds in. “I’ve called in a few of the guys from the Oakland Chapter and Orange County. Thor will be taking the lead on getting those guys up to speed.”

Thor nods. After the last scuffle a few months back, I’m surprised to see him so eager to return, after his injuries. But knowing he is willing to join in with us again makes me proud to call him my brother. Accepting his transfer was one of the best decisions we had made. He came to us looking for a better position, and we gave it to him. He has the kind of muscle that would make most thugs piss their pants in fear. He was our personal badass Fabio.

“Like I mentioned before, if you need to move your women and children out, this would be the time to do it,” Raze reminds us. Darcy had initially drug her feet on leaving, when Raze had insisted she take the kids and visit her parents for a while, but she finally gave in to his wishes. Hero had followed suit, and sent a very pregnant Dani and the twins, along with Darcy. Together and away from us, they would be safe, until this played out.

“I’ll get Maria and the kids out first thing in the morning. They’re overdue for a vacation,” Hot Shot adds in.

“Mikayla won’t leave, even if I tied her to the back of Maria’s car. She’d just gnaw her way through the ropes,” Thor chuckles about the woman who latched onto him, after the death of her brother. “She’ll stay no matter what I tell her.”

“Worst case scenario, we hole her up with Presley and Ginny,” I comment. Not exactly the best plan, but it might be the only hand we have to play.

Raze peers down the table and catches my attention.

“Show us what you have, V.”

I get up from my chair, as Ratchet tosses the projector remote into my hand. I wanted to make a remark about the use of the new tech in the Church room, but this wasn’t the time or place to do it. I will just have to wait, until all this shit is over.

“Ginny and Presley have identified the eight men seen here on the screen as Zezza members or associates.”

I click to the first full picture and rattle off the dossier of information I was able to gather off of them, via the FBI’s database.

It isn’t until I get to the last one that I pause.

“This is Gio Zezza. Oldest son of Don Rigo Zezza.”

Ratchet scowls, as he peers up at the man who is responsible for getting Ginny into this mess and for the necessity of faking her death. His stare makes it clear as fucking day that, if we get a shot off on this guy, he wants him to himself. And I can’t blame him. I would want the kill shot on the man who had hurt my sister. Although, my sister Remy would probably have already killed them, before I got there. She was the one who was all bitch and bite, where I was the calculating dark horse who planned, before he struck.

“I wasn’t able to track down any safe houses for The Zezza family in the area through their various shell companies, but I’m still looking.”

The amount of money going through that crime family would make Bill Gates look like a lucky lottery winner. They had hundreds of millions of dollars spread across various real and fake enterprises all over the world. They had their hands in import, export, and even the skin trade, as far as I could tell. These were the kind of bastards you didn’t want on your bad side, but here we were in the exact spot we didn’t want to be.

“Any idea on the weapons cache?” Thor asks.

“The sky is the limit with them.” Flipping through a few slides, I land on the screen I’m looking for. It has the listings off all the so-called olive oil importation logs from their cargo ship that comes in and out of Long Beach on a monthly basis.

“Their last shipment came in about two weeks ago. Manifest said it was olive oil, but we all know what the contents of those containers really are.”

“Drugs, guns, or pussy. Maybe all three.” Hero interjects into the conversation.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner there, VP.”

“They’re armed to the teeth and moving closer to us by the day. It’s a safe bet that their toys are far better than ours. Possibly even Soviet military grade.”

“Which is why I pulled a few strings and have some new gear headed our way. It should be here in a couple of days,” Raze happily informs us. “Let’s just hope it’s not too late.”

I add in a few more bits of information, into my part of the meeting about things I had found out from Ginny directly. Gio had a penchant for high-end escorts, and I had taken the liberty of hacking into the surveillance cameras, near the more popular clubs that were rigged with facial recognition software. If he showed up, my cameras would alert me. I had also greased Red’s palms a bit to filter in any chatter from the streets straight to us. He was a slimy bastard, but he proved useful from time to time with shit like this.

“Good work, V,” Tyson offers up to the entire room.

We discuss alterative action plans for various scenarios for nearly three hours, before we finally decide to call it a day. The more practice we have the better off we’ll be in the long run.

Raze concludes our meeting with a bang of his gavel. Each of my brothers all begin to file out, except for Ratchet and myself.

“The girls doing okay?” my club president inquires, once the last man leaves the room.

“Ginny’s good. I’ve been keeping her busy and away from the news. The less she knows about those murders the better.”

“I agree, but I’m concerned about Presley. She seems off. Shed some light on that, V.”

“I’m honestly not sure what’s up, Prez. She was fine a few days ago, but has retreated a bit,” I lie.

You fucking know what is going on, dip shit. Why don’t you go ahead and fess up now? Maybe he’ll wait to kill you, until after The Zezza’s try to make us extinct.

This situation with Presley is one that might just fucking get me killed. Ratchet shoots daggers at me with his eyes. Thankfully hiding them from Raze.

“I’ll talk to her, and figure out what’s going on.”

“Good. If you need me to get involved, just tell me,” Raze heartedly concurs.

Our president shoves out of his chair and smacks Ratchet on the shoulder, as he stalks out the door. I can’t help but notice the slump of his shoulders, as he disappears from sight. He’s miserable without Darcy and the kids, and it’s clearly showing. Even more of a reason to just get this over with.

Ratchet jerks my arm, as I try to leave myself.

“What did you do?” he snarls

“I fucked up, man. She’s pining over the fucking fake me.”

I fill him in about my original plan to just ghost. He growls when I mention the fact that she has a phone, but I remind him that I can’t exactly storm into her room and demand it without outing myself in the process. It’s a hot damn mess, and I’m smack dab in the middle of the firestorm.

“Fix it,” he growls, as he stomps past me.

I would if I fucking knew how. Believe me, I would.

I leave church and head back down to my office to think about what I can do. Just as I get to the edge of my door, I spy movement in Raze’s office, through a crack in the door. I peek in and see Presley rummaging through his desk.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?” I yell.

She freezes and drops the papers in her hand. They float to the floor in a pile at her feet.

“I know,” she angrily reveals. “I know fucking everything.”