Aggie listened with unblinking eyes and a few moans here and there. Jax didn’t skimp on the details. Lena’s violation always stayed at the forefront of his mind, and even though he could sense Lena didn’t want to talk about it any more times than once, Jax allowed his mind to fill in the gory blanks. He had seen what Eric could do if he wanted a girl against her will, and even now he shuddered to think of Lena being subjected to such treatment when he had no hope of helping her. Now would be different. It just had to be.
“So… Stiles took advantage of your woman?” Brutus asked, his fists as his sides and seemingly reserved for Eric if the man ever had the misfortune to cross his path.
“She wasn’t exactly mine then,” Jax confessed. “Kind of just my best friend.”
“Friend?” Aggie asked.
“Lena… you would like her, Mom,” Jax said. “Never judged me. Always made me feel like I was worth something.”
“Because I didn’t.”
Jax’s anger was still ripe, but he bit it back and kept it at bay as he saw firsthand how she had suffered. First her husband. Then her son. What else would Eric Stiles take away from her if the demon were given half the chance? “No more of that now,” he said. “And I’m not so pure. She ran, too, and I didn’t get it. Like I didn’t get it with you, Mom.” Aggie started to apologize when Jax took his mother into his arms and pressed his lips to her ear. “But I understand it all now,” he said. “And there’s no way this asshole is hurting any of my women ever again.”
Tears finally left Aggie’s eyes as she rested her chin to her son’s chest. Jax stroked her back and sighed into her shorn hair.
“Not such a little man anymore, Mom,” he assured her. “Time to put the bastard in his place.”
Aggie’s relieved tears trailed down his chest, and he spied Brutus moving out of the corner of his eye. He retrieved the fallen ice, already melting from the ground, and nursed the wounds he had inflicted as he grunted.
“Always heard that he was a sick fuck,” Brutus said. “And not just from Aggie either.”
Suddenly sensing a strange camaraderie with the man who had tried to do him in, Jax kept talking when Brutus pressed his hand into the air and cocked his head to the side.
“He did your girl like that?” he asked. “And you’re only here now?”
“I didn’t know,” Jax confessed. “She kept it quiet to keep me safe.”
“And now that you got the lay of the land, you’re thinking there’s another way.”
“No question about it,” Jax continued. “Maybe I didn’t see what he did to Lena, but I see it in her eyes. And I’ve loved her for most of my life. Have to help her now.”
“Of course you do.” Aggie pulled away from and stared to pinch his cheek. She stopped short at the sight of the swelling still crossing his face and folded her hands in her lap. “So let’s make something happen,” she said. On her feet and offering her hand, Jax took it slowly and basked in the feel of her fingers curling tightly around his. “We got our own chief,” she said. “And he listens to me on all things, little man.”
Aggie led him from the room, and Jax held his mother’s hand tighter and suddenly felt grateful to have Brutus at his back as they stepped through the farmhouse. The other Silver Horses still regarded him cautiously, but Viv gave him a bright smile as she pointed the way to a darkened room.
“So it’s him?” a voice asked. “After all this time?”
Aggie stepped to her son’s side, and she clung to his arms as she lengthened to her full height. “Like a miracle, Milo,” she said. “Let’s say you get a good look at my boy.”
The stranger turned around in his swivel chair, and Jax waited without words as he saw a sculpted face stretching below a fine patch of fine brown hair. The man leaned across a desk and tapped his fingers together as he looked Jax up and down. “You’re boy in the flesh,” Milo said. “Even kind of looks like you, Aggie.”
She nodded her head and gripped his arm tighter as she relayed the series of events that had brought him here. Milo listened without any eye contact, and just when Jax feared he would lose the battle before he had a chance to truly fight, he pulled away from his mother’s hold and dared to grip Milo’s collar.
“Watch it.”
Jax heard Brutus pulling a gun from his side and pushing the weapon into the open air. Even his mother’s pleas might not be enough to save him, but he kept his hands on Milo’s leather as he peered into his eyes.
“I mean you no harm,” Jax insisted. “All I want is some help.”
“Help?” Milo asked.
Jax swallowed hard before he was able to continue. “Eric Stiles needs to be put down like the dog that he is. But I can’t do this in house. Too many men are like loyal to him or scared or what the fuck ever.”
“Nathan must be rolling around in his grave,” Aggie murmured.
He turned his head over his shoulder and tried to speak up for his father’s afterlife when he suddenly knew he just couldn’t make the call. Because Nathan Monroe’s bare bones would always rattle if they didn’t make the move.
“Then it’s high time that we took it all back,” Jax said. Facing Milo again, Jax took a deep breath. “End of the day? It’s my club and my patch. And I’m fucking sick and tired of seeing it with shit dripping down all of our backs. My dad never would have wanted that.”
Aggie whimpered as she clung to her son’s back, and the pair of them turned their eyes to Milo as he stroked his chin and seemed to carefully consider the request.
“So what do you propose to do?” Milo asked.
Jax sighed in relief before he continued. “I need a crew at my back,” he said. “Firepower to take him down. All I ask is Deerfield and Lena’s safety.”
“Lena?”
“His lady friend,” Aggie offered, and Milo laughed.
“Doing all this for a piece of tail?”
Fighting back the need to pound him into the floor, Jax sighed heavily and lowered his head. “She’s the woman I love,” Jax said. “The only one I’ll ever want. So yeah. Help me have that, and I won’t fight you on the rest.”
Milo cocked his head to the side, and Jax sank into the feel of his mother’s hand and waited for Milo to render his verdict. He looked to Brutus, and the big man barely nodded his head before Milo left his chair and stepped around his desk. “Big man that gives up what he doesn’t have with one hand as he offers the world with the other.”
Some truth to that. But if he had a little bit of help, he could make all of them happy under the weight of one word. “It’s mine,” he said. “By right of birth and the patch.”
“That’s what nearly got you into all kinds of trouble,” Milo said.
“But it’s also what got me close to you,” he said.
Reaching into the heel of his boot, Jax found his knife. Aggie’s yells harmonized with those of Brutus as he pointed the tip of the blade towards Milo’s face. But just when he was on the point of slicing the man’s flesh, Jax pushed his knife into the desk, the handle right there for anyone who dared to grab it first. Milo made the move, and as he twirled the knife around his fingers, Jax knew the tip could hit his heart as any time.
“Cut me,” Jax challenged. “Smoke out all my secrets. Maybe you wanted to take Deerfield on your own. But wouldn’t it be so much---?”
Milo brought the blade to Jax’s neck and licked his lips. “Would be easier,” he confessed. “Let’s hear what you have to say.”
Milo gestured for Jax to sit before his desk, and as Jax settled in the chair, his mother’s hand still on his arm, he maintained his focus.
“I’ll tell you where he hides and everything that he had planned,” Jax started. “Up until like two days ago, he trusted me.” He lifted his gaze to meet his mother’s eyes. “Playing the right role, Mom.”
Aggie nodded as she looked to Milo.
“He’ll know it if anyone does,” she said. “Think of how much fun it could be to smoke him where he stands.”
Milo’s lips lifted into a smile at the idea, and he was on the verge of lifting his hand when the sound of a motor started to roar towards the farmhouse. “What the---?”
“Good question, Brutus. You?”
Despite Aggie’s objections, Milo pressed the knife into Jax’s back. “Maybe you aren’t being straight with me,” Milo said. “Let’s say we see who’s on your tail.”
Pressing his hands into his air, Jax focused on his mother’s eyes. Was it all about to go south right now, just when he nearly had Milo eating out of the palm of his hand? As he passed through the main room and caught the shine of a million glares, only Viv’s eyes were kind in the space of the throng, and Jax tried to think of a way to spin this if Eric were back and ready to do battle. Should he play it like he was a plant or sic the Silver Horses on his former crew with no though of blood spilling around his boots?
“Got ‘em!”
The motor came to a stop, and Jax nearly leaned into the feel of the blade at his back when he saw two burly men dragging two captive figures closer into view.
“Artie?”
The bald man fell to the ground, and he crawled through the dirt, barely managing to take Jax by the arms as he strained to his knees.
“Kid,” he croaked. “She said she had to find you. Because I---”
“Lena! Where is she?”
Pushing away from Artie, his heart stopped at the sight of Lena’s body being dragged through the dirt. There were no hands reaching up her skirt or down her blouse, and for that he was thankful. It meant they were in better company at long last. But when their eyes locked, he could still see her trembling, and Jax fell to her feet and gathered her legs in his arms.
“Stop it!” he cried. “She’s what I’m fighting for.”