Chaos Bound (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #4)(94)

“You’re learning how to shoot?” Hacker asked Naiya.

“Gotta defend my man.” Naiya lifted an eyebrow. “Or maybe I’ll shoot him. I’m not sure which.”

If Tank hadn’t been so damned stressed out, he would have laughed. He never would have picked Naiya as a match for T-Rex, but the man who stood beside him now was not the same man he had known. The new T-Rex was confident, determined, and decisive. He didn’t joke around or try to smooth things over. He took control. Made things happen. Didn’t second guess himself or try to find a middle road. He led rather than followed, and Naiya, with her quiet confidence and inner strength was a good match for him. One day maybe he would meet a woman like her.

Or, at least, he would have liked her not to run away.

“C’mon, T-Rex.” He gestured to the door. “We’d better get going.”

“Call me Holt, brother. T-Rex is dead.” Holt brushed a kiss over Naiya’s cheek, and Tank followed him out into the hallway.

T-Rex is dead.

Tank’s lungs seized up and he struggled for breath, even as he acknowledged the truth of the words that hung between them, even as his heart broke all over again. That night. In the alley. When they had cried in each other’s arms. If he’d known that was the last time he would be with T-Rex, the man who had been closer to him than anyone on the earth, he would have said the words that he had always wanted to say.

But the man who walked away from the alley that night was not the man who had walked in. Tank had seen it in the way Holt stood a little straighter, talked a little louder, laughed a whole lot less. He had seen it in his buddy’s confidence and determination, his ability to take charge, and his fierce protectiveness over a woman who burned with the kind of inner strength and fire that once would have scared Holt away.

“T-Rex” needed Tank. In the alley, he needed Tank’s arms around him, Tank’s strength to hold him, Tank’s friendship to endure. Before the dungeon T-Rex needed Tank and Tank needed T-Rex.

Did Holt need Tank, too?

Tank knocked on Jagger’s office door, and Jagger called out for them to enter. Over the years, Jagger had transformed the once lavish office—decorated in old-world style with floral wallpaper, a massive cherry desk, matching built-in bookshelves, thick carpets, and a crystal chandelier—into something more fitting of a biker president. He’d kept the desk and bookshelves, but he’d had the prospects rip off the paper and paint the walls white. Now framed prints of motorcycles and scenic bike routes decorated the walls, and the patio doors leading out to the shooting range had been stripped of their heavy brocade curtains, allowing the light to flood in.

“I’ll hear you out,” Holt said to Jagger, without preamble or hesitation.

Jagger lifted an admonishing eyebrow, glanced over at Zane who lounged in the chair in front of his desk, and then back to Holt.

“You and I have some things to discuss, T-Rex. I’ll speak to you alone.”

“I’m staying.” Zane folded his arms, leaned back in his chair. He always had Jagger’s back, even when Jagger didn’t want him. There was nothing Zane wouldn’t do for Jagger. He was Jagger’s rock, his shield, and his support. Where Jagger went, Zane followed, protecting him so he could focus on the important business of running the show.

Holt had it in him to be a leader. Tank had seen it in the clubhouse and in the bar and in Hacker’s office. A leader needed a man at his back. A man he could trust. Holt might not realize it now, but he needed Tank, just as Jagger needed Zane.

“I’m staying, too.” Tank folded his arms and leaned against the wall, just like Zane. If that’s what Holt needed, that’s what he would be.

Jagger and Holt shared a look—not the look a biker president would give to an upstart junior patch who had stormed into his office demanding details of his plan, but the look of an equal. Jagger nodded, and Tank pulled the door closed.

“You coming back to the club?” Jagger nodded at Holt’s cut folded neatly on a table beside his desk.

“No.” Holt took a seat beside Zane, although Jagger hadn’t asked him to sit. Tank tried to hide his discomfort. It was going to take a while to get used to the new Holt who no longer shared the awe and reverence Tank held for Jagger and the senior patch members of the club.

“But we may be able to work together to bring Viper down. I have other things needing my attention at the rally, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”

Jagger studied Holt for a long time, assessing, considering while Tank sweated it out at the back of the room. What would happen if Jagger pulled on Holt? Or decided to beat him up and toss him out of the room? Where would his loyalties lie?

“This is my club,” Jagger said. “I’ll share our plan, but I will not be second guessed. I will not be challenged. I will not be questioned. You are in or you’re out. If you’re out, you stay out of the way.”

Holt shook his head. “I’m not after your club. Hell, I don’t even know if I want to wear a cut anymore.”

“I’m beginning to think you shouldn’t wear it,” Jagger drummed his fingers on his desk. “There can only be one leader.”

In that moment, Tank knew what would happen if Jagger pulled his gun.

There was only one man he could follow.

And it wasn’t the man who had given him his cut all those years ago.