Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(90)

She just kept staring at me intensely.

“I really am, Beverly,” I whispered. “And it’s bad timing, I get that, after I wasn’t all that supportive of you making a decision in your love life I wasn’t sure about. But that was a lot about you bursting into tears and babbling about Boz for fifteen minutes after you told me you said yes to marrying another man. I’m all in with Hound. I’ve talked to Black. I don’t know if he’d understand but it doesn’t matter. I’m in love with Hound and he loves me fierce, babe. So fucking fierce. And that’s all I’m letting in right now.”

Like Hound was when I told him I loved him, my best friend sat there unmoving and unspeaking.

“Bev, I really need your support in this. The brothers are gonna—”

I didn’t get that all out.

I jumped in my seat when she let out a war whoop and burst out of her chair. Doing an arms and legs spread cheerleader leap in the middle of her kitchen, she then half-skipped, half pranced in a circle, almost like a Native American dance without the offensive slapping her hand to her mouth, but definitely making unintelligible sounds of sheer jubilation before she stopped suddenly.

She whirled to me and threw out an arm, finger pointed at me.

“I knew it!” she yelled. She raised her arm and hacked it down with finger pointed toward me again. “I love this!” She brought both hands in front of her and clapped repeatedly, fingers pointed straight up. “He has been so into you for so long. And he’s such a good guy. Okay, he’s a little bit loco. Maybe a lot loco. But he’s still such a good guy. This is so fucking AWESOME!”

She screamed the last.

I opened my mouth to say something, the smile on my face so big it hurt, when she rushed the table and the smile died fast when I jumped in my seat again after she slammed a fist violently on the table, making everything on it jolt and wobble. In fact, three olives rolled off her charcuterie board along with a pickle, such was the violence of her hit.

“If any of those motherfuckers does dick to make this hard on you two, I’m gonna lose my mind,” she shrieked. “One last thing I’ll give Boz is a striping if he even thinks of pulling any shit with Hound about this. I’ll even butt up against Tack!” she shouted.

Uh-oh.

Biker cheerleader Beverly going up against Kane “Tack” Allen, president of the Chaos MC who got his title by means of executing the last one?

Shit.

“Bev, babe—”

“They’re gonna make him stand the gauntlet, and you know it, girl.”

It was then, I froze.

“And if they go through with that shit,” she carried on, “I’m gonna burn down the Compound my damned self.”

I was thrilled with her excitement. Absolutely.

But I was stuck on what she’d said.

Black had told me about standing the gauntlet years ago when Chew had slept with Crank’s ex-wife and Crank had demanded a vote from the brothers, wanting Chew to stand the gauntlet.

The brothers did not vote this to happen seeing as first, Crank was a fucking asshole and most of the brothers hated him and were making maneuvers to get his ass out. And second, because Crank doing that to Chew proved what a fucking asshole he was (well, some of it) because he shouldn’t call for anything that extreme to make a brother pay penance for sleeping with a woman Crank himself scraped off.

As in, legally.

He’d been the one who had dumped her and filed for divorce. Not only that, he talked trash about her any time she was brought up in a way you’d think he’d hated her, so Black nor I ever got why he’d gone balls to the wall about Chew fucking her.

“Keely?” Bev called.

My dazed eyes went to her.

Shoulders slumped, she slid into her seat.

“You hadn’t thought of that?” she asked.

“I knew that they wouldn’t be … wouldn’t be happy and that Hound would face that displeasure, but … the gauntlet?”

Bev sucked in her lips and bit them.

I didn’t know if they’d ever made anyone stand the gauntlet. It wouldn’t be something they put out there if that decision was made. That would be brothers only. It could have happened when the Club was sliding toward the hellmouth that was Crank and fighting desperately to pull themselves clear before they went into freefall. Everything was insanity back then.

But I did know what the gauntlet was.

They didn’t run it, oh no.

They stood it, or to my way of thinking, they were forced to stand it so they could be forced to withstand it.

In other words, if a brother did something that the other brothers felt he deserved to pay penance for, they didn’t pile shit on him for days, weeks, months, making him eat it until they felt he’d paid their price.

They got shit done and quick.

This was by tying that brother’s dominant hand behind his back and making him fight every single brother for a round of five minutes. There was no break for the brother doing atonement in between. Once that five minutes was done, the next brother came right in. If he went down, they pulled him up. If he became unconscious, they threw water on him until he was sentient, or at least standing, and then they went at him again.

Once the last brother threw the last punch, it was done. Amends were considered made. And all was forgiven, if not forgotten.