King's Reign (Sydney Storm MC #6)(25)

“Johnny called,” Axe said, entering the office. “He’s agreed to your terms.”

“Good. Keep on him for that info. We can’t afford to drop the ball on this.”

Axe’s contact in the feds, Johnny, was now Storm’s contact. We’d put him on our payroll in exchange for names of any witnesses the feds had in relation to the case against us. I’d pay those motherfuckers off to keep them quiet, or if warranted, something a little more permanent.

“Also, Zane and Griff have started pulling more surveillance of the area from the day of Jen’s murder like you wanted.” To see if Romano had been bullshitting me about not having a hand in that.

“And Brant?”

“Still looking, but nothing yet. He’s an evasive motherfucker.”

“Yeah.” I narrowed my eyes at my brother. “You look like hell.”

He nodded. “We both do.”

“Justine giving you grief at the moment?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and stretched it. “When isn’t she?”

“Fuck,” I muttered. “That bitch has a lot to fucking answer for, brother.”

“She also has my child in her belly, King, so I can’t just fucking walk away.”

This was an old, recurring argument of ours. Me telling him to leave; him telling me he loved her. Except he was right—he now had his child to consider, and my brother had the same convictions I did, so he would never walk away from that responsibility.

I jerked my chin at the door. “Try to get some sleep tonight. Or find someone to take the edge off.” At his scowl, I said, “Fuck, she screwed around on you and fucking walked out. You don’t owe her any loyalty.”

I knew his stance on this, though. If I considered myself a loyal bastard, Axe was a motherfucking nun when it came to this shit. Women threw themselves at him, fucking begging him to let them suck his dick. Not once had I ever seen him so much as look at them if he was with someone.

“I’ll see you in the morning. And I’ll check in with Johnny first thing. Hurry him along.”

After he’d gone, I thought about Justine. She’d had her claws in my brother for five long years, and just when I’d thought he was finally rid of her, she’d announced her fucking pregnancy. Axe had wanted a child for as long as I could remember, so he’d been over the fucking moon. And then he’d discovered her infidelity. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see my brother lose his shit, because Axe was the guy who held himself together when everyone around him couldn’t. Fuck, if there was an apocalypse, Axe was the one I’d want in my corner. But he had lost it for a while there and had only recently pulled through that.

A text came through, distracting me from my thoughts.



Lily: If you’re coming over, I need milk please.

Me: On my way soon

Lily: Thanks.



I stared at the messages, at the simple and uncomplicated way with which Lily acted. She’d put up a fight when I’d told her we weren’t done, but I’d expected that. I’d anticipated that would continue longer than it did, but something had shifted in her since last night, and she appeared to have let it go. I’d fucking make shit up to her for what I did, but that she didn’t play games or screw me around meant a fuck of a lot.



I left the clubhouse an hour after she’d messaged me about the milk, grabbed some on the way over, and arrived just after she’d had a screaming match with Zara. I knew this because she yanked the front door open with the force of a crazed woman, eyes wild, stepped outside, and dragged me onto the front lawn before producing a cigarette and begging me, “Do you have a lighter on you? Zara may be fucking pregnant, which may mean I’m about to kill some fucking teenage boy who should not have chosen my daughter to mess around with. And I need a fucking smoke to deal with this, which means I will have to kill that little fucker twice, because I’m supposed to be quitting cigarettes, and if he got my kid pregnant, I am most definitely not quitting cigarettes.”

I eyed her, trying like hell not to smile. Lily had a way of lighting my fucking world, just by being her. She didn’t have to do shit for me or work any special magic. All she had to do was look at me or smile at me or go on about the shit she was dealing with, and I felt better than before I saw her.

Pulling out my lighter, I said, “That’s a fuckload of fucks, woman.” It was unlike Lily to swear so much, which only told me how worked up she was over this.

She ripped the lighter from my hand, still crazed as fuck. “Yeah, because they are necessary!” Lighting the smoke, she sucked nicotine deep into her lungs.

“What’s going on with Zara? You know for sure she had sex?”

“No, she won’t confirm it, but I read some texts on her phone from that little shit, and I’m almost completely certain she has.”

Lily was fucking hot when she was worked up like this. I had to work harder than usual to drag my mind from thinking about the shit I wanted to do to her. “Right, so you get through tonight, and then tomorrow you force a pregnancy test on her.”

She pulled a face as she took another drag of her smoke. “You have to wait a little while before those tests will work accurately. God, unless she had sex weeks ago, and I didn’t know. Fuck.”

In an effort to take her mind off her daughter, I said, “How’s Brynn?”