Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(95)

More screaming, muffled by Ox’s hand, which now dripped with junkie snot. Finally Chet nodded, and Ox took his hand back, shaking it with evident disgust.

“My-my dealer! My dealer! I owe him and he was gonna cut me off.”

“I thought you were clean.”

“I tried, Rad. I did. You weren’t ever gonna give me a patch, though, I know.”

Rad sighed—that was true, and it was stupid to have given him any hope. But they’d liked him as a hangaround. “Who is he and what’d he want?”

“He said he’d clear what I owed and give me a cut rate on what I need if I just tell him what I hear in the clubhouse. I never hear nothin’ big, so I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

“It did. Hurt us good. More’n us.”

“I know—I didn’t tell him about the Russians, I swear. He just wanted to know about the Bulls, so I just told him Bulls stuff. I didn’t want to hurt you. I just…I needed…”

And this was why junkies made terrible brothers.

“His name, Chet.”

“Levi. Levi Oates.”

Shit and f*ck. Levi Oates was a mover in the Dyson crew, the Northside Tulsa gang that had about as much local pull as the Bulls, and with whom they’d almost beefed over Gunner’s escapade at Terry’s.

Dyson worked drugs, and the Bulls did not, so they’d never worked together and were not allies. But they’d always had a solid truce, born of a mutual recognition that causing trouble in their own yard was bad for life and business both.

Rad looked up at Ox and Eight Ball, and back at Simon and Gunner, and knew they all understood the implications. Then he turned back to Chet. “Thank you for tellin’ the truth.”

Chet nodded. “I’m sorry, Rad. I didn’t mean anybody to get hurt.”

“I know.” Rad patted Chet’s cheek; he liked the guy, and he believed he’d meant no harm.

Didn’t matter, though.

He pulled his blade from Chet’s thigh, flipped it in his hand, and shoved it into the soft meat behind Chet’s chin, pushing the blade to the hilt, straight through the brain, until he felt the tip hit the inside of the top of the man’s skull.

Chet twitched and jerked in Ox and Eight Ball’s hold. His eyes bugged and turned in opposite directions, staring left and right. Then he gurgled, letting loose a thin stream of blood from the corner of his mouth, and died.

Rad watched it all and then made his way back to standing, clenching his teeth and his eyelids against the pain. “We need to have the body for Irina. Bring him along.”

He turned and walked away, leaving his enforcers to deal with the body. Tired to his bones, he had to get to the truck and sit the f*ck down.



oOo



Willa and Ollie were upstairs, sleeping in ‘their’ room. Rad stood at the foot of the stairs, thinking how very long the trip to his family seemed just then. But he didn’t want to sleep down here again, alone when she was so close.

He heaved himself up to the second floor and stopped at the closed door behind which he’d find a bed with his old lady in it, and their dog beside it.

He leaned his forehead against the door, unable to turn the knob. They were making a mistake, having a kid. Weren’t they? Wasn’t Willa making a mistake being with him? Wasn’t she too good for this life? For a man with so much blood on his hands?

At the thought, he looked down and saw that there was still literally blood on his hands, sunk into the seams around his fingernails. He pushed away from the door and went to the bathroom, grabbed a bar of Lava soap from behind the mirror, and scrubbed his hands under the stream from the hot tap.

Killing was not something that Rad enjoyed. He didn’t hesitate when it needed doing, and there was satisfaction in ending a man who really deserved it, but he could feel each kill drain something out of him, a little good from his soul each time. How much he lost with each one, he didn’t know. One percent? Five? Ten? Did it vary depending on the target? How much for killing a helpless sad sack like Chet?

Since the club had gone outlaw and he’d been SAA, he’d killed five men in cold blood, more than that in self-defense, and he’d hurt countless others. How many before there was no good left in him?

Would the parts of him he struggled with become the only parts of him? What would Willa do then? Willa and their kid? Would he hurt them? Would they leave him? Would he end up just like Jesse Smithers?

No. Not Willa. He wouldn’t hurt her. He couldn’t. Not Willa. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. He’d leave her before he’d turn into a monster that could hurt her like that. And he’d make no kind of father at all.

A soft knock at the door. “Rad?”

At that moment, the sound of her voice was like to break his heart. He turned away from his reflection and opened the door.

Her fair hair was ruffled about her head, and her eyes blinked against the bright bathroom light. God, look at her. Her breasts and their pert nipples lifted her white beater away from her body, and he could see the silky skim of belly above the folded-over elastic band of her boxers.

Ollie stood behind her, his tail wagging.

“Hey, baby.”

A frown took over her features, and she stepped into the bathroom. “What’s wrong? You’re hurting.” She put her hand on his shoulder, hooking the tip of her finger into the hole in his kutte. “Come to bed, and I’ll get you some Percocet. You shouldn’t have gone out tonight—I told you you weren’t ready.”