Tyrant(25)

It was the last f*cking thing I needed.

Bear and I were delirious and running on only a few hours of sleep in a week. We’d spent a shit load of time running offense, actively searching for Eli. We’d been everywhere from Miami to Atlanta, but the guy was like a ghost. Every bit of information we received brought us somewhere he’d just left.

Sometimes we’d missed him by just minutes.

“Says here they can’t do shit without you signing off,” Bear concluded, flicking the letter with his index finger, tossing it haphazardly onto the coffee table.

“Yeah, but it’s also basically saying that if I don’t sign off she’ll be in f*cking foster care until she’s eighteen.” I twisted the last piece of my tattoo gun in place. “Don’t know if I can do that to her, man. When I was a kid I would’ve given anything for my mom actually be a mom. Fuck, I would have given anything just to know who my father was.”

“But your mom was a f*cking cunt,” Bear stated, “and now she’s a dead f*cking cunt.”

“Her being a dead f*cking cunt is the reason I don’t have my kid,” I reminded him, “and maybe she’s better off living with normal people who don’t have to worry about all this bullshit of killin’ or being killed.”

Bear rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. Killing motherf*ckers is business. Ain’t got shit to do with family. What the f*ck do they know, anyway? We’re lawless, my friend. Civilians can’t wrap their little f*cking brains around what that means without getting their frilly panties in a f*cking twist.”

“You do know that in the eyes of the MC I’m a civilian,” I countered.

Bear waved me off. “Just to my old man, and what the f*ck does he know?”

I paused for a minute; before I shared with Bear something I’d never told anyone else. Even Preppy. “If I ever get the chance to be a real dad to Max…I’m going full civilian.”

Like you had to tell me. I f*cking knew that shit. Let me know how your application to f*cking DeVry pans out you f*cking *, Ghost-Preppy taunted.

“You ain’t thinking clearly right now. We’ll get Eli all nice and dead and then you can think about what a dumb f*ck you just sounded like when you informed me that The King of the Causeway is going f*cking legit,” Bear scoffed.

I’d expected that answer from Bear. I knew he wouldn’t understand what lengths a person would go to for their kid, for their family. “You know how you would do anything for your brothers in the MC?”

Bear nodded. “For the MC. For you. Yeah, man. Anything. Steal, fight, maim, kill. Shit, I’d take a f*cking bullet. I’d go back and take Preppy’s f*cking bullet right now if I could.” I believed him, because Bear’s loyalties ran deep.

“Well,” I started, “those things are jack shit compared to what you would be willing to do for your own kid.”

It was Bear’s turn to shake his head. I knew he would never really understand what I’d meant unless he up and had a kid of his own someday, and that thought was laughable at best.

I rubbed my hand across the stubble on my jaw, which over the past week, had turned more beard than stubble. All I really wanted was to drag Pup into my bed and settle my face in between her legs for the foreseeable future.

But I couldn’t do that until we ended Eli.

The guy was smart. He liked his revenge slow, sweet, and torturous.

Torture is the word I would use to describe not being able to reach out to Pup. It was too dangerous. The last guy Eli set his sites on lost his entire family, right down to his second cousins before Eli finally put in an end to the guys misery of watching every he loved die off one by one.

“We’ll start back up in the morning,” I said, “put more feelers out there, see if we can get info from someone closer to him or his inner circle. Someone who will know where he is in present tense, not past.”

I rubbed my eyes. I was tired, but also restless. My skin was literally itching to move the f*ck on past all the f*cking problems and move onto the solutions.

Like putting a f*cking bullet in Eli.

Ideally I’d like to do it without even stopping the f*cking car, and then hightail it back to Pup. Then, we can figure the Max thing out.

Together.

“You got any space left?” I called over to Bear, who was lying face down on the couch. We were in the apartment he’d built for himself in my garage. With no windows and only a single door in and out it made us feel less like sitting ducks than the main house.