Ray put her hand on my shoulder and I opened my eyes, peering into her doll-like icy blue’s that projected nothing but sincerity and sympathy. “No,” Ray said. “I’m not.”

“You’re crazy,” I said. She’d lost so many people she’d loved, so why wasn’t she afraid of losing King too? “Why?” I asked again.

“King promised me he would be okay,” Ray said, “and he always keeps his promises.”

I wanted the same to be true for Bear, for him to promise me he’d be okay and swear to me that he’d come out of all this alive. As much as I loved the broken promise that had brought us together to begin with, it was one I really wanted him to keep.

“I just wish there was something I could do to help,” I admitted.

Ray nodded. “I feel exactly the same way, but aside from grabbing a gun and storming the compound we are S.O.L,” Ray said with a laugh, “or unless you have an army laying around they could borrow.”

I jolted upright as an idea went off in my head like I’d been struck by lightning. Circuits were connecting. An idea was taking shape. I turned to Ray. “What if I did have one?”

“One what?” Ray asked. Her lips turned to the side in confusion. I leapt to my feet.

“Stay here, I’m going to grab my phone. I’ll be right back!” I yelled.

“But one what?” she asked again. I turned around before going into the house and smiled wickedly.

“An army.”

I disappeared inside and ran to the kitchen table when I remembered that the phone was in the truck. I jogged out the front door and stuck my hand through the window, grabbing the phone off the seat. I dialed and waited but there was no answer. “Crap,” I said as I typed out a text and hoped to God he would get it and know what it meant.

I jogged back up to the house, still looking down at the phone, waiting for a reply, when I ran into something hard.

Someone.

I didn’t get a chance to see who that someone was before I was zapped by a bolt of blue lighting. Hovering somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, I could still hear the crickets chirping and Ray calling out for me as I was carried away, bombarded by the sensations of both familiarity, and dread.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Bear

THE ONLY THING my old man ever gave me was the promise of the gavel and his fucking temper.

Cocksucker.

With Preppy’s death, I reached an entirely new level of anger, a feeling so far beyond anything I’d ever experienced before, I never thought I’d be able to unclench my fists or take a deep breath again.

For a while I let it destroy me from the inside, like the cancer that took Grace, tearing apart the very foundation of who I thought I was, and leaving a fraction of the old me in its place.

By comparison, the anger I felt when Prep died was a mere blip on the fucking radar compared to the out of body rage I experienced when Ray called to say my girl had been taken.

Ray hadn’t seen who it was, neither did Wolf or Munch who were in the back yard watching the girls. When Munch saw Ti duck inside he didn’t know she was going out the front of the house. They ran out just in time to see a van driving away.

They may not have seen who took her, but they didn’t have to see it for me to know who was behind it. If he thought for even one fucking second that taking my girl would in any way give him the upper hand that fucker was dead wrong. All it did was move up the war, his imminent death, and the probability of torture unlike he’d ever known before.

Go get her, Bear.

Preppy’s ghost voice was the most serious I’d ever heard him, and that filled me with even more rage, and something else I wasn’t familiar with ever feeling.

Terror.

The plan had always been to storm the MC. Take back what Chop had taken from us. Take back the club. Not once while making those plans had I feared for my own life, but now that Ti’s life was in the hands of the man who’d already caused her so much damage, and was capable of inflicting so much more, the fear within me was damn near overwhelming.

Life and death had always been very factual for me. We all lived, and we all died, and I was fully prepared to take a bullet when my time was up. I was okay with my death, regardless of when it came.

I wasn’t okay with the death of Preppy.

In thirty years, if I’m still walking the earth, I still won’t be.

If something happened to Ti, the pain I would inflict would be endless because my pain would be endless.

Hurry. Ghost Preppy said.

I throttled my engine and forced my bike to breakneck speeds. I ran every red light, stop sign, and dodged every stopped car. I lead our group, which consisted of Wolf, Stone, and Munch, with King taking up the rear. Gus was meeting us there. We weren’t the largest group, but we had a lot of talent between us, and it was that talent that I was relying on to get my girl back. Then and only then, when I knew she was safe, would I take my time to dispose of my old man for good.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was all a trap to lure me in—no fucking doubt about it. I even think Gus was fed false intel on purpose about the club being out on a ride, but trap or not, Chop had brought the war to his doorstep and I was about to reign down a hell on him like he’d never imagined possible. If there was any part of my old man left who thought I might be incapable of laying him out because he was blood, he was about to learn just how wrong he was.

Dead fucking wrong.

I frantically flew into the night and used the thoughts of my girl to fuel my hatred and push me forward.

The war we had been preparing for had officially been moved up, to right fucking now.

Hang on, Ti. I’m coming.

I was going to get my girl back and I was going to bathe in the blood of any motherfucker who stood between us.

I wasn’t just after revenge.

I was on a fucking hunt.

I kind of missed the psychotic part of me that had been lying dormant since Preppy died and welcomed the thought of mounting Chop’s severed head on the fucking roof of the MC as a warning to any other piece of shit who thinks they can cross me and somehow get away with it.

The Beach Bastards wasn’t Chop’s club anymore.

He wasn’t their Prez.

They didn’t exist.

Or at least, they wouldn’t after I was through with them.

Ti may have taught me how to be a man again, but I shoved the man to the side, because right then I needed the biker, the devil, the fucking demon who would shoot without question or hesitation. Cut without feeling. Hurt without hurting.