The King reached down and stroked the retriever. “You’ll find out soon enough with the others. You got something on your mind, my brother? You came by when V was talking to me earlier.”

Rhage glanced around the empty room. “Actually, yeah.”

“Talk to me.”

The story came out in a rush of sound bites: Bitty, her mom, Mary, him, the GTO—yup, for some reason, the fact that the girl liked his car made it in there. He also explained that he’d had his interview with Rhym, that Mary was having hers, that they needed Wrath’s approval.

Blah, blah, blah.

When he ran out of nouns and verbs, he discovered that he’d wandered around and ended up sitting in the chair on the far side of the throne, he and his brother separated by the expanse of desk, all those carved figures and sacred symbols marking the divide between their stations.

And yet he felt as though he and Wrath were one and the same as the male smiled. “You got it, my brother. Whatever you need, it’s yours. And if they want to do a site visit, or whatever you call it, the social worker is welcome here. We’ll have Fritz bring her in.”

Rhage was exhaling a fuckload of tension as Butch and Phury walked in. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Thank you so much.”

“You’ve come a long way from being that asshole I once knew and tolerated.”

When Wrath extended the black diamond ring of the King, Rhage got up and leaned over to kiss it. “Yeah, we all have—”

Just as he was straightening, someone goosed him so hard in the ass, he nearly face planted all over that desk. Wheeling around, he saw Lassiter smiling.

“Sorry,” the angel said. “Couldn’t help it.”

Rhage bared his fangs. “Lass, seriously, could you be anymore annoying.”

The fuck-twit put his forefinger to his chin and tapped as he tilted his head. “Hmm, I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”

“I swear to God, one of these days . . .”

Except it was a lie. He wasn’t going to do shit. The trouble with the current asshole crown holder was that it was impossible to truly hate him. Not when on a regular basis he proved there was a stand-up guy under all that goddamn, fucking irritation.

The rest of the Brotherhood filed in and took their customary places in the room. As Rhage camped out with Butch on one of the spindly sofas, it took him a minute to realize someone was missing.

Nope, here was Vishous. With Payne at his side.

One look into the pair of grim faces, and Rhage cursed under his breath. And he wasn’t the only one.

The doors were shut, and then everyone got dead quiet—

Before something could be said, Zsadist burst into the room and everybody recoiled.

“What the fuck happened to you?” V demanded.

The brother had steam rising up off of him—and not because he was pissed. There was, like, actual smoke curling from the shoulders of his leather jacket and the bottoms of his shitkickers. And, Jesus Christ, the stench—he smelled like burned rubber, bad chemicals, and a three-day-old campsite.

“Nothing,” the guy said as he sauntered over to his twin. “Just roasting marshmallows.”

“Is that my flamethrower?” somebody asked indignantly.

“How many square feet was the marshmallow,” someone else muttered.

“Hey, was it a Stay Puft?” Lassiter cut in.

The King cursed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, did you burn that bitch’s house down?”

Well, hello, everyone clearly thought as they went quiet and stared at Z.

“Technically, it was her old man’s,” Rhage felt compelled to comment. “Assuming we’re talking about the cunt who held that blood slave in her basement.”

Wrath shook his finger in Rhage’s direction. “Hey, no ‘See you next Tuesdays’ if you’re going to be a father. You need to drop that shit right now and get used to it before you bring that little girl into this fucking house.”

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd now everyone and their uncle turned around to eyeball him.

Fantastic.

Can we go back and talk about the marshmallow? he thought to himself.

As he hoped for a change of subject, and absolutely nothing like that happened, he shook his head. Wasn’t this just like the Brotherhood mansion, where news traveled faster than . . . well, a bonfire, for instance.

“Okay, A,” he said to the crowd, “I don’t know if we can adopt Bitty yet. Two, that holier-than-thou, no-cussing speech would have been a lot more effective if it didn’t have ‘shit’ and an f-bomb in it. And D, yes, Mary and I are trying to become parents, and no, I don’t want to talk about it yet. Can we be done.”

Lassiter came over. “High five for the Home Alone ref.”

“I did it for you, you piece of shit.” Rhage clapped palms with the douchebag. “And thanks for your support. Now let’s move on to the next crisis. Does anyone want to drop their trousers and admit to having a thong on? Or are we going to get serious and start sharing pedicures.”

Wrath spoke up. “Rhage is right. We got problems. V and Payne, take it away.”

Instantly, the vibe in the room changed, everybody getting serious as the siblings went over and stood in front of the fire. Man, you could see the family resemblance between them, with that jet-black hair and those diamond eyes. V was a little taller than his sis, broader, too, of course, and then there were those warning tattoos at his temple and the goatee. Payne was no slouch, however, her fighter’s body covered in exactly the same leather as her brother’s was, her muscled arms and legs making Ronda Rousey look like someone’s shrunken grandmother.