Chapter Two
Snake
The second Adella comes back in through that door, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. Somethings wrong. Even before I catch sight of the two suited people behind her — one man, one woman, both walking with the practiced rigidity that comes with being law enforcement — I’m halfway out of my seat and ready to deal out some severe punishment to the bastards who have put such a spook into her.
“Easy, Snakey boy,” Mack says in a low, whispery rumble. “Tomorrow’s a big day, so don’t go spoiling that by turning this into a shitshow, you hear me?”
Uneasy, I sit back down.
And keep my eyes focused square on Adella and the two suits looming right over her. Questioning her. They menace her for a minute before intimidating her into leading them over to Tricia.
Those two might not be able to tell how scared Adella is — as kind and caring as she is, she’s still got a backbone made of steel and won’t show she’s spooked — but I know. I can see the defensive jut of her shapely hips, the way she’s got her delicate hands almost balled into fists, the way she subtly gnaws on her lower lip.
Out of anyone in the club they could target, these bastards had to pick the one woman who means the most to me; the one woman that ache to get close to, yet have to stay away from — because there’s not a chance in hell Stone would approve of his only daughter dating anyone in the MC.
“I don’t give a fuck who they are,” I murmur. “They fuck with her, they’re going to regret it.”
My hand drifts to where I keep my knife around my ankle — the same combat knife that I’ve carried since my days as a Ranger — and, in my head, I’m counting the steps it’ll take to get to those two suits by the bar. Sixteen steps. Twelve if I really push it.
There’s a good chance I could kill at least one of them before they even react.
I’d take out the tall bastard first, then bull-rush the woman.
“Calm, Snake,” Mack cautions.
I shake my head.
“Either of them touches her — especially that tall son of a bitch — and I’m making a move.”
“You got the shakes from missing action? How long has it been since Carbon Ridge?” Mack says, low.
“Too long,” I say. And even if it hasn’t, just watching Adella go through an intense interrogation at the hands of the tall bastard who’s obviously in charge — while his colleague in whatever law enforcement branch they work for interrogates Tricia — is enough to make me itch with the urge. “Way too long.”
This clubhouse is sacred. It shelters my family, my friends, the people who took me in when I came home from the military, broken and wondering just what the hell I was going to do with my life, or if I should just end it.
They helped piece me back together.
And, though I’m still broken, I wouldn’t be where I am without them.
I’ll kill anyone who threatens them. Including these fucking feds.
“Suppress your murderous urges,” Mack says. “That’s a fucking order, brother.”
That one word — order — snaps me back to focus. I’m a soldier at heart. Even though it’s been years since I’ve worn my uniform.
I settle in and watch.
Watch as Tricia and Adella both, in their own unique way, handle their aggressors with skill. Tricia with a smile, a deflection, and every bit of grace under pressure that comes from being the wife of an MC President for over twenty years. And Adella with nervous laughter, a smile, a flirty touch that disarms the suited asshole questioning her.
I know she’s just flirting because she has to, but watching her carry on with another man has me reaching for my knife again.
“Snake,” Mack says, slow.
“I’m all right, Mack,” I say, letting out a slow breath.
Eventually, the interrogation ends with the female officer coldly turning away from Tricia — who stares daggers into her back — and the male officer handing a business card over to Adella, while giving her a way-too-fucking-familiar smile.
That smile on its own nearly has me shoving a knife into the gangly motherfucker.
The second the door closes behind them, I’m out of my seat and racing to Adella’s side.
I put a hand on her arm.
She’s shaking.
“You OK?”
Two simple words, but they burn with rage and promise — say the word, and I will go hunt them down.
“I’m fine, Snake. Just shaken, that’s all.”
“What did they want?”
Tricia answers from the other side of the bar, where she’s already pouring up a line of four highball whiskey glasses.
“That was the FBI. They wanted to talk to my husband.”
“Oh, fuck me up the ass with some barbed wire, Stone is not going to fucking like hearing that. We will have to delay the fucking gun shipment,” Mack says.
Tricia finishes pouring, slides three of the glasses across the bar to Adella, Mack, and me, and then downs hers in a gulp.
“That’s for my husband to decide, but they weren’t here to talk to him about club business.”
“What do you mean? Why the fuck else would they come in here?” Mack says.
Adella takes her glass, sips it, then finishes the rest in one gulp.
She makes a face as she sets the glass down.
“They wanted to know if my dad had heard from some fugitive they were looking for. That guy wanted my number, too.”
“He told you nothing else?” I say.
Adella shrugs her slight shoulders and worries her plump upper lip between her teeth. Her hands shake a little as she drums a nervous rhythm
