Another growl sounded, but it lacked any real ferocity.
The next thing I knew, he was releasing Wolf and stepping back.
He opened his hand and the blade clattered to the ground.
He turned, a dark look passing between him and my dad. “Too close. Way too fucking close.”
27
~Wraith~
I WATCHED THE WATER.
My palms pressed against the shower wall, hunched over, I took in the bloodied water streaming down the shower drain.
Blood.
So much blood.
Too much blood.
Wolf’s blood.
Just a little of mine.
I peered down at my arms, the grazes I’d sustained when I’d tackled that son of a bitch away from Ashley and Scott. They’d stopped bleeding. I clenched my fists carefully, eyeing the damage there from the brutality of my bare-knuckled hits. The wounds were open but no longer bleeding either.
It was more than could be said for Wolf.
He’d barely been conscious when I’d watched Wrecker and Anarchy haul him into a transport along with the others we’d fucked up. They’d picked up an unconscious Kyle on the way too. They’d taken them off our territory to a known safehouse belonging to the Rogue Riders MC. We couldn’t have that kind of incriminating evidence against us left out in the open. Scott might’ve had the law in Ridgefield in his pocket, but what’d happened earlier would’ve really been pushing it.
The thing was, today was nothing compared to what was going to happen.
The club was furious.
It was beyond brazen and beyond insulting that the enemy had launched a kidnapping attempt on the club princess right from club territory. It was an act of insanity and that made the Rogues more dangerous than they were even already believed to be. They’d clearly become desperate to get the reaction that Scott had been denying them, to force a major confrontation with Iron Kings.
Unfortunately, they were going to get it.
Despite how level-headed Scott normally was, when it came to his daughter, it was a very different story. I hadn’t seen fury and pain, such powerful emotions, breach his cool, collected demeanor for years. The last time had been following the murder of his wife.
And, as for me, I’d nearly lost the woman I loved. All I’d been able to see was blood and death. I’d wanted to watch the life drain out of that motherfucker like nothing else. The only thing that’d stopped me from taking it there was Ashley, my anchor.
“Finn!”
I jolted, pulled abruptly from my thoughts, at the sound of a familiar voice calling to me from the open bathroom door.
“Jesse?” I called back.
“Yeah. You’ve been in there for over an hour. Are you about ready to wrap it up?”
What? Over an hour? “It takes a good long while to scrub bloodstains off skin,” I bit back, way too defensively.
There was a brief pause, no doubt from my unprecedented harshness.
Then the shower curtain was ripped aside and Jesse stood there, thrusting a towel at me.
“Let’s talk.”
Frowning at his urgency, I switched off the shower, then snatched up the towel, drying myself quickly. I grabbed my clean clothes that were folded on the sink base and hurriedly pulled them on, then followed him into the bedroom.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, as I grabbed the bottle of whiskey I’d swiped from the downstairs bar on my way up here. I took a long swig then eyed him expectantly.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his tactical pants, his hazel eyes scrutinizing me. “So, the girl’s your tether, huh?”
I froze with the bottle halfway to my lips, eyeing him in surprise. “She told you?”
“Spartan called it. You’ve never pulled back once you’ve decided to go in for the kill.”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “She is.”
“I never thought I’d see the day. I didn’t think anyone could tame that part of you.”
“Her light is stronger than my darkness.”
“I’m glad.” He took a seat on the window ledge, his bulky form barely fitting in the narrow space. Nodding to himself, he said, “It changes everything. You can live a real life now, no more closing yourself off to people. You don’t need to worry or fear that part of you anymore.”
“I still need to keep a low profile the second I step beyond Ridgefield’s borders and the protection of the club.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said, more than a little pointedly.
It was blatantly obvious what he was getting at. “The Rogues need to be eliminated. They’re dangerous. You saw it up close and personal earlier.”
“There is more than one way to eliminate a threat.”
“Going the fatal route is the only way to be certain a threat is null and void. You know that as well as I do.”
“What I know is that this has become more and more personal to you the closer you’ve gotten to the lovely Miss Tate. This fatal approach isn’t the soundest strategy and if you weren’t personally involved, I’m certain you wouldn’t go this route to take care of this particular threat. No, all of this is borne from fear of losing what you care about dearly, not to mention, retribution.”
I took a long swig from my bottle, his sound observations hitting me right where I lived. He really had a knack for doing that.
But he wasn’t the only one who could read between the lines.
“You have something, don’t you? You came through with that research I asked you to do on them.” I shook my head at him in mock disappointment. “Finally.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “It took so long, because there was a lot to compile.” I watched him reach into the inside pocket of his tactical jacket and pull out a folded manilla envelope. “These guys have their fingers in a shitload of pies.”
I took it from his offered hand and pulled out a thick folder. I smiled with amusement as I opened it and
