Page 164 of I Will Revel in Glory (Death by Daybreak MC 3)
Our demon wings unfurl to catch the wind—and trust me, there’s plenty of it—and off we go.
We end up parked at the front of a horde of bikes, many of them covered with the drifting ash, turning their shiny surfaces a grimy, muted color, like we’re all standing inside an old movie. Not black and white, of course, but shades of gray.
The whole world is gray.
Seems fitting considering everything that’s about to happen is hinged on a boy named Grey, on the crime syndicate that he’s named after.
The boys park and remove their helmets before heading inside.
Just yesterday, the clubhouse was a bustling mess of women and children. Now, it’s packed wall-to-wall with men in leather vests (and a few of the scrappier old ladies brave enough to stick by their husbands). Some are from the Ashbury chapter, others from Seattle, more from Los Gatos. There are three more chapters on the way from Bentonville, New Orleans, and Denver, but none of them are here yet.
All eyes turn to us when we walk in.
I can feel the collective weight of the room on me, but there’s less judgment in it than I expected. Because not only am I Cat’s daughter and Beast’s wife, I’m also shacking up with Crown and Sin and Grainger. More importantly than any of that, I cut the head off the alpha female wolf and killed the leader of Alvise’s tactical team.
So maybe some of these men will never be able to see me as anything more than an extension of Cat or Beat, but there are plenty who’ve seen what I can do, what I’m willing to do, how far I’ll go.
We ignore the crowd downstairs and head up to Cat’s office. He’s in there with René and a half-dozen other men, but he waves them all out when we come in. Once the door’s closed behind them, my father gives me a look from across the desk.
“Well, your nun left. What do you have for me, girl?”
There’s the undertone of a threat in his words, but there’s something else, too. He’s eager to hear what I have to say. Information is power in a world like ours, and mine is good. I’ve proven it not once, but twice now.
“Grey is going to be at the Artefact,” I tell him, referring to the crumbling old party house, the one whose real name is the Jensen Manor and Inn, an Artefact of Historic Downtown Ashbury. Or so it says on the plate outside the front door. “In …” I check my phone to see the time. “About two and a half hours.”
Cat stares me down, searching my face for lies. He won’t find any. How could he think that, after all the things I’ve done?
He has to die.
I tell myself that, letting the thought echo in my head. In order for this to really work, I know that to be the truth. Cat will never enter into a peaceful agreement with Grey. He really won’t like the idea of me being the liaison between the club and the mafia either.
Yet … even as I stand here, even as I know that this is the conclusion Grey is hoping I’ll come to, I’m not sure that I can do it. Breathe, Gidget, breathe.
“We think he’s bringing the whole of the mafia’s army to wait for us there,” I tell Cat as he mulls this over and glances at the silent forms of his four officers. “But they could also be on their way to the compound. That’s what Grey told me, but I’m not sure if I believe it. The Don and Grey, at the very least, will be passing by the Artefact on their way out of town.”
“If we can take out the Don, it’ll cause a power struggle within the organization. We won’t have to kill ourselves trying to slaughter them,” Crown offers up, rubbing at his chin. That’s true. Grey isn’t going to automatically be able to step in and fill his father’s shoes. He’s going to have to fight for the privilege.
“You want us to go to war today?” Cat asks with a bit of a dry laugh. “Sounds like a stupid ass fucking plan to me. I don’t know if you’ve looked outside, but the world is on fire.” He sits down in his chair and leans back, one elbow on the arm of it, his hand stroking his beard.
“The compound may burn as well,” Crown continues, looking over at Sin. “Maybe we should take all of our men into town and deal with Alvise? Let the mafia have whatever’s here—if they show up at all. If it doesn’t catch fire, we’ll deal with it later. At least then we’ll have the Don’s head.”
Cat doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
I have no idea how to work out the logistics of this. All I know is that we need to be at the Artefact when Grey told us to be. That’s it. Everything else is unimportant.
