“Sharp enough to know the difference between an authority figure and her soft-hearted old dad.”

  Decoy chuckled, then sobered as Cam appeared.

  We all did.

  4

  EMBRY

  Cam wasn’t a dictator.

  But he had an aura we respected.

  Authority.

  Strength.

  When he walked into a room, we knew it. When he spoke, we listened.

  He spoke now with no preamble, jabbing his finger first at Nash, then Rubi, then at me.

  “Skylar called and ripped my head off this morning. Someone want to tell me why all of you ain’t attending your follow-ups at the hospital? Actually, don’t fucking tell me. I don’t care.” He tossed three brown envelopes across the table. “I asked Alexei to hack into your records. Every one of you has an appointment tomorrow morning. I’m rounding you up like children and taking you myself.”

  Wonderful.

  I claimed my envelope and dropped it in front of me.

  Nash did the same. Only Rubi ignored his, face scrunched in a scowl. “Why do I need to go? They already told me they can’t do fuck all for me.”

  Cam fired him a glare. “So you want to live in pain forever?”

  “Not what I said, bro. I told you already it’s gonna hurt whether I drag myself to that shithole or not, so what’s the fucking point?”

  He could’ve plucked the words from my head verbatim. Rubi had concussion syndrome. I had a small bowel that was still regularly unhappy that it had been perforated by a serrated garden knife. The only fix in the world for us was time, not the anger and frustration Cam and Rubi filled the room with while they glowered at each other.

  Nash frowned between them. Then sighed and looked to Saint. “How come you didn’t get an envelope?”

  Saint glanced up from retying the ribbon in Ivy’s hair. “I go to my appointments.” His gaze flickered to me. “It’s not like they can take my spleen twice.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Rubi grumbled. “You’re the fucking Avatar. I’m pleased for you, man.”

  “That’s what you think?” Saint finished the complex bow he’d made of Ivy’s ribbon. “I fell asleep in the shower yesterday.”

  A pause settled over the room. Saint never talked about the brutal injuries he’d suffered a month or so after I’d been stabbed. Smoke inhalation. A ruptured spleen. Severe concussion. A burn on his chest that was so grisly Rubi’s gentle soul couldn’t look at it. He had no business looking so annoyingly healthy, but perhaps he was telling us there was more than we could see.

  “I hear you, brother,” Rubi said. “Just jealous that you’re a stronger motherfucker than me.”

  Saint slow-blinked and effectively removed himself from the conversation. Done with it already. Unaware that he’d left the room reeling with the most personal he’d ever been with so many of us at once, if I didn’t count him revealing his long-lost foster brother three nights ago.

  “All right.” Cam braced his fists on the old table. “Eleven o’clock tomorrow. If you don’t want my company, make your own arrangements, but this ain’t a discussion I want to have again.”

  He finally sat down. It should’ve amused me that no one questioned the fact that Alexei had hacked our medical records. That it was more normal for us than Saint telling us he took a wet nap in the bathroom. But I was more irritated than I cared to acknowledge. I hated doctors. They smelt like chemicals and death.

  Wasn’t a fan of taking orders that had no part of club business either. Only the tension in Cam’s jaw kept me quiet. The last year had been tough on all of us, but no one more than him. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and some days it showed.

  That’s why I didn’t need to ask why Saint didn’t have an envelope on the table. He went to his appointments for Cam. Because he loved Cam far more than he’d ever love himself.

  The conversation moved on to business. Everyone had something to say, even Saint. “How are the strays working out?”

  His question was for me. The adopted Crows weren’t brothers, but we were trying to treat them the same as any other new member, which meant their wellbeing and happiness was my responsibility.

  My answer was honest. “I like Locke. He’s easy. All he cares about is paying his maintenance bills to his ex and making sure his kids don’t bunk off school. Folk is harder to read. I think he’s only here because Rocco might come to us when he’s ready to break cover. Same with Ranger. Actually, I think he’d be happier as a nomad.”

  The table chewed on that.

  “I’m good with Locke too,” Decoy offered. “He helps out in the yard. Orla likes him.”

  Nash drummed his fingers on the ancient wood, then reached for his smokes before he remembered Ivy. “Orla doesn’t like anyone.”

  Rubi snorted. “Keep telling yourself that.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Cam rolled his eyes.

  Beside me, Mateo snorted into a quiet chuckle, his amusement seeping into me, the way most of his emotions did when I let them. And I liked it when he laughed. It tempered the despair that seemed to smoulder in him the rest of the time.

  Don’t look at him.

  The warning came too late. I glanced sideways, and there he was, grinning a little, leaning closer to me as if we were the only two people in the world.

  It was like that sometimes, when we had the safety of our brothers around us. The pressure of being alone and messy faded and we could just be, knowing that nothing would happen that we couldn’t handle.

  That you can’t handle.

  Mateo . . . I had no idea what his limits were when it came to me. Just that I’d pushed him to the edge over and over and he was still here next to me, waiting for the next blow.

  You don’t deserve him.

  Cam was speaking again. I tuned back into the world and caught the tail end.

  “—let Ranger go if he doesn’t want to be here. Folk . . . he’s a scuba diver, right? Or did I dream that?”

  “It is true.” Alexei turned away from the window. “He was a soldier. How he ended up in this place with the Dog Crows, I do not know.”

  Cam’s gaze landed on his lover and it settled him, a sight I was equal parts jealous of and happy to see.

  I cocked a brow at Alexei. “Something wrong with bumfuck Devon?”

  Alexei spared me a glance and shrugged. “Not at the moment. But a brother with those skills could prove useful to you in the future. Also, he is loyal to Rocco and grateful that Saint was idiotic enough to risk his life for his friend. If it was my decision, I would keep him around.”

  Saint didn’t react to being called an idiot. Probably because it wasn’t true. The table had never debated his reasons for half killing himself to save a Crow, trying to rationalise Saint had always been impossible. But to me, his motives were obvious. If he hadn’t charged into that burning building, there was every chance the idiot in the room might’ve been Cam.

  Our president.

  Our brother.

  Saint’s everything.

  “Can you feel him out?”

  It took a second to register Cam was talking to me. And that he meant Folk.

  I nodded. “I’ll catch up with him later.”

  Cam held my gaze a moment longer, spearing me in a way that should’ve made me squirm. But Mateo’s amber eyes cut deeper than Cam’s ever could. I won our stare down and Cam switched his attention to Decoy, Mateo, and the fledgling haulage business they’d set up with Alexei’s help.

  They were killing it.

  Alexei brought a laptop to the table and ran through the accounts slow enough that everyone except Nash kept up.

  Five minutes in, Nash left the table, taking Ivy with him. The smell of bacon filtered into the room from the kitchen and he returned sometime later with breakfast.

  Decoy took his cue, grabbing a sandwich from the tray with one hand and gathering Ivy with the other.

  He said his goodbyes, then nodded to Mateo. “See you tonight. Pack for a few days, yeah?”

  Mateo dipped his chin in agreement and my gaze darted between them fast enough to make my head spin.

  “Where are you going?”

  Mateo leaned across me, reaching for the breakfast Nash had conjured up. “Up north. Biggest load yet.”

  “But you just got back—” Too late, I snapped my mouth shut, fighting the wave of . . . something that washed over me. Disappointment. Dread. I couldn’t name it. Just knew it made my stomach churn and my skin prickle. He’s leaving again. It wasn’t a new phenomenon. Even with Saint back to full fitness, Mateo’s workload was insane. But a primal part of me I couldn’t acknowledge had been counting on his company. Craved it, as if he was a fucking drug.

  Had it always been this way?

  My mind wanted to drift back and figure it out, but my brothers were staring at me, even Alexei. Goddamn it, I’d fucked up. This wasn’t who I was to them. Who they needed me to be. “Uh—”

  Mateo shoved a bacon sandwich at me and rolled his eyes. “All right, mate. Maybe I’ll see my old dear on the way. Take Decoy for some bocadillos and bad coffee. Leave me alone about that shit, okay?”

  It was a plausible save. Mateo was a London boy, but his mum lived in Reading now, and it was a running joke that I tried to encourage him to visit her more. A joke without humour because their relationship was strange. She cried every time she saw him, as if he’d broken her heart a thousand times, and he’d never told me why.

  Decoy left.

  Cam waited for the door to shut, then cleared his throat. “Whether you swing through Reading or not, be careful on the road. This is legitimate business, but there’s been rumblings in the haulage rackets.”

  Mateo sat back again. “How do you know?”

  “Viktor.” Cam’s gaze briefly flitted to Alexei again. “He made contact late last night and said there’s a civil war brewing in the Sambini family, so territory we think is safe might belong to someone else by now.”

  “Since when are we in bed with Sambini’s Russian henchman?”

  “Since he stopped us getting massacred in the mud,” Cam retorted dryly. “He also cleaned up our mess so we could be elsewhere. I don’t know what his motives were or are, but for now, we have no reason to distrust him.”

  Rubi rapped his tattooed knuckles on the table. “I like any dude who shows up uninvited to do the housework. Saved me a night of puking into my boots.”

  Mateo rolled his eyes. “You’d trust any cunt that stops you getting your hands dirty.”

  Rubi opened his mouth, but Cam cut him off. “Wind it in. Ain’t got time for bickering.” He tipped his head at Mateo. “You got anything sensible to say?”

  Mateo fixed a brief glare on Rubi. Then shrugged. “We need more specific speculation, boss. Like, who’d take territory from Sambini? They own all the claimed roads we use and they’re scared of him.”

  He jabbed a finger at Alexei.

  Alexei spared him a hideous smile. “That is a cute observation, but incorrect. It is only the roads in the South West that they are beholden to minding their own business about. The rest of your country is fair game. And to answer the question, if there is a split within the family, it is likely that Lorenzo Sambini will strike out on his own and need to raise capital quickly.”

  “So he’ll sell the roads to someone else? To who?”

  “Whoever has the deepest pockets.”

  “Not us then?”

  Alexei spread his hands and looked to Cam.

  Cam sighed. “We’re working on expanding the haulage business to any charter who wants a piece of it, but even if we did have the money to buy territory from whoever the fuck is selling it, it goes against what we’re trying to do here. I want our lorries shipping timber without having to worry they’re going to get jacked. Which means we have to stay out of this. Work around it.”

  With Ivy gone, the smoking ban was over. Mateo lit up, narrowing his fiery eyes. “Working around it means driving hundreds of miles out of our way to avoid upsetting anyone.”

  “I know.”

  “That costs more in fuel and manpower.”

  “I know that too.”

  “And you don’t care?”

  It was a fair question, but Mateo’s natural aggression made it sound like an accusation, and Cam wasn’t himself. Hadn’t been since long before he nearly lost Saint.

  His dark eyes flashed and he set his palms on the table, leaning forward. “If I didn’t care, I’d send you out there to fight them, wouldn’t I?”

  “You think I’d lose?”

  “Eventually. It’s not about fists. If it was, we wouldn’t have brothers with burns and knife wounds.”

  Or bullet scars, but Cam always seemed to forget that he’d been hurt as badly as me and Saint.

  Mateo simmered down. He wasn’t used to Cam biting back, but he was astute enough to know it wasn’t about him. “We don’t have any idea who might want these roads?”

  Cam shook his head. “Not yet. And I know Viktor might turn out to be . . . what is it, Em?”

  “A Trojan horse,” I supplied. “But we can’t use that analogy for everything. There are much better ones out there, unless you really want to read the Odyssey.”

  “I’ll pass,” Cam deadpanned. “Regardless, I know it’s a grey area, but it’s all we have if we want this business to work. And we do. Unless anyone has changed their mind on that?”

  No one spoke. Mateo liked the fight, but he loved the club more. Loved Cam, even if he didn’t quite believe he wanted nothing but the best for all of us.

  Church broke up. Alexei disappeared. Everyone else moved slower, but I found myself the last person seated.

  I was still holding the sandwich Mateo had given me. He sent me a hard stare as he left the room with Saint. Eat it, Em. Please?

  How many times had I heard him say those words in the last six months?

  Too many. And I hated the distress in his gaze when I couldn’t. So I stayed in my chair and picked at it, not noticing Cam until he claimed Decoy’s vacant seat.

  “Not feeling good?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You used to be on the other side of the fence.”

  “The ‘can’t cook, won’t cook’ fence?”

  Cam wrapped his tattooed hands around a coffee mug. “The ‘hangry enough to kill people’ fence. You used to be on the same team as Nash, Rubi, and Mateo. Now you’re with Saint, Alexei, and my kid brother on the dark side.”

  “I just watched Alexei eat a box of pancakes.”

  “He’s a mood eater, like Saint, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re both moody bastards.”

  “That’s why you love them, though.”

  “I love you too, Em. Something wrong?”

  “Stop stealing my lines.”

  Cam waited, pinching my best listening techniques too. But they didn’t work on me. My skeletons were locked up tight. They had to be, or I’d never swim out of the mess I’d made when I’d showed them to Mateo.

  I gave up on the sandwich I was pulling to bits. “I’m tired, man. The last time I saw a doctor, they said I was anaemic. Maybe I’ll get that fixed tomorrow, eh?”

  Cam leaned back in his chair, appeased but still with the air of a man with something to say. “What about Mateo?”

  “What about him?”

  “Are you two fucking?”

  Cam was more than a friend. More than a president, he was my brother. When I’d been in so much pain I’d truly wanted to stick a gun in my mouth, he’d stayed with me every moment Mateo couldn’t. Sent Rubi to fill his place when Saint had needed him more.

  He did love me.

  But he didn’t know me. If he did, he’d never ask me that question. Not about Mateo.

  Not about anyone.

  “Why are you saying that to me when I told you last night he was still out with that girl from the Joker?”

  Cam regarded me over the rim of his mug. “A couple of reasons. One, Alexei thinks Mateo has a secret and I wondered if it might be you. Two, I know that girl and she’s as gay as Nash thinks he’s straight.”

  The single bite of food I’d managed to swallow turned to ash in my stomach. “Does it matter if Nash is straight or not? Last time I checked, he only had eyes for your sister.”

  “Not my point, father.”

  “Then what is? That Mateo’s corrupting lesbians, or you think he’s a liar?”

  “I never said he was a liar. Just that something is weighing him down, and I’d be a shitty president if I didn’t care about that.”

  I pushed the sandwich further away from me. Cam’s hands twitched to push it back, to coax me to eat like every one of my brothers had in recent memory.

  But he didn’t move.

  Didn’t give an inch.

  Neither did I, out of habit, more than anything else, and a fierce loyalty to Mateo that even Cam couldn’t break. But I really was tired, and Cam’s suspicion cut deep. Mateo vanished at least twice a month, for days at a time. If he wasn’t getting laid, where the hell was he going?

  An hour later, I still had no clue. I left Cam in the chapel to think on the more in-depth assessment I’d given him of Folk, Ranger, and Locke, and drifted outside.

  It was a hot day, and the compound was busy with brothers and their families enjoying the sunshine. Relaxed and communal, it was everything Cam wanted the club to be, but I found no joy in it as I swept the yard for Mateo and came up blank. Alexei saw things with different eyes and he spent a lot of time with Mateo. Was he right? Did Mateo have a secret?

  Or was it my secret that was fucking with his head?

  Reverse it. How would you feel?

  Nope. Couldn’t do it. The anger wrenching my gut hurt too much.

  “Hey.” Mateo’s warm palm skated over my arm, not quite touching, but close enough to my skin that I felt him everywhere. “Did you eat?”

  I raised my gaze to the six inches he had on me. The sun was behind him, shadowing his face, but I saw him. Saw his amber eyes molten with concern I wasn’t in the fucking mood for right now. “I need to ride.”