Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 115186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“Where the fuck is she?”
“Who?” filled Romeo’s ear.
“You know who,” he responded impatiently.
“Ain’t learned your lesson yet?” Magnum asked.
Romeo pulled the phone from his ear, frowned at it for a few furious seconds before putting it back to his ear. “Since the Russos are involved, went to check on her and she’s gone.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Romeo echoed.
“That’s what I said.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Brother, you think she shares her goddamn plans with me? Why don’t you fuckin’ call her.”
He had. Numerous times. “She don’t answer her phone.”
“Maybe that should tell you somethin’.”
Romeo dropped his head back and ground his teeth. “She’s just pissed right now. She’ll get over it.”
“You wanna know so fuckin’ bad, call Shade and ask him. ‘Cause you’re callin’ the wrong fuckin’ person. Got no fuckin’ clue where she is. My guess? She went as far away from you as she can get.”
This was going nowhere, so he pivoted. “What’s the plan?”
“For what?”
“To get those motherfuckers back.”
Magnum huffed. “You want us to go to war with the goddamn Mafia?”
“Not war. Just take a coupla shots at ‘em.”
“A coupla shots lead to more. Look what they did to the Deadly Demons. They pretty much wiped out that MC after being crossed.”
“We ain’t those Deadly Dumbasses.”
“Look, brother, thought long and fuckin’ hard about it and decided we gotta make the best decisions to keep this club in one piece. They got a shit-ton more scratch behind their organization with access to a lot more. They also got a fuckuva lot better firepower than us. They could easily pick us off one by one ’til there ain’t nothin’ left of our brotherhood. That what you want?”
Magnum’s response surprised him. When did that man ever back down from anything? Romeo swore he softened with age. “Assumin’ you had a sit-down with the Shadows about this.” That had to be where this was coming from.
“Not a sit-down but yeah, discussed our options about dealin’ with that kinda organization. This ain’t another MC. This ain’t those fucknut Warriors takin’ pot shots at us and the Angels. We’d need the whole fuckin’ alliance behind us to go head-to-head with a Sicilian army and that ain’t gonna happen. No one wants to start a goddamn war if we can avoid it. We got too much to fuckin’ lose.”
“Sounds like a bunch of pussies to me.”
A loud sigh hit Romeo’s ear. “Suggest lookin’ in the fuckin’ mirror, Rome, and ask yourself if you’re ready to go head-to-head with La Cosa Nostra in your fuckin’ condition.”
“Not sayin’ we need to do it this fuckin’ week, but we need to strike back. What he did to me can’t go unanswered.”
After a long pause, Magnum said, “This is personal shit, brother. This ain’t got fuck to do with the rest of us.”
“You sayin’ you won’t back your prez?”
“For fuck’s sake. Ain’t what I said. You stepped in shit I told you to avoid and now you want us to turn that into a shit storm? Be smart. Take your knocks for bein’ stupid and let it go.”
Romeo couldn’t do that. He understood what Magnum was saying but he didn’t have to like it. He also could handle Smith—or Russo or whatever the fuck his real name was—on his own. But he would not just “let it go.” Fuck that shit.
And, yeah, it was personal.
What Smith did to Maddie. What Smith did to him.
But he was still disappointed that his sergeant at arms wouldn’t have his back in this. “Old age really mellowed your ass out.”
“Unlike you, the older I get, the wiser I get. Also, my head’s a lot fuckin’ cooler now than it used to be. Remember that I gotta look out for the whole damn club, not just you.” A noise in the background had Magnum pausing again. “Gotta go. Got a baby who needs me and that baby ain’t you.”
The line went dead.
Maybe he should take this to Bishop and if his VP agreed, take it to the board for a vote. Magnum wasn’t the be-all, end-all. He might be on the board, he might be toward the top of the Knights’ chain of command, but he was only one of thirty-two patched members.
He’d worry about that shit later. Right now, he was on a mission. He needed to find Maddie and make sure she was okay.
He scrolled through his phone for LZ’s contact and when he found it, pressed Send.
“Didn’t know you had my fuckin’ number,” were the first words out of Zeke’s mouth.
Romeo wasn’t calling the cocky shit to have a friendly conversation. He only needed info. “Where she at?”
“She?” Zak Jamison’s firstborn asked. The kid Sophie Jamison should’ve swallowed.
“Know who I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about.”
“Not sure I do.”
Romeo gritted his teeth. The kid was a dick simply because he could be. “Where’d Maddie go?”
“After you got her ass fired? Where d’you think?”