He smirked. “You come here…” he pointed to the ground, “…and try to step on me on my own turf?”
“Travis!” a low voice interrupted from the patio of what one could only assume was the actual clubhouse.
“Get the fuck over here.” The man began making his way to the gate and Hella mumbled next to me, “Just don’t lose your shit. Rein it in.” I looked to him, eye brows drawn. It was usually me telling him to hold off on his anger, not the other way around.
“Can I help you?” the man said from his position. I eyed him up and down, resting my vision on his patch. Where pretty boy’s patch read ‘Prospect’ this one read ‘President.’
This was more like it.
“Yeah,” Hella began. “Looking for Abby. Not causing any trouble, I knew her when we were kids,” Hella stated, placing his hands against the iron fence, clutching his fingers through the triangles.
President’s eyes slant. “What you say your name was?” Eying Hella up and down, he reached into his pocket and fished out his phone.
“Hella. Or as she would have known—Braxton.”
Braxton? The fuck. If the situation weren't completely serious, I would’ve laughed at him. Then I remembered, at least someone gave enough of a shit to actually give him a name.
“Yeah, got a couple big motherfuckers here. You know a Braxton?”
“Yeah? All right then.” He hung up his phone, twisting his fingers in the air when no-one moved he looked to the prospect. “Open the fucking gate, Trav, or what? You scared now. Hold your fucking tongue next time, boy.” The prospect snapped to action, pushing a red button on the gates, causing them to slide open. We both walked in, a few other men stepped down from the patio area, looking skeptical.
“I’m Zane, the president.” He pointed up to the patio, where two other men stood. “That’s Ade and Blake.” He smirked. “Don’t try anything, we have a special burial ground for sneaky little fuckers that worm their way in. I’m sure we could accommodate to your size, too.”
I nodded my head in understanding. I got it. After being in The Army all my life, anyone outside of that life seemed normal to me. I had a lot to learn when it came to civilization.
“Beast,” I mumbled, shaking his hand.
He nodded his head. “I see that.”
We made our way into the bar area, taking a seat at a table where Ade and Blake joined us. They ordered a couple beers from the bartender who looked like she’d just stepped the fuck off a magazine. Do all girls look like that? Don’t fucking like it, it’s fake. Anyone that needs to spend time in the morning to try and look that perfect I will never be interested in.
“So,” Zane started, placing his beer on the table after taking a drink. “Abby will be here when she finishes. She couldn’t get off early.”
“How’s she been?” Hella asked, rolling his cold drink around in his hand. I scanned the table, bringing my eyes to the biggest out of all of them—Ade. You’d think he could have stepped out of a magazine too, that is until you saw the empty depths of his eyes. I nodded my head at him, once he noticed my staring. His eyes faltered but he nodded back with a small smirk. That was one fucked up man recognizing another.
“Yeah, good,” Zane answered, gazing around the clubhouse. “She didn’t say much on the phone but said I was to trust you and anyone you were with under any circumstances. Our little Abster can be very demanding.”
Hella chuckled around the rim of his beer. “That much hasn’t changed then.”
“How do you know each other? We’ve known Abby since she was fourteen,” Ade asked from his seat, throwing his arms back onto the empty chair next to him. The gesture showed his confidence and lack of giving a fuck. He could be a problem if anything went down.
“We were in the same home together for three years when we were kids. I came here once, to see if she was happy. She tried to beg me to stay,” Hella answered. I think about the time I had spent at The Army, all the schooling from the private nuns. My memory draws blanks on a lot of those memories, but I remember the learning aspect of it. I was grateful for it, and I guessed because Jada and I were the youngest there—her coming in at the age of four— we were Nun Nancy and Nun Lucy’s only students.
English and math were our primary subjects, but most of our learning was guided by what Kurr wanted us to learn, which was mainly killing. With Jada, it was killing in the art of seduction. She was good at it—is good at it. Too good because once they saw how easily she could reign in some of the larger upscale kills, there was no way they were letting her go. She’d bring them to their feet before ripping their throat out. Probably the hottest psychotic bitch you’d ever meet, but she has an entirely different side to her too. They needed her, and there was no way they would ever let her out of their sights. I promised myself that I would go back to her, and I will. I needed to make sure I had somewhere to bring her first, and there was no doubt that they would have put out a code black on both Hella and I. We were not safe. I knew that they wouldn’t hurt Jada, they needed her too much, but I had no doubt that every person I saw on the side of the road could possibly be working for them.