Page 22 of Found Through Fire

“No, Will, I’m not mad. Thank you for saving her again. At this rate, I’ll never be able to pay you back,” I assure her as gently as my voice will let me.

She meets my stare with a small smile. “Okay, good. ‘Cause I have some shit to tell you. After I snuck in and started thinning the herd, I lurked around and caught some talk. They have some big shit planned for your club. I have no idea what some of it meant, but it sounded bad, even without the context. I was able to catch it on the body cam footage. I can send it to you.” She talks so fast she has to take a breath when she’s done.

“This isn’t my chapter. I’m not even sure what they have going on with this club. I’d have to let them watch to understand the situation,” I state, knowing that she’s going to be the deciding factor. As President, I have to warn the chapter to try and avoid casualties. But I am not going to be the one responsible for outing her, not just to an entire chapter that I’m not sure I would vouch for, but to Griz and Smoke, too. This has to be her call.

She nods her head, getting what I’m saying. “If you can trust them, I trust you. But make sure they know what will happen if they tell anyone. I’m very good at handling loose ends, and if Idon’t, Gig loves hunting. If they want, they can go check out my handy work. I left the bodies so they could see the fun we had. I didn’t leave survivors, but the entire club wasn’t there, only like thirty or so,” she says as her face turns into a pointed smirk, like hunting someone down excites her. This girl’s family, but she can be terrifying when she is pissed.

“I’ll make sure they know. I’m probably going to pay more visits to this chapter or send one of the guys. They need to clean up their shit, and since my kid got taken, they’ve now invited me into it,” I tell her as I finally put Sophia down. I walk to the doorway to try and keep her out of view from Smoke. She has done enough today; she shouldn’t have to deal with more bullshit. I pull her in for a hug, and she gives me the memory card from her body cam.

“I’ll smash it when we are done,” I promise as I put it in the inner pocket of my cut.

“Thank you,” she says, smiling up at me. “Tell Aunt Jaz to call me later so I can talk to her and Sophia, please.”

“Love you, kid. Knowing her, she’ll call you the second they both get settled in the room.” I smile and back away, straightening my face before I’m back in view of Smoke. This is why I told him to stay back. He can learn what’s going on with everyone else. After I help Sophia on the bike and get on myself, I ride right past Smoke. I’m not giving him a signal. I think this club needs to work on having common fuckin’ sense, so I hope he can understand to follow me.

Thirty minutes later, we’re pulling back into the driveway of the clubhouse. Jaz is running to us the second I stop my bike and grabs Sophia off the back. Throwing off the helmet, she begins hugging and kissing the sides of her face. She fires off, speaking in rapid Spanish that I can’t keep up with. Her voice stays soft as she whispers in Sophia’s ear, hugging her and rubbing her back.She looks at me in question, asking me with her eyes if she is alright.

I just shrug my shoulders. Jaz will ask questions about it when they are alone. Sophia seems fine, and if she was injured, Will would’ve had her at a hospital before she even called Jaz. I’m hoping it means nothing too bad happened before Will got to her.

Smoke pulls up next to me and gets off his bike. I look over Jaz’s head and see Red standing there.Church, I mouth to him, and he nods. I don’t step on the chapter President’s toes when I show up. I’ll take control if a chapter is fuckin’ up, and I need to put them in their place, but besides that, I like to see how a chapter functions.

“Church! Fifteen minutes!” Red yells to everyone that came out when we rolled up. Everyone starts to head back inside.

I walk to Jaz, who’s still holding Sophia to her like she is afraid to let go. I hate seeing her like this. That the world that I dragged her into has put her and our child in danger again. She is a good and strong woman, but I will always carry the guilt for bringing her into my life.

I’ll never send her away, though. I’m a selfish bastard, and I refuse to have a day without her with me. I kiss her on the top of her head. “This is going to be a bit, but I’ll come in and get you when we’re done. Why don’t you girls go hang out in the room until I’m done?” I tell her and give Sophia one more kiss on her head. Jaz was going to go back to the room anyway; she doesn’t like hanging around other clubhouses.

She smiles at me, holding her hug with Sophia, and stands to her full height, with Sophia wrapping her legs around her mother. Not ready to let go of her, either, she starts walking with Sophia in her arms like she did when she was a little girl, not the eleven-year-old that she is today.

Walking into Church, I find everyone’s eyes fixed on me, especially Smoke’s. I sit down in the same spot that I had earlier, and everyone follows suit and waits quietly. “I know you have questions, so I’m going to start at the beginning. Everything said here is to stay in this room. I’m going to repeat that anyone that betrays this information will be dealt with, no questions asked, no chance to explain. I know the Fox personally—my entire chapter does. They’ve been a friend to the club since they rescued my ‘Ol Lady. Jaz was eight months pregnant when the Silver Saints took her.”

“That was around when they fell off the map, right?” Flame asks, interrupting me.

“Yes,” I say, giving him a look that dared him to do it again.

“Before they were a known contract killer, the Fox was taken the same day as Jaz. They were both held hostage, and that’s when the Fox took out the entire club to get them out. We were still at the clubhouse, trying to get a plan together that would make sure Jaz lived. When we were about to roll out, a van pulled up to the gate. The prospect let them in, and when the van stopped in front of a bunch of bikers, ready to go, the door opened, and a small twelve-year-old girl hopped out of the driver’s seat. She was covered in blood as she flung open the back door of the van, and we saw Jaz laying down in the back,” I say into the quiet room.

No one asks any questions. Good. “After we got the story from her and Jaz, we called her parents. We found out that she was taken the same day from the mall while shopping with her mom. They were trying to blackmail her dad to work for them. Her name is Willow Russo.” I finish my story and wait for the reaction that I know is coming, once Smoke finally pieces it together.

“What the fuck?!” Smoke shouts in shock. I was okay with being interrupted this time, because he was going to have toknow the truth. Everyone turned to Smoke in question, probably waiting for me to rip him a new one for speaking out of turn. I just make eye contact with Smoke and raise a brow.

“My sister’s the Fox?” he asks slowly. He isn’t stupid, from what I’ve heard, so I’m hoping he is just in shock and can understand what I’m saying.

“What?” comes from Buck, trying to figure out what is going on. The club officers seem a little slow on the uptake.

“Not Maggie. My actual sister that my mom had after Dad kicked her out because he knocked up Andrea. I’ve met her, and there is no fuckin’ way that little thing’s the Fox.” You could hear the shock turn into anger as Smoke replies to Buck. I remind myself that this is Lilly’s son, so I hold myself back from beating the shit out of him for questioning me in front of my club as a one-time courtesy and move on.

“Willow gave me the video from her rescue of Sophia. She usually doesn’t share it because the biggest part of her business is that no one knows what she looks like. But she said she picked up some conversations that I needed to hear about my club. She let me know that I can share who she is if I could trust that anyone watching this will keep the information to themselves. I gave my word. Anyone who breaks it will now be going against the club,” I say as I take the memory card out of the pocket of my cut.

Everyone just stares at me in silence, which I prefer over them interrupting me. I hand the card over to Axel, the club IT guy. He grabs it and hurries over to the computer at the other end of the room, which has a projector hooked up to it. He does his tech shit, and it starts playing.

It starts with Will getting off her Ducati. I always give her shit about not going American made, but even I have to admit that it is the perfect bike for her work. She has the audio set up on it, too, so you can hear her talking to her brothers as they giveher the facts about the building and the best entry points, listing them off for her to choose. They let her know that there’s a patrol walking the perimeter of the building every fifteen minutes.

I’ve never watched her work before, always just getting her summarized version. She decided on climbing the fire escape on the side of the building and going in from the top. It looks like the ladder’s busted in a few places, and she thinks that they wouldn’t come around to check it as much if they think that no one could use it.

The ladder’s completely ripped off until about eight feet from the ground. Will just stands and looks at it for a moment. “I fucking love old brick buildings. Looks like I’m going barefoot,” she says to her brothers. She bends down and starts to unlace her boots, taking them off and throwing them in a bush that’s close to the building. She then fits her fingers into the worn-out spaces between the old bricks, doing the same with her small toes, and starts scaling the fuckin’ building in the middle of the day where anyone could see her, like a damn spider monkey.

She finally gets to the fire escape ladder and starts to climb that. We all watch slack-jawed as she gets to the roof of the old building within twenty minutes.