Page 12 of Devil's Queen
“He was?” His eyes widen as he asks.
“He was,” she admits. “He loved your mom, though. She was his pride and joy just as you would be. You have his eyes, you know.”
“I do?”
“You do, just like your mama has them. Brown like melted milk chocolate.”
Beaux peers over at me, studying my face like he had been studying his math homework earlier.
“We may not have lived an easy life with him, Beaux, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t love him all the same.”
“We miss him, don’t we?”
I feel my throat tighten as I hear his words. Mama and I exchange a quick glance before I lean over to hug him tightly.
“Yes, we do, Beaux. We miss him very much.”
REX
The meeting room is tense.At the end of the table, a couple of the old-timers bicker with Coffey and Tex over the purchase of the club’s new garage and the financial toll it took on our bank account.
“We don’t need no fucking garage,” Curly argues aloud. His eyes stare a cold, hard line toward me.
I shift uncomfortably in my chair, feeling the weight of Curly’s stare bore into me. The tension in the room is palpable, like a thick fog that refuses to dissipate. The arguments echo off the walls, creating an atmosphere that suffocates any semblance of peace.
Coffey leans forward, his hands planted firmly on the table. “Curly, we’ve been through this a dozen times,” he says, his voice laced with frustration. “The garage will bring us more revenue in the long run. We need a steady stream of cash coming in.”
“We’d have that if our president would grow a pair of balls and finish what Wolff started,” Monte mutters aloud.
“The fuck did you just say?” I roar, his words hitting his intended mark.
Monte’s eyes widen at my outburst, and for a moment, the room falls into an eerie silence. The tension that had been building suddenly snaps, crackling in the air like electricity. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears as I stare down Monte, daring him to repeat his words.
But instead of backing down, Monte rises from his chair with a smirk. “Oh, you heard me right,” he says, his voice dripping with venom. “Rene’s business should be ours.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and pointer finger. We’ve rehashed this argument for the last several years. We didn’t have a claim to it, and rightly so. Rene’s will was ironclad. Papa Midnight Customs belongs to Remy, not the Zulu Kings MC. Yet, here we are again, arguing in circles about it because Monte has an axe to grind that he lost his chance at the gavel.
“We’re not going down that road again,” I declare. “We need to put it to rest and move on.”
“Why should we?” he doubles down. “It’s ours by right.”
“Rene put it into his kid’s name, Monte. There isn’t a lot we can do about that,” Tex fires back. “Ronnie’s Garage is our future.”
“Fuck that piece of shit garage. We won’t see a return on it for years, but we would with Papa Midnights. It’s ripe for the picking.”
“It’s not ours,” I grind out through gritted teeth. “It belongs to his daughter.”
“Fuck her too.”
I feel a fire ignite within me, fueled by rage and betrayal. Every muscle in my body tightens as I rise from my chair, my voice trembling with suppressed fury.
“You dare disrespect Rene’s memory like that?” I hiss, my words cutting through the air like a blade. “He built this club from nothing, and you have the audacity to question his decisions? Wolff couldn’t let it go either and look where it got him. You’d be wise to remember that, Monte.”
“So should you,” he retorts. “We got rid of Wolff. We could just as easily do the same to you.” The threat in his voice comes through loud and clear. He’s gunning for me and the gavel. I’d hoped he would fade into the background, but with Wolff’s heavy influence, I know he won’t.
Monte rolls his eyes. “It’s not just me who feels that way either. The Zulu Kings used to own this fucking town. When we rolled up, the streets cleared. Look at where we are now.”
“That’s on Wolff,” Coffey interjects. “He fucked us over. Rex and the rest of us are trying to pick up the pieces and keep us afloat for the next generation.”