“I guess word got out about what Jon could do. Soon clubs and gangs were coming to him from the outside, asking him to hurt people who’d hurt them while they were under his watch. He knew…everyone,” she breathed quietly. “That meant he knew everyone’s secrets, too. People will pay good money for those. It was a win-win situation for him.”
Sutton’s breath caught in his throat as he watched her and waited patiently.
“There isn’t much I know for sure,” Helen went on. “But what I do know is that The Mayor of Babylon shouldn’t be trusted. Jon spoke about him the most when he was loose-lipped and drunk.”
“What did he say?”
Helen looked up at me then—her final words ready to strike. “That he wanted to eradicate the MCs in and surrounding Babylon, and he’d do absolutely anything to make sure it happened while he was around, even if that meant working with one of them until he could figure out a way to destroy them all.”
Eric cleared his throat behind me, and I spun around to look at him. His head was bowed, his hands behind his back as he stared down at his parted feet and rocked back and forth.
“What?” I asked him roughly.
Glancing up through the thickness of his brows, Eric held my gaze. “Time to let her go,” he said quietly.
I knew he was right.
Turning back, I focused on Sutton who was now rubbing Helen’s back with his free hand.
“Chief?”
He looked up at me and said nothing.
“You care about her?” I asked, not caring how awkward that made anyone.
With a small nod of his head, he gave me his answer.
“Then her safety is on you. Put her somewhere where we can’t find her. Make her disappear. Get her the hell out of here,” I ordered calmly.
I turned my attention to Helen, making sure she saw just how fucking angry I was in the hostile glare I gave her.
“And I don’t care who you were trying to protect along the way, but it ends here. Today. You ever even breathe my club’s name again in your life, and I’ll feel the wind of it, and when I do, I will hunt you down, and I will do what I should have done the first time.”
She blinked at me, her tears finally falling free.
“I’ll kill you, Helen. I’ll fucking kill everyone who gets in my way from now on if that’s what I have to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
AYDA
The sun was high in the sky, and the leaves were finally starting to fill out on the big tree, the breeze rattling them as it rolled over the open space. It had been twenty-four hours since we’d had Sutton get Helen the hell out of Babylon, and not one of us who knew about Owen had been able to relax. Just knowing the rat bastard was lurking around corners, looking for something to feed right back to the people who hated Drew and the club the most… it made me feel violent. Trying to keep ourselves acting like we didn’t know was proving to be harder than I’d ever imagined. Understanding that I needed a break, Drew had suggested the one place in Babylon that Owen wouldn’t accidentally stumble upon.
Pete’s Tree.
Being out here in the open while Drew was lost in his memories made me feel like there were miles between us, and the shit that seemed to surround us constantly these days. I found it hard watching the other guys talking to Owen like there was nothing wrong. To just smile as they slapped the traitor on the back and laughed and joked with him. It was even harder to watch Tate and Rubin throwing questions about the inner workings of a V-twin engine at him.
Picking at the long grass, I threw a couple of strands at Drew who had his back against the bark of the tree, his eyes distant. When those blue-green eyes fell on me, I smiled and pulled my legs closer to my chest so I could rest my chin on my knees.
“Please tell me this is hard for you as it is for me. That you want to wring his weasel neck every time he pops up around a corner looking like he’s supposed to be there.”
Drew had one knee raised, his arm hanging limply over it while his other hand rested in between his legs. For a moment, he just stared at me. “What do you think, Ayda?”
“I think that was a stupid question on my part,” I huffed out, my eyes rising to the canopy above us. “I think that if you didn't have a plan, he’d be dead already. He just makes my skin crawl.”
“If you knew the things I was thinking, the way I was imagining killing him, you’d never look at me the same way again. Fuck, I want to make him bleed so badly. And he will.”
I rolled to my knees, shuffling close enough that I was between his legs, my hands resting on his knee and thigh. “I was lying in bed this morning, and… well, I was thinking the same thing. If you could see inside my mind…” I shook my head again. “What does it say about me that I want to see him bleed, too?”