Page 86 of Kings Have No Mercy

“What?! What is it, Cash? What the fuck do you want?”

“You’ve made a mistake.”

“I’ve got no clue what the fuck you’re talking about,” I say, dropping my legs from the desk and sitting up. “You need to have your head in the game. Tonight’s the night we get our revenge on the Hellrazors and finally sabotage their drug supply, effectively hurting their profits and the club. We’ve put everything in place and got all the details planned out. Why are you in my fucking face and not making final arrangements with the rest of the guys?”

“I told you,” he says, his skin flushing from frustration. “Because you’ve made a mistake.”

I heave a deep breath and almost roll my eyes. “I already said fucking spit it out. Are you gonna keep playing games, or are you gonna tell me what the fuck your problem is?”

He pulls up the chair opposite the desk and drops into it. He’s got the purple book in his hands and he pushes it toward me.

“Have you actually read this?” he asks.

“I read enough.”

“Enough isn’t enough. You didn’t look into what she was saying about it, did you?”

“It’s not my job to look into liars and their stories. All I give a fuck about is that they’re lying. Sydney was lying. What’s not clicking for you, Cash?”

“Her father,” he says. “Her father—did you know he was Jacob Singer? As in Pop?ThePop from the Hellrazors?”

A couple seconds pass between the two of us where we sit on opposite sides of the desk and stare at each other. Cash expectantly. Me trying to fend off the surprise at his news.

“Pop,” I repeat slowly, finally swallowing my pride, searching for familiarity in the name. “Jacob Singer. You mean their old prez? The one from way back when? From when we were kids?”

“The one and only.”

I don’t know how I didn’t draw the connection sooner. Sydney Singer and Jacob Singer seem like it’d be obvious dots to connect, but I had never heard of Jacob having a daughter. Let alone aBlackadopted one…

Jacob “Pop” Singer had been a former president of the Hellrazors way back when I was still a kid. He was from the old school crop of guys that came up even a few years before Tom’s run. At that time, all the presidents in the area got along fine enough.

That didn’t change ’til the day Mom was murdered. ’Til she was killed in cold blood.

Relations between the local MCs have never been the same.

“Pop was murdered,” Cash says. “The men who did it are still at large.”

“That doesn’t explain why Sydney thought it was a good idea to infiltrate our club and betray our trust. She was convinced we had something to do with it.”

“I repeat… you made a mistake. Sydney thought what she did for a reason. Take a look at this.” Cash withdraws a rolled-up copy of the Boulder town newspaper from his back pocket and slides it across the table the way he did the little purple book.

I hold him hostage with a hard glare before patronizing him and picking up the newspaper.

There’s nothing that can change my mind. It’s made up about Sydney and how she’s betrayed the club. Over the forty-eight hours since she’s left, I’ve battled with doubt that tried to convince me I made the wrong decision. I shouldn’t have kicked her out.

Squashing these second guesses has taken work, but I’ve done it.

More or less.

At this point, there’s nothing that can be said to change my mind. What I did was necessary regardless of how I feel about her, or how it’d be easier if things could be different.

I unfurl the newspaper anyway, flitting my eyes over the small text. Cash has circled the article he wants me to read:

Beloved Member of Local Church Community Murdered in Cold Blood

On Sunday night, well-known pillar of the community Jacob Singer was slain when three mysterious masked men broke into his home and shot him dead. The fatal attacked occurred around four in the morning as Singer reportedly slept in his bed. Local police reveal that no belongings were stolen from the home.

Next-door neighbor Colleen Appleby claims she overheard the intruders crossing through her vegetable garden. “I was up walking off my arthritis flare-up when I heard ‘em,” Ms. Appleby states. “There was three. One was huge with ginger hair. He was the one I heard clomping around. I peeked out my curtain and saw ‘em headed toward Jake’s. That’s when I knew I had to call the cops.”