Free Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set by Sienna Valentine

since the quiet din of
LeBeau had been shattered by anything more than a drunken fist-fight; Henry
worked hard, and sometimes with the police, to keep it that way. It was as much
self-preservation as it was philanthropy. Large-scale violence, no matter the
real cause, always blew back on the MC. 
     
    Maggie felt emotionally — and
a bit literally — hung over from the
night before, and did her best to sink into the crowd unnoticed. Between the
painful pulses of the headache brewing at the back of her neck, she could
occasionally hear Jase ’ s
voice, clear as a bell. I don’t care about you anymore. When it would echo
through her head, she would rub her face and eyes like she could wipe the
thought out of existence if she found the right spot. Henry ’ s
arrival acted as a welcome distraction from the broken record of heartbreak in
her mind.
     
    Leader that he was, Henry came right into
the den with Beck and Jase at his back. Henry launched immediately into it.
     
    “We’ve got six wounded locals
from the shooting at the roadhouse last night. Witnesses said they were masked,
three or four of them, and that they came in after midnight. Plenty of armed
folks were there, but no one was ready for it. Tamales never got hit this bad,
even in the old days. ” Henry
cleared his throat before he continued. ” No
one is totally sure what they were after, but they definitely ran around like
they were looking for something, and they didn’t take a single bill from the
registers. Witnesses say they were targeting bikers wearing cuts. And we have
some suspicion that this is related to my daughter. ”
     
    Every pair of eyes in the room turned to
look at her, this newly arrived stranger hunkered over her cup of coffee at the
bar, looking a hot mess that hadn’t seen a mirror or a hairbrush that morning.
She felt her exhausted heart skip a beat.
     
    “ Related to Maggie? Why? ” asked Tommy from the crowd.
     
    “ That ’ s
a good question, Tommy, ” said
Henry as he took a few steps towards her. “ You
tell us, Maggie. Why does someone want you dead bad enough to open fire on a
packed roadhouse? ”
     
    Everyone was staring at her. She was
grateful she had kept her sunglasses on; at least they couldn’t see the fear in
her eyes. “ I told you why, Henry. ”
     
    “ You want me to believe a
couple of street-rat opiate pushers had the time or money or fucks to give to
follow you over three-hundred miles to your hometown, just because you wouldn’t
play ball with them? I might have believed that story yesterday, young lady,
but today there are folks in the hospital right now who tell me you ’ re
holding back. ”
     
    The room fell quiet and still as the
grave. Like any good predator, Henry had layers to his anger, and the one he
was revealing now came straight from the core. He was many men in this
instance. He was a citizen distraught by violence. He was a soldier upset at a
tactical error. He was a general on display for the morale of his troops. And
he was a father, disappointed in his offspring, yet driven to defend her
regardless.
     
    Maggie took a deep breath and turned on
the barstool to face him. She recognized what he was doing.  She knew she had
to be honest with him now or lose his respect forever, even if that meant
having this conversation in front of Jase and the entire MC. Henry had always
reacted to her rebellion by forcing her to prove herself in the most vulnerable
of ways. Throwing her into the fire now, at this moment, didn’t faze her; it
just felt like old times.
     
    At the rear of the room, Jase couldn’t see
the quick glances of him she stole from behind her sunglasses. Like everyone
else, he made no attempts to hide his own staring.
     
    She found a spot on the floor to stare at
as the spoke. “ When I ran from here, I
ran because I felt like I didn’t belong, ” she
said. “ So
when I got to Eagleton, I tried to do what you had told me I should do my whole
life. See if maybe I