Storm by Aria Ray
Chapter Three
Storm
Where have I seen this chick before?
“What has this got to do with your kid?” I asked Breaker.
“She covered a story about people who’ve gone missing locally. A few months ago. I was thinking of finding her and talking to her. It’s possible that she may have leads I don’t know about. This girl seems to know what she’s doing.”
It sounded ridiculous. How could this chick, hiding behind the safety of a camera, have more resources and information than we did? I was just about to pose this question to Breaker when he clicked on one of the videos.
The girl’s face went full screen.
“Hi everyone, thanks for joining me on today’s segment which happens to be an important one. I’m Zoe Leigh and I’m here to give you the scoop.”
“Hold up,” I groaned, grabbing the phone out of Breaker’s hand. That was all I needed to see. “The chick you’re talking about is Zoe Leigh?”
Breaker sighed, clenching his jaws together.
“Yeah, I know this isn’t exactly what you want to hear, but she might be the only one who can help me at this point.”
“Why the fuck would she want to help you? She wrote about us. Bad things. She thinks we’re scum. Lower than scum. She’s the one who’s been driving Grit crazy for an interview. An interview! Like we got time for that shit.” Breaker’s mind really must be fucked up if he was suggesting that she could offer them anything more than a shit-ton of trouble. “She doesn’t have any intention of helping a member of any MC. In case you didn’t hear me the first time, this chick thinks we are scum.”
“She is a journalist and claims to be neutral. It shouldn’t matter who I am. She should want to help find my boy,” Breaker snapped.
“You don’t have to convince me. I’m just telling you like it is. This chick doesn’t want to be on our side.” I shrugged, hoping he would drop the suggestion. “She claims we’re too busy partying, fucking women, and making trouble for the police to have jobs or be productive.”
Breaker weaved a hand through his hair, sighing like the life force was exiting his body. A nerve twitched behind my eye as I tried to put myself in his shoes. What if I lost a son and couldn’t find him?
I couldn’t put myself in his shoes. I couldn’t picture myself being responsible for a kid.
“I want to try and talk to her, that’s all.”
I shrugged. “Get her number from Grit and go talk to her then.”
“You could come with me.”
“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” I had told her to back off after she spewed all that garbage about us.
Now, he wants me to invite her for tea? Fuck that!
“No. The more people with me, the more inclined she’d be to talk to us and tell us what she knows.”
“You think my presence there would intimidate her?” That thought made me reconsider.
Breaker shrugged.
There wasn’t much I knew about this chick, but the one thing I’d estimated about her—from the way she’d written that bullshit about the local MCs—was that she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. The fact that she was harassing us for an interview showed me that she didn’t scare easily.
I almost grinned. Almost. Let’s see how tough she is when I show up.
“So, are you going to do it? Are you coming with me to talk to her?”
“Maybe,” I replied.
Breaker breathed a sigh of relief and visibly relaxed. Now I needed to stop thinking about Zoe Leigh.
She wanted an interview. So be it.
∞∞∞
Amber was dancing on the pole again, and I watched her for a while out of boredom. I wasn’t thinking about her, though. The only face running through my mind was of that journalist chick, Zoe.
I hadn’t met her in person. In fact, nobody in our community had met her, even though she had written extensively about us. When I read her articles, I could hear the bitterness dripping from her every word. She seemed to hate us, before she’d even met us. And Breaker said her claim was to be neutral?
That’s a load of bullshit.
I had seen her face printed on those magazine pages and on Breaker’s screen tonight. She was sexy, but she didn’t scream it. In fact, it looked like she tried to hide it.
She had pale skin, long auburn hair, and blue eyes. Or were they grey? She had a heart-shaped face and bee-stung lips.
Even without meeting her, I imagined that she would have looked pretty hot on that pole in place of Amber. Much classier, too.
I pictured her on the stage, thrusting her hips and touching herself while she rolled to the music. The idea of her stripping on my stage brought her down a few notches. She wouldn’t be so high and mighty, then.
Breaker was watching Amber, too.
“If Zoe Leigh knows something about the disappearances, it could give me a lead. Apparently, she’s been following these cases for a few months.”
I didn’t have as much faith in this chick as he did. She was a pretty face and had a loud mouth. Big fucking deal. I knew a lot of those types of women. None of them were ever any good to me. But Breaker needed hope.
Teeny appeared in my line of vision, almost on purpose like he wanted to cut off my view of Amber.
He stood in front of me, pushing his hands into the pockets of his pants. I was confused at first. He was a prospect. I was the president. What was he trying to do? Get his ass kicked into next year?
Then I realized what the fuck was going on. Amber’s kiss had given him courage and some ideas. For some reason, he decided she was his now, and he didn’t want me looking at her. I could have her any time or anywhere I wanted her. Apparently, that bugged the hell out of him.
He didn’t have the balls to actually say something to me. Did the idiot not realize that his actions gave me a first-row seat to his thoughts?
“Get out of my sight before I make you regret you were ever born,” I said, the warning rumbling out of me as I shifted all my attention onto him. Teeny’s face fell. He couldn’t think of a response fast enough but stood there trying to come up with one. If he was smart, he would be putting space between us. Lots of it.
I leaned forward, my fingers itching to grab him and introduce his face to the table beside me. He took a step backwards as understanding slammed into his eyes. Now, he was all for self-preservation, but I needed to be clear. Lucky for him, the need to keep everyone calm protected his ugly face.
“And don’t ever assume I’m going to fight someone over a woman, even if it’s Amber Harper.” He opened his mouth to say something, and I glared a warning at him. This one had balls bigger than his brain. He turned and scrambled away from my table.
“Who the hell sponsored him?” I asked Breaker.
He shrugged. I took a deep breath. I couldn’t come down too hard on him if I wanted Amber to leave me the hell alone. At least he kept her tongue busy.