Perceive by K E Osborn

 

 

AXEL

 

Kenzi pauses at the bottom of the stairs.

Just a few steps behind her, I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, but I’m promptly cut off by a chorus of, “Good morning” coming from my kitchen.

“Fucking hell,” I mutter, rolling my eyes as I reach the bottom step and press my hand to Kenzi’s back. “You guys do have your own places where you can cook, you know.”

“You have better coffee,” Lily responds with a shrug, placing her mug into my coffee machine.

“And better food,” Luca mumbles around a mouthful. “Everly’s cheer team is training for nationals, so all we have is vegetables.”

“Vegetables are good for you,” Lily argues in a sing-song voice.

But Luca simply shoves another spoon into what I finally decipher is a bowl full of scrambled eggs and bacon pieces. “I am a growing boy, I need my sustenance.”

Kenzi curls her body into mine, her arms circling my waist.

Lily’s face softens instantly, her shoulders slumping and a gentle smile forming as she leans her shoulder into Kace. “You two…” she comments with a soft sigh. “It’s nice to see this.” She glances up at Kace with a wide grin, maybe expecting him to say something, to add something, but he just nods once, while continuing to frown at Luca, who’s still shoveling food into his mouth like it’s his last meal.

“We’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes,” Kace finally announces as an explanation as to why Luca isn’t stopping to breathe. “And I need to brief everyone about the plan of attack before Brandon shows up to said meeting.”

“I’ll grab a protein shake, and we can head out,” I agree, reluctantly pulling away from Kenzi and making a beeline for the refrigerator.

“Eli and Tanner are gonna run Kenzi back down to Richmond,” Kace continues, watching Kenzi out of the corner of his eye. She sits a little taller, her head falling to the side. “They will make sure you know what the plan is, fill you in on what we need.”

I dump a load of protein powder into my shaker before pausing, his words taking those extra few seconds to sink through my skin. “Hell no, man,” I snap, shaking my head. I know what Kace wants to do, and I’m not fucking happy about it. “You’re gonna use her to fucking get Brandon to confess? No. Fucking. Way.”

Kace meets my electrified gaze head-on.

It doesn’t faze him, doesn’t cause him to stumble.

The asshole is stronger than that, nothing throws him off, nothing gets under his skin. Nothing but the woman he loves.

Oh, how I know that fucking feeling.

“It’s the only way,” Kace challenges, his voice sharp like the edge of a blade. One you definitely don’t want to fuck with. “We need him to throw himself under the bus, and the only way he’s gonna do that is if it’s to Kenzi.”

“How do you know that?” I snap back, my fingers curling into a fist.

“Because he fucking did it before,” Kace responds, rolling his eyes. “He thinks Kenzi is weak. He thinks she’s stupid.”

He didn’t have to say it, but I can hear the words he’s holding back.

Because she’s a woman.

Brandon is an egotistical, misogynistic fucking bastard. When it comes to females, he believes they’re the inferior gender—even after being proven wrong, time after fucking time. If he’s going to give his own ass away to anyone, it’s going to be to someone who he feels is lesser, who he feels the need to gloat to about his accomplishments.

I hate that Kace is right on this.

I hate it with everything in my being.

My gaze drifts to Kenzi sitting beside Luca on the other side of the kitchen counter. Her head bobs gently up and down, her body leaning in like she’s eager to get involved. A gentle growl in the bottom of my throat draws her attention, though the second her eyes meet mine, she lets out a soft laugh. “I’ll be fine,” she assures, trying to ease my concerns, but I find my eyes narrowing further, and the tension in my shoulders twitch and tighten. “Axel.”

“Mackenzi.”

“Uh-oh,” Luca mumbles around the last mouthful of his breakfast. “He used your full name. Abort mission. Abort mission.”

“When he picks her up later, we will be right behind her. Brandon confesses to anything that indicates treason, and we shut that shit down in seconds,” Kace tries to reason again, quickly pressing a light kiss to Lily’s head before making his way toward the door. “Now grab your shit, and let’s go scare the fuck out of this bastard. Make him really squirm before we lock his ass up.”

“Have a nice day!” Lily calls with a giant smile and a wave, like her future husband is just walking out to some normal day job. Not about to go and eliminate a threat to national security.

Luca pushes his empty bowl across the counter before gathering his crutches and following our almighty leader out the door. “Eli and Tanner are just next door, they’ll be here in a few minutes!” he announces over his shoulder on the way out.

Gritting my teeth, I grab my protein shake, gripping it so tightly I swear I hear the hard plastic crack. I’m not happy about this, far from fucking happy about it, actually, but when push comes to shove, Kace is fucking right.

Like goddamn always.

Which is probably why he’s in charge.

And a hothead like me isn’t.

“Come here,” I rasp, noticing how instantly Lily makes herself scarce. Kenzi’s whole body lifts as she sucks in a deep breath and lets out a long, heavy sigh. “Kenzi.”

“I have to do this.”

“You don’t have to do shit,” I argue, slamming my drink down on the counter. She leaps down off the stool and presses her shoulders back, narrowing her eyes at me defiantly. It’s sexy. So fucking sexy to see that light, that fire in her. “Kace knows there are other options. This is our fucking job. We have more than one irrational plan. And I guarantee there are at least ten others that don’t include putting you in a car with a crazy bastard who is itching to silence you.”

“You heard Kace. You guys will be right behind me, right there for when shit goes south,” she tries to reassure me.

“Fuck Kace,” I hiss, stepping closer, my hand curling around the side of her face. “Kace didn’t fucking lose you six years ago. Kace didn’t give up everything to finally get to this moment. To finally have you back. You think I want to risk losing you all over again?” My body is burning, this itch under my skin screaming at me to just pick Kenzi up, throw her on the back of my bike and ride off. To leave. To get the fuck out of here.

I desperately want to scratch that fucking itch.

“You aren’t like that, though,” she whispers as though she’s heard my secret plan. Stepping in closer, she grabs my shirt and twists it in her hands while pressing her body against mine. “You don’t turn your back on the people you care about. You don’t leave them out there to dry. I know, because if you were that person, you wouldn’t have given up everything to keep searching for me. I’d still be with Hendrix, hating him, hating myself, hating everything about that hell.”

She’s right.

Annoyingly fucking so.

If there’s anything I would want the world to know about me, it would always be my loyalty. That is the piece of me that will never break or be taken away. Growing up in the club, that was always the part you were taught to hold closest.

The club is nothing without the brothers.

The brothers are nothing without their loyalty to each other.

It’s something that burns so fucking fiercely in my soul, I know I’ll never turn my back on the people I love. And for me, my team has become a part of that too. As much as I want to just pack my shit and run, I’d never leave my team out to dry.

“Fucking Kace and his goddamn plans,” I curse, leaning forward and pressing my lips to Kenzi’s forehead, eliciting soft laughter from her.

“Go, have your meeting, taunt Brandon a little for me,” Kenzi urges, her hands moving to my chest and giving me a gentle push, forcing me to step back. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

I snatch my protein shake off the counter, continuing to step backward, holding her in my sight for those extra few seconds. Something I’d always wished I’d done before she disappeared last time. Even with that foresight, though, my gut is screaming, twisting, and churning. I learned a long time ago to trust that feeling inside.

Telling me to be wary.

To be cautious.

Something isn’t right.

Things aren’t as straightforward as they should be.

I climb in the back of Kace’s SUV, slamming the door shut behind me, because apparently, I’m a fucking child.

“You done?” Kace challenges, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror, his eyebrows raised.

“I can’t fucking lose her again.” Just the words leaving my mouth feel like a black hole forming, a darkness sucking away all the light, ready to decimate everything in its path if this goes wrong. Losing her once almost destroyed me, I simply don’t know if I could survive again.

“She’s not going anywhere,” Kace answers, starting the engine and pulling out of the driveway.

My eyes catch movement behind us, and I look back over my shoulder to see another car pull out—Blair and Noah.

Sitting back, I shake my head. “It’s not that I don’t trust you guys,” I tell them truthfully. I know they’ll do everything they can to protect her, but I’m also not naïve enough to think that sometimes everything isn’t enough.

“It’s not about you trusting us,” Luca objects from the passenger seat. “Maybe you need to start trusting her. The girl is a fucking firecracker. She’s a fighter and is not going to let some little fuckhead like Brandon be her demise.”

I choke out a laugh.

It’s odd when you realize that sometimes, Luca isn’t just the class clown. The kid is smart, he knows what the hell he’s talking about, but more often than not, he relies on that instant defense mechanism.

Humor.

Bad humor.

That’s the place he feels the most comfortable.

It’s his default setting.

“We need to remind her not to go for the balls if she has to fight him, though,” Luca adds, like it’s a sudden afterthought.

“Because he doesn’t have any?” I question when he doesn’t explain further.

He eyes me over his shoulder with a frown. “No,” he snorts, shaking his head like I’m the fucking crazy one. “I just imagine Brandon is the submissive type. You know, the kind of guy who gets off by having a chick in leathers and heels stomp on them. Kenzi tries to hurt him like that, and he’s just gonna orgasm all over the damn place.”

“You’re fucked in the head,” I deadpan, my brows pulling together to mirror his deep frown. “You know that, right?”

“I like to examine all possibilities.”

I turn my attention to Kace, who has yet to comment or even make any kind of emotional response. “That’s your best friend.”

“I plead the fifth.”

 

 

It takes every ounce of strength—and Noah’s hand firmly on my shoulder—to keep my ass in my chair as Brandon walks into Jack’s office behind Reid. His eyes flicker around the room, moving quickly from one person to the next, trying to analyze just how this meeting is about to go. At this stage, he’s not aware of the fact that Kenzi has already tattled on him. He’s standing at the edge of a fucking plank, he just has no idea we’re standing right behind him, ready to shove him off.

Because that’s not what Jack wants.

He wants the asshole to jump.

Jack stands in front of his desk. Leaning back against it and tapping the wood with his fingers as he waits for Reid and Brandon to get settled. “All right, here’s the deal,” he starts with a rough growl. “Mackenzi is trying to negotiate a… deal of sorts.”

Pain radiates through my jaw because of how tightly it’s clenched. I can’t fuck this up, I need to keep my mouth shut. I need to let my team take control.

We want this to seem like a big deal, we want to make Brandon feel the pressure, to make him think that there’s a possibility he’s about to be found out, and all his little lies and secrets are about to come back to haunt him.

“What’s she got?” Noah questions, his hand squeezing my shoulder reassuringly.

A sharp, short laugh shoots from Jack’s mouth. “She said we have a mole.”

The sarcastic, disbelieving tone is almost realistic. At least, if I didn’t know he was lying through his damn teeth, I would have fallen hook, line, and sinker.

Just like I can see Brandon doing from across the room.

His brow is pinched, like everyone else’s, as if he’s confused or surprised by this information. But it’s the beads of sweat settling at the edge of his receding hairline that out him.

Sure, Brandon is an asshole.

He’s a fucking self-assured, head-up-his-ass, misogynistic bastard.

He has all the same skills we have, maybe not as refined, but still present. They have to be or he would have never been asked to work at The Agency. And unfortunately, it’s all those things that make him even more dangerous.

More deadly.

My stomach begins to twist again at the thought of Kenzi being stuck in a car with this fucker.

“A mole?” Reid questions with a raised eyebrow, tucking his arms across his chest. “And how the hell would a mole have gotten in here?”

“You think she’s full of shit?” Kace throws back, challenging the other team leader.

Reid shrugs. “It’s a little farfetched. The Agency is water-tight. We all know the crap we had to go through. Months and months of tests. Background checks. Random drop-ins. A security clearance that reams you out from the bottom up.”

I remember. We’d all gone through it—psych evals, accounting for every year of your life on this earth, lie detector tests where they made you admit to things you never wanted another person to know.

“What if she’s wrong?”

“What if she’s right?” I snap, edging forward in my seat.

Reid’s gaze quickly switches to meet mine. I know I’m meant to keep my mouth shut, I promised Kace that much, but I can see Brandon looking at me, watching me out of the corner of his eye. I know after the shitstorm I’d made about Kenzi, none of this was going to be believable if I didn’t stand up and argue for her. “What if she is right, and there is someone here looking to do fuck knows what? Or better yet, what if there is more than one someone?”

“Axel, that’s enough,” Jack scolds, his fingers gripping the edge of the desk beneath him. “You’re too close to this. To her.”

“Or maybe you’re too fucking blind to admit she’s been here for a couple of fucking weeks, and she’s already spotted holes in defenses you’ve been working on for years.”

“Enough!” Jack’s roar is powerful and silencing.

We all hold our breath as his sharp laser eyes scan the room.

“You’ve had your say, now it’s time to fucking listen.”

No one moves.

Lips zipped closed.

That’s why Jack is in charge.

He’s a take-no-shit kind of guy, and when he speaks, we shut the fuck up—not because he’s also scary as hell but because the man deserves the respect he demands. He’s earned that shit.

“We bring Mackenzi back in, we question her, and based on the information she gives, we then consider whether it constitutes dropping some of the charges she’s looking at facing.”

“And what if she’s right?” Luca enquires, his quiet laughter amplified in the tense and silent room. “We have a mole! I shotgun being the exterminator.”

“Like I said, we will consider the information she brings to the table,” Jack reiterates sternly, but diplomatically before turning his attention to Reid. “I need someone, not from Kace’s team, to head down and get her from the Malice MC in Richmond. This is too close to home for them.”

Kace snorts.

Loudly.

Dramatically.

Reid nods, but before he can agree, Brandon leaps to his feet. “I’ve got this one.” He speaks calmly, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary, but his body says something entirely different.

The sweat drenching his collar screaming, I’m guilty.

Jack pauses, eyeing him for a second as if considering the option. “I don—”

“Jack, really… I’ve got this,” Brandon urges, doubling down now but at the same time trying to curb his eagerness to take this job. “I don’t want to take Reid too far in case something happens with Zeb.” He slaps his team leader on the back, trying to act supportive, but it’s hard not to take his words as more of a threat than a kind gesture. If Jack says no, what the hell kind of lengths will Brandon go to in order to make sure Kenzi keeps her mouth shut.

Who and what is he willing to destroy?

“All right,” Jack settles finally, forcing Brandon to stand a little taller, his head bobbing up and down enthusiastically. “I’ve got a couple of drivers. They’ll take you down. Meet Kace’s team who is supervising her at the clubhouse. You bring her back. Safe. Intact. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Brandon assures Jack, snapping a weak salute. “Safe. Intact. Clear.”

“The rest of you out,” Jack orders, pointing at the door.

I climb off the sofa, following Noah, Luca, Blair, and Everly to the door while Kace and Reid stick around to go over the plan for retrieval.

“Axel.”

My hand grips the door frame so tightly, it feels like I could just rip it off the wall. I suck in a deep breath before looking over my shoulder. “Sir?”

“You and I…” Jack adds as he rounds his desk, “… we’re going to have a chat later.”

I’m not sure if it’s for Brandon’s benefit that Jack has decided to call me out, or whether I’ve actually overstepped the mark. I guess it doesn’t matter.

I catch the way Brandon’s snarky little mouth curls up into a smirk, his shoulders push back, and his chin high like he’s all fucking that, looking down at me like I’m the scum in here.

God, I can’t wait.

Yours is coming, asshole.

Yours is coming.