Wirth (Dirty Aces MC Book 5) by Lane Hart (carter reed TXT) 📕

Malcolm slams down his gavel so loudly on the wooden table that I feel it echo in my skull. “Shut your fucking mouth now or take off those cuts,” he tells the new guys. “We’re trying to help. One of your men was shot, yeah, but two of us were fucking hit.”

“So, you’re saying we have a rat because we had less injured?” Titus grunts. “Maybe our men are just faster at ducking.”

“Watch it!” Malcolm warns him, narrowing his eyes and pointing the gavel in his direction like he’s considering slamming it against his big head. “I got winged when I was protecting my woman. Fiasco was outside in the open, unprotected. He couldn’t have just ducked to avoid getting shot twice!”

“Sorry,” Titus mutters, his enormous shoulders slumping inward after being chastised.

“Tell us more about these Irish fuckers that you failed to mention before patching over. Preston said you’ve heard rumors the Irish weren’t happy with you taking up residence in Wilmington,” Malcolm explains.

“You know how people talk shit,” Troy says. “That’s all we thought it was – talk. If we had any idea they would come at us like that, we would’ve told you.”

“Even if it is the Irish, how would they have known that we were there too? Doesn’t seem like the attack was a coincidence, does it?” Silas asks.

“You think someone tipped them off,” I say in understanding.

“It wasn’t our guys!” Preston exclaims.

“Yeah, we would know if we had a traitor,” Titus adds. “What about him?” He points his sausage finger in my direction so suddenly that I feel like I’ve got whiplash.

“What about me, motherfucker?” I hit back.

“You weren’t there when the shooting started,” Titus explains. “That doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”

“I will ram this gavel up your ass if you ever insinuate that it was one of my men again,” Malcolm warns him, but I can take up for myself.

“You and Hunt know goddamn well where I was,” I tell Titus. “You’re just pissed because Maeve left with me and didn’t go upstairs with you. Get the hell over it. Just because I was getting fucked and you weren’t doesn’t make me a traitor.”

“Why didn’t she take you upstairs like usual? Picked the perfect time to vanish. Did you ask her to leave?” he remarks.

“No. Maeve wanted to go back to her place. It was right down the street. Not my fault if she’s never invited you to her bed. Then again, I wasn’t the one trying to drag her upstairs regardless of what she wanted.”

Titus growls but doesn’t get to say whatever he wanted to say when Nash holds up his hand and then chimes in.

“Hold on. Start from the beginning.” Then to me he says, “You left the bar with one of their girls?”

“Yes. Maeve. I actually gave her a ride to the bar after finding her trying to change her tire on the exit ramp.”

Shit, that reminds me that I need to get a tow truck out to get her car before the Highway Patrol moves it. With everything going on, I had forgotten all about that.

“Is she trustworthy?” Nash asks. It’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to pound in his pretty face.

“She’s fucked all of them, so they know her better than I do,” I grit out.

“Maeve’s a sweetheart,” Preston says, speaking of her fondly. “She’s loyal to the core.”

I can feel Malcolm, Nash, Silas, and Devlin watching me, waiting for my take. They’re all thinking the same thing, can we really trust the woman just because she’s a club slut?

“She showed me a hell of a good time and didn’t seem the least bit nervous or on edge,” I assure them.

“Good. Then we’ll forget about her,” Malcolm says, which is a relief. “Who else is a club girl or hang around?” he asks the guys while in my gut, something unsettling is trying to twist up my insides.

Everything happened so fast last night, especially once we got back to Maeve’s place. But I can’t forget how adamant she was about leaving the bar – first to go to the store and then to take me to her place. Was she trying to leave because she knew shit was going to go down?

I don’t hear the rest of the guys talking during the meeting as I replay every second of the night from the very beginning.

What if there was more to Maeve seducing me, insisting we leave, than I want to believe?

It’s not like I’m going to voice that shit aloud to Malcolm and the others, because there’s no telling what they would do to try and make her talk.

No, I need to have proof first before I go and point a finger at anyone, especially a woman who could be completely innocent.

I’ll just have to keep an eye on Maeve myself, get closer to her, and see what happens while I work on her car as promised.

But if she is the one responsible for telling the Irish about the Dirty Aces partying with the Knights, then I’ll have no choice but to turn her over to the club.

Fuck, I hope I’m right about her.

“Now,” Malcolm says with a slap of his palm on the table, bringing my attention back to the meeting. “Let’s talk about how the fuck we’re going to retaliate.”

The men at the table cheer while all I can think about is Maeve.

Chapter Nine

Maeve

Being alone in my apartment, isolated from the rest of the MC as the sun sets on one of the shittiest days ever really sucks. The bar is closed until further notice, and the men are all MIA. All I got was a short text from one of the other club girls telling me to avoid the bar until I’m specifically told otherwise, in case it gets hit again while the men are out of town.

When I asked about how everyone is doing, she said she didn’t know. No one knows. The Knights have