“For touching your bitch? After she all but gave me the green light?”

“We already know that’s not how it went down,” Rooster says.

Hustler shifts forward. “You still pulled a knife on a brother.”

“He was beating the shit out of me for no reason.”

“So, you didn’t try to choke the mother of my kid?” I ask, already tired of his bullshit.

He shrugs. “She likes it rough, so what?”

“It doesn’t really matter how she likes it or what she said to you,” Teller says from behind me. “Z made it clear she was his property—”

“She wasn’t wearing no patch.”

“A technicality, asshole,” Jigsaw grumbles. “Everyone knew it.”

“Everyone knew she was with our prez,” Suds says. “Don’t matter if she hiked up her dress and put a free sample sign over her cunt.” I glare at Suds and he holds his hands up. “Just trying to make a point.”

“Putting hands on her went way too far,” Smoke says. “Leave it at that.”

He’s probably trying to distance himself from Shadow at the last minute, but Smoke’s condemnation of Shadow’s actions—no matter how lukewarm it might be—finally shuts Shadow up.

“Take his cut.” I nod to Steer, who holds Shadow while Hustler and Jigsaw strip off Shadow’s cut. They hand it to me.

Slowly, I pull my knife out of the sheath resting against my thigh. It’s a different knife than I carry every day. This one’s for special occasions.

Shadow’s eyes widen as I use the heavy, curved blade to slice off his VP patch. Overkill, but it gets the job done.

“Burn it,” I order, handing it off to Rooster.

Now that his patch has been taken, Steer throws Shadow back in his seat.

I circle the room once, considering how this should go down.

“While we were at the table, some disturbing information was brought up.”

Shadow doesn’t seem to care. He sits back. “If you’re gonna kick me out, just do it.”

“You think we woulda brought you down here if you were only getting kicked out?” Steer rumbles.

The gravity of the situation seems to sink in for Shadow. He squirms in his chair.

“What’s wrong, Shadow?” I ask. “Were you thinking, even if you got kicked out of LOKI, you’d run to the Vipers and they’d patch-in your disloyal ass?”

He cocks his head and glares at me but doesn’t open his mouth.

“Or were you thinking you’d help the Vipers infiltrate our club and you’d patch them over to us?”

His mouth twitches. Jesus Christ, was that really what he wanted to do?

Steer must have the same reaction. “How many of us were you planning to kill to make that happen?” he rasps out.

“I didn’t need to kill anyone,” Shadow says. “Sway just needed to stop being a pussy.”