The Rampage MC #3: Atlas and Joy

Chapter 7 (Atlas): The Damage

Even after Joy walked away, the brothers and club girls remained absolutely silent for two full minutes. I looked at the four brothers who had shouted crude shit to Joy and they knew what that look meant.

There would be a reckoning with me later.

"A word," Beard said to me, and stalked off toward his office. I followed, knowing what was coming.

He threw himself into his chair behind his desk and looked at me.

"So, Kit."

Fuck. He'd caught that. Joy had always been extremely careful to call me Atlas in front of the brothers, never by my real name. I'd been surprised when it had slipped out of her mouth in front of everyone.

Or, given the look on Beard's face when he'd demanded a word, maybe she'd known exactly what she was doing. She was that pissed at me, and I couldn't blame her.

I waited him out. Flinging my real name at me like that signaled a minefield ahead of me.

"Interesting that Joy knew your name." Yep, he was going there and I was fucked. "Your real name."

Saying nothing, I continued to play my waiting game.

"I thought maybe there was more to it when she came to me and asked me to keep you out of the kitchen. But I was preoccupied with finding my Emily and didn't have any time to spare thinking about it, so I just chalked it up to you rubbing her the wrong way."

I knew Beard, I knew that tone, so I continued to wait.

"But you claimed her tonight in front of all the brothers. You didn't like them wanting to fuck her now that the six months was up. You stood up and made it clear pretty damn fast that they needed to back off because you didn't like the offers they were making to her."

No, I hadn't liked it at all, and those four fuckers would figure out just how much I hadn't liked it as soon as Beard was done with me. If I could still stand after this meeting was done. Given what I'd seen him dish out to Max all those months ago, I could easily go that way to some extent.

"Seems like a strange thing to do, claim a woman you don't really know. Considering I told all you fuckers in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to lose the fourth cook we'd had in seven months."

His eyes appraised me. "Do you remember that meeting I held? The specific church session where I laid things out for all of you regarding Joy?"

At this point, I realized things weren't going to end well. Beard was pissed if he was taking the time to walk me down Memory fucking Lane. I'd known this was a possibility, but there was no way I could have resisted going there with Joy. The minute those plush lips of hers had curved into a smile, I'd been a goner. I'd just needed to be careful.

And then fucking Trixie...

"You gonna answer my question sometime in the next century, Kit, or should I just wait for you to pull your head out of the motherfucking clouds?"

I looked at him. "Yeah, I remember that meeting."

"What'd I say?"

"You said we all had to keep our hands off Joy for six months."

"You purposefully leaving out the important part of that meeting?"

Motherfucking shit damn fuck.

"And you said if we didn't leave her alone, other than to say thank you for the meals, then you'd fire Joy, not give her a reference and blackball her in this town and all the surrounding ones in a two hundred mile radius."