CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

 

With his head held high and his shoulders back, Jax knocked on the closed conference room door then let himself in to a room full of bikers, Sugar, and Jared. It wasn't often that a boulder of tension lodged in his chest, but it was there now. Part of that was frustration that he couldn't do as much as he wanted to help Seven with the team, and part of that was disappointment.

Boss Man stood up. "Hey, I've been taking calls out here." Then he brushed past Jax and moved to the small conference room next to where they were.

Jax turned on his heel and followed. He should be happy it wasn't a public flogging. They'd all had verbal ass-kickings by Jared—Jax more than others. But he would be flat out lying if he said his ego wanted to get canned with a live studio audience.

Closing the door behind him, he turned around and said, "Look, no hard feelings. I'll head out. That's the way these things go sometimes." Then again, if Jared thought he had murdered Deacon, maybe volunteering to leave the city wasn't the best thing to do.

Boss Man paced the length of the small room with one arm across his chest and the other one propped under his chin until he squared to Jax. "When I don't know a situation, I send out for reports. Parker pulls intel, siphons data. I'll ask you guys for recon. The team will get what we need. But if I don't know, I'll ask. And"—Jared straightened his arms—"when I'm wrong, I need to own that shit. Say that I'm wrong. I'm not perfect, and I don't expect you to be."

He stopped, and Jax let the I'm not perfect sink in.

Jared ran his hand over his beard, shaking his head reflectively. "The way I came at you earlier today? I had assumptions, and that's on me. I'm sorry. Even if I still have questions, I owe you more than I gave you."

Jax stared, overwhelmed.

"When it comes to standing by my men, I see loyalty like I do consistency. Like I do the truth. There are very rare exceptions when that shit's not black and white." He dropped his hand from his beard. "And you? You're consistent. You call it like you see it. Not even one to talk shit behind someone's back. You give no fucks. Just say it to their faces. No one questions where they stand with you."

"True."

"I need to figure out what happened to Deacon, but if you say you didn't kill him, you didn't kill him."

His jaw tightened as he tried to ignore the flicker of hope his job wasn't lost. "I didn't."

"If you say you want Titan to be loyal and you'll be loyal to Titan, consider it done."

Jax nodded.

Jared took a step closer. "If you want back on this job, Jax, I need you with us, man. I didn't follow my own standard operating procedure, and there are consequences for that failure. But I hope that it doesn't mean I'm a man down. Stay on, would ya?"

Of course Jared Westin could apologize like a badass pro. There's nothing the guy couldn't do like a boss. "I don't want to leave Titan. Ever."

"Good." Jared threw out his hand, and Jax shook it.

"One more thing," Boss Man said. "In the process of pulling my head out of my asshole, I heard that you figured out the situation with the notes. We decoded Leyva and you saved us from a bloodbath."

His brows arched. "Yeah?"

"If we'd tracked Seven there anyway and gone in blind? We'd be fucked. I called in extra hands, Mayhem's dropping in. Whole new approach. Appreciate you looking out."

Maybe that was why Ryder wasn't answering his phone, and Jax wasn't going to get upset that Titan likely tapped into his phone to learn what he knew. "No prob."

"You good?"

"All's good with me as long as Johnny Miller isn't involved."

Jared smirked as he nodded his agreement. "Why don't you go in with me and tell them you're back? I think Johnny will particularly like that little bomb that he's staying home."

Jax followed Jared out of the small room, feeling one hundred percent different than he'd thought he would when he walked in. As they entered the main conference room, Hawke stood up as Jared acknowledged him, and Sugar watched intently.

He cast an eye to Jared. "As most of you know, Boss Man called in all of our teams and asked for men from Mayhem. Except for…" Jax turned to face Johnny. "You. You're staying home. I don't trust you. And you cause more problems than you've helped since the day I met you. You hurt my wife. And you put her kids in danger. Your ass is staying home."