Jax turned to look at Tig and Bobby, "Let's go."
For a second, the two men exchanged a look and then Bobby spoke. "We're not going with you."
At first Jax looked angry, but the look faded almost immediately and he turned away from the group in the room.
It was tempting to not let him leave the room alive after the stunt he'd pulled. However, the one gun policy had backfired spectacularly and the only weapon that had been in the room was now speeding away from Diosa in Jimmy O'Phelan's hands.
Even if a gun was on hand, killing the president of SAMCRO without first explaining why to the other club members was suicide at best.
As soon as Jax was gone, the room temporarily filled with a tense silence.
Finally, Chibs spoke "Jesus Christ! What a mess."
The room was indeed a mess. One chair was knocked over and lying a few feet from the table. On the floor, the now truly deceased Kellan O'Rourke was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Directly behind him, also on the floor was the corpse of the hooker. The back wall of the room was splattered with a mix of the two's blood.
After a pause he asked "Which one of you told Jax about the meeting?"
"Look, we know how important that meeting was for you," Bobby answered "we wouldn't risk ruining it like that."
Although he appeared to believe them, Chibs still wasn't happy. "Well someone did, and it nearly cost us our bloody lives!"
Tig raked a hand through his hair before speaking "Did you ask Nero? Maybe he didn't quite get the message."
It hadn't originally occurred to Chibs that Nero might be the one who had told Jax about the meeting. However, the suggestion did seem to make sense. Although the older man had seemed friendly and willing to shelter his family, he was still dating Gemma. Because of this there had been a tenseness, but he'd been too worried about what Jimmy was doing to notice it as much as he should have.
xxx
By early afternoon, almost all signs of the events of the morning were gone. The corpses had been whisked away by Happy and Chibs hadn't bothered to ask where they were going. All visible blood was cleaned out of the room, and work was already being done to hide the bullet holes in the door and wall. However, the notion that Nero had been the one who had tipped off Jax still reigned strong. Telling Jax of the meeting could have been an honest mistake. However, it could also be a sign that Nero had a different agenda than the one he portrayed.
The worries about ulterior motives had driven Chibs to take his family back to his house. Still, doing so made him nervous. His house wasn't exactly what he considered secure. In the dining room there was a large paned glass sliding door. The garage also could be opened from the most generic of door openers and Jax still had a key he hadn't returned as nobody expected the feud to go this far. Still, he had nowhere else to take his wife and daughter and he could easily have the locks changed on his doors if it became necessary.
A loud knock at the door shook him out of his thoughts and he immediately reached for his gun before turning to his wife and daughter who were both already standing up at the sound. Softly, but forcefully he growled "go into the kitchen!" It was obvious by the look on his wife's face that she wanted to protest so he added "get the gun out of the cookie jar!"
As soon as they were safely in the other room he walked towards to door, and pulled back the curtain to see who was on the other side.
xxx
Across town above the ice cream shop a different kind of meeting was taking place. The spot at the head of the table was empty and the room held an air of tension. By now the events of the morning had became known by all members of the club and although originally there had been distaste about the exclusion of most of the club from it, now every man seemed to know what had to be done. Jackson Teller was no longer fit to lead the club and had to be impeached from his role as president. Normally, the notion of changing leaders while in the midst of battling an outside force, but having a man who was as much of a loose canon as Jax had become leading them felt almost the same as giving O'Phelan himself a cut.
The impeachment had gone about as well as it might be expected with Jax's current mental state. The younger man seemed to believe that instead of having become a power crazy maniac he had been wronged by the rest of the club. Before storming out of the room he'd turned back to the remaining club members and stated "You're making a big mistake. Without me you'll all be buried by O'Phelan!"
After he stormed down the stairs, a loud bang punctuated the air followed by the sound of a car alarm and a motorcycle speeding away. The sound of the car alarm made it almost urgent to investigate what had caused the sound before somebody called the police and it became an even more sticky situation.
The scene outside was a complete wreckage. Jax had pushed the bike at the end of the line, which happened to be Bobby's into the other motorcycles causing a domino effect of sorts. The final bike, Tig's, had fallen into a car that was parked a few feet away shattering the window of it and setting off the car alarm.