"You can't leave the club Chibs." Jax made one last attempt to change the other man's mind. "SAMCRO can't afford to lose anymore members. You've seen first hand what Jimmy O'Phelan is doing to the club." he almost looked like a pleading child rather than a grown man, and all the notions of anger and betrayal he'd seemingly felt from his former VP appeared to be lost. The play of innocence usually worked. As a child and even as an adult it had more than once convinced Gemma Teller that her son could do no wrong, and there had even been times in the past it had worked on club members. However, the look was usually followed by false promises and Chibs knew this from past experience.

"I understand what O'Phelan's capable of far better than most of the people in this room do." Chibs snorted.

"Well then enlighten us." Jax responded angry that his attempt had failed to have any effect on the older man.

For a moment Chibs felt guilty that he was leaving SAMCRO in the dark, but his loyalties didn't lie with the club anymore and he wasn't sure if Jax's ego would allow him to accept that he was wrong both about his former VP and about how to best defeat their reborn nemesis. Still, there was a lingering guiltiness. Although he resented Jax, the other members of the club were still his friends and he worried that their , they had to know the risk of being in the club and the club itself might be the target of Galen O'Shay's rage, but it wasn't Jimmy's focus.

"No."

"What do you mean no?" Jax asked.

"O'Phelan's a egotistical bastard who tends to fixate on a single target and I'm his white whale, not the Sons. Filthy Phil and V-Lin were an obstacle not the target." Before Jax could think of a response Chibs stood from the couch, taking his wife's hand again as he did so. "Let's go love."

xxx

"Congratulations, you've finally manipulated your husband into leaving SAMCRO," Gemma's voice was dripping with disgust and anger as she approached the younger woman who was smoking a cigarette while leaning against the back wall of Diosa.

"Is that what you assume every time someone goes against what you want Gemma? That someone else manipulated them?" Fiona didn't want to agitate the other woman, but the accusations both that she was as manipulative as Gemma and that her husband was unable to make his decisions, were incredibly irritating to her. Still, she refused to make eye contact with the older woman as there was no reason to show that she'd done exactly what she wanted.

"Don't play innocent on me sweetheart. I've seen the game you play. You always show up to cloud Chibs mind around the same time O'Phelan comes to town. You two formulated quite the plan." Gemma paused, and her next comment changed tone so quickly that it almost sounded like it came from someone who actually cared about others until the last part of her words ended in a biting insult. "Chibs is a good person and he doesn't need to die because his mind is clouded by your toxic pussy."

Trying to ignore what was obviously attempts to get under her skin, Fiona dropped her cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out with the toe of her boot. "I'd never do anything to hurt my husband." Instead of giving the other woman a chance to respond she pushed past her, still not making eye contact, hoping to get inside without further taunts.

As the other woman walked past, Gemma slyly stuck her own boot covered foot into her's path causing her to fall to the ground roughly. It was a childish act, but it felt good putting the undeserving object of her fear in a place ,where she could easily kill her if she so desired, felt good. However, kicking Fiona in the head wasn't something she desired to do in that moment and instead, Gemma left her to get back up on her own while she walked back inside.

xxx

Nigttime snuck up on Charming mere hours after the meeting at Diosa. Jimmy O'Phelan and the IRA had been suspiciously quiet over the past twenty-four hours, but this was only part of the reason Chibs remained awake, lying in a bed next to his sleeping wife, staring at a picture of a half naked woman on the wall. Nero had promised him that the rooms closest to where his family was staying would not be used for prostitution. However, from the sounds coming from just a room over it was apparent that someone had not received the notice. Sex wasn't something that normally made him squeamish, but tonight all he wanted was to pound on the wall and scream for the couple to stop if only so he could hear himself think.

When there was finally a break in the whore's exaggerated moans he found himself able to get to the root of his worries. The moment Fiona had walked back into the brothel covered in dirt, with a bloody nose he'd known something was wrong. Fiona had claimed that she'd tripped while smoking her cigarette, apparently unused to her heels, however he'd immediately read this as a lie. During his last visit to Ireland only a month earlier he'd watched her move so fluidly in a pair of three inch heels that he'd almost thought she was gliding above the ground rather than walking. It was an obvious lie that he'd wanted to call her out on ,especially after noting that moments earlier Gemma had walked in from the same direction looking a little too prideful, but Kerrianne was with him and he hadn't wanted to worry her. However, he was sure that even his sixteen year old daughter knew it was a lie and Gemma had done something to her mother.

Deep down, Chibs felt like if he'd chosen to stay with the club he would have been able to at least prevent the shame and humiliation from what Gemma had done to his wife. However, it was too late now to turn back, and Chibs was always a man of his word.

Across Charming Tara laid in bed alone, also deep in troubling thoughts. Jax had been so angry over the loss of his VP that he had stormed away from Diosa on his bike. Tara had a feeling she knew exactly where he'd went, having heard accidentally from Happy that he had picked up a girlfriend in the two weeks she was behind bars. Along with everything else that had been going on, this only served as another reminder of why she had to get her sons out of Charming. She loved Jax and always would, but Abel and Thomas didn't deserve to have a father that came home irregularly smelling like strange women. However, seeing how angrilily Jax had lashed out at a club member turning in his patch she could only assume that if he found out his old lady was about to take his sons and leave Charming.

It didn't help that the one person who was supposed to care about the boys as much as she did, Abel's biological mother, had seemingly decided illicit encounters were more important than the safety of the boys. Although she still preferred to get out of Charming in a way that was completely legal, she was beginning to wonder if she needed a backup plan that wasn't completely so and an ally in it who wasn't a member of the Sons, but was someone close enough that she could still trust them with her sons life.