Becki Crowley.
Ezekiel’s brat.My enemy long before she tried to blackmail me out of my own birthright.
She stood in Paradise Falls in my mama’s wedding gown with her lips curled like a snake about to strike and told me she’d marry my father, using her daddy, the Reverend Crowley, as officiant.She said she’d own everything I had, everything I loved, that all she had to do was whisper the right words into the right ear.
She threatened my whole life without touching me.
Threatened my family with a smile.
Threatened my relationship with Legend just by saying his name.Kept me from him.Had me kidnapped, beaten by the Depraved Sinners MC.And now she’s here.In our clubhouse.In a bed ten feet away from where I’m expected to sleep.
Legend proposed.But now, the woman I almost lost him to is under our roof, eating our food, wrapped up in Royal’s dark silence like it’s a fluffy black blanket.
My hand fists against the door.I want to tear it off the hinges and drag her out by her petty short hair, but I don’t.
Because I know Royal’s on the other side.And Royal’s the one man in this club whose quiet scares me more than everyone else’s shouting.I’ve seen the way he looks at her.
Not with hate.
Not with disgust.
With hunger.
Like he’s been starving, and someone finally threw a bleeding deer into his damn cage.
My stomach twists as I pray, he can control her.
Footsteps echo behind me, heavy and familiar.I don’t turn right away.I don’t need to.Legend fills the hallway like heat before a summer rain.
“Sophie,” he says, voice low and careful.
“Don’t.”My voice cracks from the strain of holding myself together.“Don’t talk to me like I’m overreacting.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“She’s still here.”
“I know.”
He steps closer, shirtless, jeans hanging low like he just got out of bed or out of a fight.Sweat glistens across his chest, down the line of his stomach.Normally I’d climb him like a tree.Today I feel like hitting him with the bourbon bottle.
“You said she was staying for answers,” I snap.“It’s been days.What have you figured out except that Royal watches her like he wants to fuck her straight through the floor?”
His eyes narrow.“Careful.”
“No,” I spit.“You don’t get to defend her.Not after everything she did.Not after the threats.I won’t sleep another night with her my neighbor.”
“She’s locked up.”
“And still manipulating everyone,” I hiss.“She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
Legend’s jaw works like he’s chewing broken glass.
“She goes,” I say.“Or I do.”
Silence.
Just the two of us standing in a hallway full of ghosts we never buried right.
