I cry for myself, for being so naive, for falling for a man who could look me in the eyes every day knowing what his club had done.
And, lord help me, I cry for Bane. For what might have been if things had been different. If he’d told me the truth from the beginning.
But he didn’t, and I can’t forgive that.
No matter how much my heart aches for him.
The next morning I force myself into the shower, scrubbing away the tears and self-pity. I can’t keep living like this, can’t keep hiding in my apartment.
Wrapping a towel around myself, I march into the kitchen and grab my laptop. I haven’t touched it since I got back to my apartment, too afraid of what else I might find if I started digging deeper. But now I need answers—real answers, not the sanitized version the Kings tried to feed me.
I need to know exactly what happened to my father.
Settling at the kitchen table, I boot up my system and get to work. I may not have access to the Kings’ secure server anymore, but I don’t need it. There are other ways to get information.
Hours pass as I work, piecing together fragments of information. According to what I found on the Kings’ server, my father was meeting with the Sinners at the Pretty Kitties the night he died. Something went wrong. There was a fight, and my father ended up dead.
But why was he meeting with them in the first place? What business did the mayor of Odin have with an outlaw motorcycle club?
My eyes burn from staring at the screen, but I keep pushing. I need to know.
Opening a file on my father’s personal server, I start scrolling through meeting minutes, public records, and financial disclosures.
And then I see it.
A series of wire transfers from an offshore account to my father’s personal bank account. Large sums of money, too. Fifty thousand here, seventy-five thousand there. Money that can’t be explained by his salary as the Mayor of Odin.
The deeper I dig, the worse it gets.
Shit. Running my hands through my hair, I lean back in my chair. “Shit.”
My father was taking bribes from every player in the game. The Sinners. The Kings. Some Russian named Ivan, that’s his contact with the Valenciaga family.
The same family that’s running a human trafficking ring in Odin with the Sinners.
My blood runs cold.
My father was helping them—maybe looking the other way while they operated in Odin, maybe providing some kind of cover. Whatever it was, he was involved with them.
“What happened, Daddy?” I whisper, wondering what changed. He met with the Sinners at the Pretty Kitties, and he ended up dead.
Did he try to back out? Did he threaten to expose them? Or did he simply outlive his usefulness?
Biting my lip, I debate what to do next. I could leave all of this alone and never look back, which would be the smart move.OrI could go back to the Kings and find out the truth.
All of it.
Chapter Sixteen
Bane
Leaning back on the couch, I swirl the amber liquid in the half-empty bottle of Jack in my hand and stare as it spins around like a liquid tornado. The clubhouse is quiet tonight, most of the brothers having gone to Kitties for the night to watch our new headliner shake her ass, much to Gator’s dismay.
“Here.” Destiny slides next to me, pressing her body against mine. She passes me a joint. “This’ll help more than that.” She nods at the bottle.
I take it from her and place it between my lips, inhaling deeply. Holding the smoke in my lungs, I close my eyes, waiting for the weed to quiet the voice in my head that keeps whispering Frankie’s name, to dull the ache in my chest that hasn’t eased since she walked out that fucking door a week ago.
Destiny’s hand slides up my thigh, palming my cock through my jeans. Her lips find my neck, hot and wet. “I missed you,” she whispers against my skin.
