“Well, I happen to like them,” I tell him firmly.
He finally smiles. “I do too, but don’t go tellin’ everybody I’m a mama’s boy or anything like that.”
Before I can answer, he leans over, gives me a kiss, and heads down to his office to work. The club is buying a new business and he’s got paperwork to file with the county that can’t be put off.
After showering and getting dressed, I wander out of our suite to find Christina lingering in the hallway. She’s got her purse slung over one arm and a cup of coffee in the other hand. She takes one look at my face and grins.
“You look happy. Onyx must be doing something right.”
“I was just thinking how much my life has changed in the past few months. From being alone to having a huge family. We were talking earlier about what great grandparents Queenie and Rock are,” I say.
She laughs. “Yeah, they’re beyond anything I could have imagined. I knew the first day that Katie and I arrived that we’d never be able to leave again because she’d cry her eyes out for them.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all. They’ve always been just like they are now. I can remember when I was a little kid and my grandfather came to have breakfast with Rock on Sundays. Queenie would spoil me rotten and tell me I was born to be a club queen.”
Christina chuckles. “The joke’s on her. Tessa turned out to be the Sons of Rage club queen when she married Jasper because he’s the Prez.”
I laugh as we walk downstairs. “It’s not like I was gunning for the job or anything. Tessa is like a force of nature. I don’t think I have it in me to do what she does in a day. And the way she organizes the club girls and keeps them all on the same page is some form of dark magic I don’t understand.”
“I agree,” she says as we push open the front door to the clubhouse and walk out onto the porch. Her vehicle is parked right out front. “Tessa even managed to tame Silver. I never thought I’d see the day that happened.”
We drive in silence for a while, me thinking about everything that’s happened and all the changes coming. Eventually I turn to Christina and ask, “So, what’s the plan for the day?”
She responds, “We’re going to a custom T-shirt shop to pick up a bunch of T-shirts for the baby that have our club logo and have cute sayings, likemy dad’s a biker.”
“That sounds really cute,” I tell her.
She flashes me a quick grin. “The club is such a big part of Slate’s life, and he loves it when we lean into the biker themefor the baby. So, I figured why not dress him up as a little biker when we bring him home.”
Without pausing, she continues, “After that, we can go take a look around one of the baby shops. I need to pick up a few things for the nursery, and we can see what you need.”
As she continues talking, I decide on the spot that I really like Christina. She’s exactly the kind of woman I always hoped to have as a sister-in-law. I really lucked out in every conceivable way with Onyx’s family.
We’re on a lonely stretch of road that cuts through open farmland. Christina’s still talking about our shopping trip, but I’m not really listening. I’m looking out the front window, enjoying the scenery, when the hairs on the back of my neck start prickling. Then I see a black SUV speeding up in my side-view mirror. It’s moving too fast and it’s setting off my Spidey senses.
“Christina,” I say in a low voice.
She glances over. “Yeah?”
“That black SUV behind us is moving pretty fast. Do you think it’s trouble?”
She tilts the mirror, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe,” she responds, glancing between her rearview mirror and the road in front of us.
“Maybe?”
“I’m changing my answer to yes. Text Onyx right now. Tell him where we are. Do it now, Emily.”
The deadly serious tone of her voice is a sharp contrast to her happy chatter before we hit this danger point. I pull out my phone and frantically begin hitting buttons. “We share locations, so that should make it easy for him to find us,” I mutter as my fingers fly across the keypad.
Me: We’re in trouble. We’re on the back road heading towards the city. Black SUV bearing down on us. Need help NOW.
The minute I hit send, that SUV speeds up again and this time it slams into the back of us. Christina yells, “Hold on, Em.”
It takes two more jolts into our rear end for the SUV to veer off the road and end up in a shallow ditch. The airbags explode, sending a burst of white powder everywhere.
My head snaps forward and the seatbelt bites hard into my shoulder. My ears are ringing.
“Christina?” I choke out, trying to catch sight of her through the cloud of white powder.
