Ambros curses, running his fingers through his hair.
“Dad?” Six whispers.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well, you did. Just tell us. Who’s not okay?”
“I don’t know. All Blade said was that a body had been found. A Jane Doe.”
“Jane Doe? I don’t understand.”
“It means they don’t know who she is,” Ambros fills in.
“Okay, so what does that have to do with the Ravens?”
Ambros and King look at each other before King sighs. “Whoever she is has a tattoo of a raven on her wrist.”
“What does that mean?” Six asks, but I already know.
“It means she was a club girl.”
And only one club girl is missing right now.
Lil.
Chapter Thirty-Two
AMBROS
As King can’t comeinto church, with him not being an official member and all, he agrees to take the girls home and stay with them until Con can finish at the gym and relieve him. A look at the grim faces around me tells me most of the brothers have been informed about what’s going on. None look worse than Powers, though.
As we wait for the last of the brothers to arrive, I take a seat at the bar next to him. I nod to Tina for a beer, who grabs one, pops the cap off, and hands it over. “You okay?” I ask Powers.
“What do you think?”
“Right.” I run my hand through my hair, not knowing what the fuck to say. “We don’t know anything yet, Powers. It might not be her.”
“Then who else could it be?”
“I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean it’s Lil.”
He snorts before draining his bottle. “Right. Just some other random club girl.”
“Honestly, it could be. A lot of people left after shit went down with Bear, from what I heard. That included club girls.”
He pauses with the bottle in the air as if that thought never occurred to him. “You think that could be it?”
“I have no idea. My point is, we don’t know anything yet. Plus, we’re not the only Raven Souls chapter. Nothing says this girl is local. We don’t have enough to go on to make assumptions. I get that it’s hard with Lil being gone, but she’s proved she’s nothing if not resourceful.”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Fuck, I hope you’re right.”
“What happened between you two anyway? Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s cut up over what’s happened, but this is more than that.”
“Because Lil’s more than that.” He peels the label from the bottle before continuing. “She’s more than just a club girl. People think less of her because of it, and she thinks less of herself because of it. I guess I understand why now. It’s not a role she actually would have chosen for herself if life had been kinder to her. I understand, I do. But I’m still pissed. This woman I spent time getting to know was living a lie. And I have no idea if anything she shared with me was true or just part of this game of make-believe she was living.”
“I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t know Lil as well as everyone else here, least of all you.”
“That’s just it, Ambros, they didn’t know her. Not at all. None of us did.”
