I’d lied to her. Not with my words—those were careful, measured—but with the silence between them. That silence held everything she didn’t know, everything I couldn’t say. Because the truth wasn’t just dangerous, it was a fuse already lit, and there were many too ears listening to our conversation.
I knew she’d come looking for answers, and that when she did, it would give me an excuse if anyone was wondering why I was looking into it. I could say it was personal, that I knew them from way back and I had to look like I was trying to help her. The quicker she got out from it, the better.
What I didn’t expect was how much she reminded me of him. Not only her face, but the way she spoke, the way she challenged me, like she didn’t care if it cost her.
That’s what scared me the most. Because the second she stepped through that door, I stopped thinking like a Presidentand started thinking like a man who owed a dead brother a favour he never got to ask for. A man who’d let the woman he was in love with walk away thinking she meant nothing to him.
She thought I was stone, unshakeable, but every word she said was more damaging than she’d know. Instead of crying, I’d poured my grief into the barrel of a gun and waited for a name to pin it to.
Then there was her, and she wasn’t leaving. I almost laughed when she said she wanted in, like it was a job application. Like the wordtruthmeant something in a place where lies were currency and bodies were payment.
“You wouldn’t last a week,” I told her.
She didn’t blink. “Try me.”
I believed her, and that was the problem.
Lucy Kane wasn’t part of my world. She had no patch, no brother left to protect her, and if she kept coming back, she was going to end up the same way Caleb did—dead in a dirty room with secrets stitched across her spine.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I poured another drink and gave her time to back out, but she didn’t back down.
She drank the bitter whiskey like it was her way of proving something. I watched her throat bob, watched her face twist from the taste, and saw the moment she swallowed more than just liquor. She swallowed the risk.
God help me, a part of me wanted her to pass my test. I wanted her to get inside and burn this place down with her grief and her fire and her refusal to die quietly like so many others had. But the other part of me, the part that had buried too many brothers, too many friends, and watched too many good people go up in smoke, wanted her gone before the fire spread.
Before the club smelt her weakness, and before the men started asking who she belonged to.
I looked at her empty glass, her hands curled tight and her knuckles white.
She’d already made her choice. Fire ran in the Kane blood, and she was burning.
I had to figure out if my choice would be to protect her, or make sure she never came back.
Chapter 8
Reaper
Gage swaggered in with Bishop at his side, both reeking of whiskey. Each had a woman draped over an arm.
Gabby joined them and was immediately hanging off Gage, her laugh a little too loud and shrill. Her eyes landed on me instantly before sliding to Lucy. Then that smug smirk slowly crept across her face like she’d been handed front row seats to a fight she’d been waiting for. She shifted closer to Gage, her hand splayed over his chest.
I didn’t feel a damn thing. She’d been just a bit of fun, nothing more, but it was obvious she was trying to get a rise out of me, and that made her little game almost pathetic.
“The hell is this, Pres?” Gage barked.
I didn’t flinch. “She’s with me.”
“That’s not what he asked,” Bishop added, his eyes narrowing on Lucy.
Out the corner of my eye, Gabby tilted her head against Gage’s shoulder, still watching me like she was waiting for a crack in my expression. She wasn’t getting one.
My eyes narrowed, molten lava racing through my veins as my hands clenched. They wanted to challenge me, here, in front of Lucy?
“You know the rules, Pres. Hell, you wrote most of them. No outsiders in the clubhouse. You wanna play house, do it somewhere else,” Gage said, stepping up to the bar and grabbing the whiskey bottle and a glass as if he owned the place.
My jaw flexed, and I was seconds away from smashing the bottle over Gage’s head. I caught his wrist before he touched glass. Not hard, but enough to make the air go still.
Gage’s smirk spread as he leaned closer to Lucy, his voice oily with contempt. “Wide-eyed princess, that’s all she is. You really gonna risk the whole club for some?—”
