“You’re too fucking sweet, Morgan. Too pure for this life.”
If he only knew who my father was. He wouldn’t think I was too pure. I might not live in my father’s world, but I was familiar with it. Not to mention the MC world.
I could have told him then. Could have told him he was my uncle, but I stayed quiet. My father hadn’t told me about his brothers; my mother had. When I called her to tell her I got married, I told her everything about Jude and his brothers.
When I mentioned King, she got quiet. That was when she told me about Declan and Kingston O’Rourke.
My uncles.
I should have told Jude the truth, but I hadn’t told him about my father. And I wasn’t even sure King knew about his brother. Neither Jude nor he had ever mentioned Braesal O’Malley.
The head of the Irish Mob.
So I didn’t bring it up. And now that Jude was gone, I would move back to Rosewood. I couldn’t stay here, not without him.
Three weeks later, King took me to my appointment with Dr. Adams. He stayed in the waiting room while the doctor examined me and gave me a clean bill of health.
Then King helped me go through my apartment, getting rid of Jude’s things. Condensing mine to fit in my car. When I sat on the floor of my bedroom and held the cut in my hands, King sat down beside me.
“You’ll always be an old lady, Morgan. You’ll always have me and the brothers at your back. No matter what you do or where you go. You call and we’ll ride.”
I packed the cut away in the box and turned to him. “I’m not an old lady, King. I never really was. Jude didn’t want me at the clubhouse. He didn’t want his president to even know about me.”
“There was a reason for that, Morgan. Things haven’t been the same since Titan died. He was trying to protect you.”
I nodded as if I agreed with him. As if I understood why I had been kept a secret. The truth was, I never thought about it. Never cared until I couldn’t go to his funeral.
King never knew about the man who came to see me. I never told him about the man with eyes I recognized, eyes that haunted my dreams, who shattered my world even more.
Jude’s brother showed up on my doorstep two days after he died. Justin told me to stay home. He said Jude wouldn’t want me there. So I never got to say goodbye.
To my husband or my son.
I sat in the truck, waiting for Jude to process everything I told him. He’d been so quiet as I told him about the baby, the miscarriage, his brother.
“I asked him to go see you.”
“What?”
“Justin. I asked him to keep you away from the funeral.”
“Why?”
His hands tightened on the wheel, and he turned his head away from me. I waited for him to answer, and when he looked my way, there were tears in his eyes. Tears I’d never seen.
“I couldn’t risk you being there. I couldn’t risk Steele finding out about you. I knew he was behind the explosion. I thought King was in on it.”
“King wouldn’t do that,” I snapped.
It wasn’t just that he was my brother; King was a good man. He’d never have turned his back on Jude.
“I didn’t know that then, Morgan. All I knew was that he wasn’t there with me. He’d stayed outside talking to Steele on the phone, while I went into the warehouse Steele had sent us to.”
Jude started the truck, and I said, “Take me back to the clubhouse.”
“I promised you lunch.”
“I don’t want to have lunch with you. Take me back to the clubhouse.”
