Wolf nods absently, shuffling the papers like they might tell him something different if he stares long enough. He reads one, then rereads it. Again and again.
I’m about to stand and leave him to it when his phone pings. He frowns at the screen for half a second—then sits up straighter. Entire body locking like he’s been shot in the spine.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, already on alert.
He doesn’t answer. Just dials, fingers shaking.
The moment the call connects, his voice barks out, sharp and rough, “Ryder. When?”
The silence on the other end lasts all of two seconds before Ryder’s voice crackles through the line. “Two days ago. Glory’s parole went through. My contact didn’t get notified in time. They tried—she slipped through.”
My lungs empty out in a sharp exhale. Panic gripping my chest.
Glory can’t be out, can she? We had buried her in court. Five years, minimum. Slammed her with every charge we could dig up—fraud, theft, accomplice to assault. We had evidence. We created witnesses. How the fuck was she out in two?
“Where is she now?” Wolf demands, eyes flashing murder.
A long, heavy sigh seeps through the phone. “Take a seat, Prez. She’s… in Craven Ridge. I’m working on pinning down the exact location. Gimme an hour.”
Oh god. She’s in Craven Ridge? She’s in Charlotte’s town.
My stomach drops straight to my fucking boots.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
I shoot out of my chair like a shot. “Fuck!” My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. I don’t wait. Don’t speak. I don’t even breathe.
Before I know it, I’m running out of the clubhouse.
SEVEN
Charlotte
Peace.
That’s the first thing I felt when I moved to Craven Ridge. After a few months of chaos from my past life, I settled in. Even today I try to remember why I never left earlier.
At first, I gave an excuse of Glory. That she cared about me and it wasn’t right to leave her alone. She’d say things that made me feel she was lonely. But I found out later I was projecting.
Great. Now I’m using words my therapist reminds me too much of. According to her, the Glory I saw was a reflection of me. She made sure I never saw the real her. The real her that wasn’t naive, bereft, aimless, and confused—like me.
‘Even when there’s more than a dozen people around me… I don’t feel I’m welcome here.’
She’d say such things so softly—oh so sullenly.
And it felt as though she took the words right out of my mouth. I felt seen, but never heard.
That was the tactful delicate balance Glory created, I realized. Giving me the words I couldn’t voice. Some were true, most were not.
As years passed, I stopped questioning the mirror she posed as. I stopped dissecting which words of hers reflected my true feelings and which ones were injected. So when she told me to‘stop making googly eyes at Ruin’when I wasn’t, I surprisingly started doing it.
When she said the club wasn’t my family and she was, I believed her. And I drifted farther away from anyone who could’ve potentially heard me. Like Mama Deb.
I know better now.
For one, the club wasn’t indeed my family. Hell, my family wasn’t even my family.
