I know she’s not even a little bit remorseful about it. Minx.
“The others are… Eagle, Wolf, and Knuckles.”
“Knuckles?” She frowns adorably, and the realization dawns on her.
Just two weeks ago, I planted a massive punch to Thomas’s nose. A fight had broken out, and my knuckles bled like anything.
Sandra cleaned me up afterwards.
“God!” She huffs out a laugh. “You wouldn’t! You’d really choose a name just to spite him?”
I tilt my head and give her a half-truth. “Didn’t I create a whole new club just to spite the fucker?”
She rolls her eyes dramatically. “My God! You’re savage.”
I chuckle at the thought of this whole club starting because a stupid prospect couldn’t keep his hands off my girl. But thisclub will be a lifeline that goes beyond it. Paul—Torch—and I will make sure of it.
I sober quickly, a thought gripping me. My gaze snaps toward her. She’s still mulling over road names. Mumbling a list like she’s been thinking about this for a long time.
“Savage.” The word is out of my mouth before I can think.
“Huh?”
“Savage,” I repeat with a smile.
A grin slowly forms on her face as she nods. “Savage.”
NINETEEN
Charlotte
It’s been a week since I had seen Wolf completely disintegrate in front of me. I watched him try to claw his way out of a wreckage I didn’t fully understand. No one actually said who Leila was—is. I doubt Ruin even knew.
The look on Ryder’s face told me enough. The gray pallor. The way his jaw had tightened. The pity in his eyes, so raw it almost hurt to look at him.
Leila Richard was someone Savage took from Wolf. That much is clear. He might not have been my father, but what kind of man does that to his own son?
‘Savage got you out of a buyer contract. You were being sold to the Romanian Mafia’s flesh trade.’
I still remember the exact moment those words had landed. The cold that seeped into my bones when the meaning finally settled.
Savage saved me.
But the next part burned through that thought like molten lava.
He’d also swapped me. He’d handed someone else’s life for mine. And I still can’t reconcile how a person could make that choice.
Granted, I barely knew Savage when he was alive and functioning. During the years he spent confined to a wheelchair, I hardly interacted with him at all.
Still. None of it makes sense. Why would he save me? Why was I even in that position to begin with? And why the hell did he trade Leila for me?
Those same questions had flickered in Wolf’s eyes that day. Hollow, desolate eyes. He had drifted in and out of lucidity until he pushed himself off the grimy floor—swaying slightly—and called for church in a hoarse, defeated voice.
That moment gave me pause. Even as Ruin, Ryder, and Wolf left the office, I stayed where I was, staring at the door they’d walked through.
They had delayed church. For me. They waited until I knew everything before dealing with their club business. They had lost a major weapons shipment, their alliance with Reapers, and possibly stepped into a war. Yet, Wolf still prioritized telling me the truth first.
I didn’t know how to take that.
