“Ripped,” Gracie said, eliciting a sigh from Gauge. “Quinn didn’t want to leave—she doesn’t love him!”
I shook my head. “I don’t need to hear this shit.”
“You do!” she called as I turned to leave. “You do need to hear it because it’s you she loves, not him.”
I swung back around to her, making her flinch and Gauge step forward, a growl in his chest as I stepped closer to her. She’d put the kid back down in her bouncy chair thingy, where she was jumping and giggling like all of this was normal.
“Yeah? Well she sounded pretty fuckin’ happy screaming out his name for two fucking days, moaning and groaning and taking his cock like a motherfuckin’ champ while I was tied up next door! Sure seemed like she loved him then. And she looked real fuckin’ cozy on the back of his bike when she left with him.” I was furious. Furious and scared that maybe I’d gotten it wrong. That maybe I’d abandoned my woman when she needed me the most.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that!”
I shook my head at her. “You know, he told me if she was given the choice she’d pick him, and she did. Let me walk away with some fuckin’ pride still intact,” I roared, anger surging through me.
“Careful, brother,” Gauge said on a snarl.
My gaze skipped to his. “What the fuck are you even doing here? Does Hardy know?” I frowned.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you: something ain’t right,” Fighter said, glancing between us both. “He ain’t done anything about what they did to you, and I don’t think he’s gonna.”
I scowled and Fighter nodded in agreement with the sentiment.
“Battle, if you’ll just listen—”
I turned back to Gracie. “She chose him, bitch. I saw her leaving with him and she looked happy as a pig in shit about it. I’m not about to go chasing down a woman that don’t wanna be with me.” I looked back at Gauge, a snarl on my face. “But, if Hardy ain’t willing to do anything about Ripped, then I’ll have to.”
“We play this right and it won’t be on you,” Gauge replied, surprising me.
Half expected the man to try to convince me otherwise, but instead he was encouraging it.
I smiled and cracked my knuckles. “That’s the thing though, brother. I want everyone to know that it was me.”
“You’ll be a dead man walking if you do that,” Fighter said, stepping forward. “It don’t need to be like that!”
I grinned wider. “But I want it to be like that. He’s not getting away with coming into our club and almost killing me, beating down on my brothers, and then moving on as if it were all right. Fuck no.”
“I think he’s blackmailing Quinn into staying with him,” Gracie added in, and I turned to look at her. She lifted her chin and held my gaze. “She loves you, Battle. And if it’s easier for you to believe that she chose him then you keep believing that lie, but I know her—probably better than she knows herself—and I know that she wanted you, not him. It wasn’t even a choice for her. He said he’d kill you if she didn’t go with him. He said he’d kill Bonny and me too.”
I let her words settle on me for a moment because I’d spent the better part of three months thinking she’d chosen him and all of the shit had been for nothing. Living with the pain inside me was a hell of a lot harder than living with the pain in my arms and head, and one I couldn’t talk about or explain to anyone. Knowing that there was even a small possibility that she had been forced to go with him filled me with a rage that made my vision blur.
Quinn was mine.
She had been from the first moment I’d seen her.
And he’d taken her away from me, leaving me with a gaping hole in my chest the size of Texas and believing that she’d chosen him.
I was going to kill him.
Then I was going to rip off his head and fuck his skull.
I closed my eyes and clenched my hands into fists as I tried to control the rage burning inside me.
“Brother?” Fighter said from somewhere, but I was too busy trying to not lose my shit completely. “What do you wanna do?”
I opened my eyes, my gaze going around the small room, moving across the three adults and one child all staring at me silently.
I pulled out my gun and held Fighter’s gaze steady. “I’m sending him to ground.”
“You sure about this?” he asked, glancing back at Gauge.
