Obviously, that was never my plan. This numbness, this indifference when it comes to taking a life. It wasn’t like that when I forced myself to imagine handing her over. Dread swamped me first. Then fear. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t fucking breathe. Not when her face kept flashing in my head. That pretty little smile. That scowl she wears every time she looks at me.
With a sigh, I rub my hand over my mouth. “Keegan is dead.”
It’s more than right versus wrong. Just the thought of Grace with them, what they’d have done, was like a hole punching through my chest.
So yeah. I got what I needed out of Keegan, and then I put a bullet in his head. Well. Maybe I made him hurt a little beforehand. He put his hands on her. He hurt her. So maybe I got a little… overzealous with my cutting.
Grace swallows, eyes locked with mine, searching, as more of those tears drop. “How?”
“It wasn’t quick, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You… killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I… I don’t know,” I admit. “But I couldn’t let them have you.”
She’s quiet a long moment, like she’s thinking, processing. Eventually, she clears her throat. “What the hell was the point of this conversation? If you wanted to scare me, to show me who’s in charge, then you win. I get it.”
“No, you don’t.” I tilt her face up, angling closer. She doesn’t understand what I’ve done. “I killed him, and all his club is gonna see is that one of their men died chasingyouinto enemy territory. A Sinner. Keegan might be gone, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe. In fact, it means you’re in more danger. We all are.The point of this conversation was to help me understand if the fucking shitstorm I just dropped at our doorstep was worth it.”
She lets out a long, shaky breath. “Well? Was it?”
Another moment where I was sitting at a crossroads, waiting for a sign, something to tell me what to do. It wasn’t all that hard this time.
We’ve got a connection. A twisted little history, where the deadbeat I came from raised her, threw her around, put her mom up on the block and handed her over to a group of violent men. The girl who hid in my treehouse to get away from him, who I share a sibling with. The woman I can’t seem to keep away from.
Maybe this is my atonement. Like with Emily, when I carved up the man who took her life. The atonement I’m still paying for.
Throwing Grace to the wolves was never an option. Protecting her, keeping her safe. It’s just something I need to do.
“Yeah, Gracie. You’re well worth the blood I spilled. But now we got a bigger problem. You might have started this, but I just hammered the last nail into the coffin. And the Sinners, yourbrothers,have no fucking clue what’s coming. What I did was a fucking war crime, and the Raiderswillretaliate.”
20
I’m headedfor Decker’s front steps when a light in the window of his small, detached garage catches my eye. Without slowing, I veer off and pull open the side door.
Decker is kneeling on the ground, wrench in hand, fidgeting with his bike. His focus whips up. For a moment, he stares, a mix of contempt and surprise flashing across his face. Along with that other look he can’t seem to bury behind all that irritation. The look that saysI’ve seen you naked.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I was hoping we could talk,” I say as I step inside.
Yesterday was intense. The shit at the clubhouse. The fresh bruises all over Axe’s face when he came back from lockup. The conversation Decker and I had in that wretched basement cell.
A war is coming, he said. Because of me. And him.
He killed a man for me.
We might not exactly be friendly. Or maybe we are, since he knows what my pussy feels like wrapped around his dick, as he so eloquently put it. Regardless, we’re definitely… something. In deep shit, I guess. Together.
“Yeah? About what?” He moves his attention back to his machine, cursing under his breath as he works the wrench back and forth.
His light jeans are grease-stained, full of black smudges and fingerprints, his grey T-shirt streaked with all the usual smears of what you might find in a garage—oil, fluids, dirt, and grime. “Take it Easy” by the Eagles plays low from a small radio on his workbench.
“Something wrong with your bike?” I ask.
