“And you all knew?”
"Yes." Rowan's voice is quiet. "We knew."
The confirmation lands like a fist to the sternum. My knees feel weak.
“We didn't want to hurt you," Sarah says. "Zeus asked us to let him be the one to tell you. He wanted to do it when you were ready?—"
"When I was ready?!” A laugh scrapes out of me. "I've been here over a week. When exactly was I going to be 'ready' to hear that my father was a—a?—"
I can't say it. The word traitor sticks in my throat like broken glass.
Rowan pulls out her phone. I watch her thumbs move across the screen urgently.
"London, please," Kayla says, reaching for me. "Let us explain?—"
"London—" Zeus races across the lot toward us, his chest heaving, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Obviously, he’s who Rowan was texting. He must have sprinted from the shop. His eyes find me, and his expression fractures—guilt and dread and desperation all at once.
"When were you going to tell me?" My voice shakes. I hate that it shakes. "That my father was an enemy? That he betrayed this club?" I have to swallow before I can finish. “How can you even stand to look at me?”
I'm vaguely aware of the three women slipping away without a word—Rowan reaches out to touch my shoulder as she passes, then thinks better of it and pulls her hand away.
Then it's just us.
Zeus doesn't move. His hands hang at his sides, and his face carries the look of a man who's been dreading this moment.
“Let’s sit down," he motions to a picnic table nearby. "I'll tell you everything."
"I don't want to sit?—"
"London. Please."
The rawness in his voice, the plea buried beneath the command, makes me reconsider. My feet carry me over to the wooden plank bench. I sit. Zeus sits across from me.
And he tells me the whole story.
Fiend's gambling debts. The cartel approaching him. How it apparently started small—schedules, routes—then escalated. Tank and Biggy, two prospects, murdered outside the warehouse where they hold cage-fighting matches.
And my father fed them information that nearly tore the club apart from the inside.
His voice doesn't waver. He doesn't make excuses for my father, but he doesn't vilify him beyond the facts either.
Then he tells me about Rowan. About how my father kidnapped her, drove her to a cliff, intending to throw her off and kill her to destabilize the club.
"We tracked them," Zeus says. His hands are flat on the picnic table, palms down, like he's anchoring himself. "I rode beside Chaos. When we got there, Fiend had a gun on Rowan." He makes a gun with his thumb and index finger and presses itto his temple. "Chaos stepped out to distract him. Fiend shifted—pointed the weapon at Chaos instead of Rowan. I had a clear shot, and…"
He meets my eyes. "I don’t miss. Ever.”
I stare at him, not knowing what to say, how to react.
“I killed your father, London. I pulled the trigger and put a bullet right between his eyes."
My father was trying to murder an innocent woman, Rowan, my friend.
And Zeus killed him. He killed my dad.
It’s so hard to reconcile all this—Zeus held me through the night. He shared stories of the time he spent with my father. He made me laugh, made me come, and made me feel.
Being close to Zeus, along with getting to know Rowan, Kayla, and Sarah—for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged somewhere.
