“All those years.” A wave of hurt crashes into me. “I blamed myself. I carried her death like a cross, and this club, this family, let me slowly die because I wasn’t worthy of the truth.”
“Who told you?” Anger replaces my father’s shock. “Did you visit the detective?”
Oz and Chevy release me as they also regard me like I’m capable of that type of betrayal. “That’s what you think of me, isn’t it? Disloyal?”
“How else?” Dad shouts.
“Enough!” Cyrus expects compliance. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
“There’s never a time or a place!” I yell. “We’re doing this now!”
Cyrus steps in front of me and he’s not the man I’ve claimed as a surrogate grandfather but the badass biker I’ve seen take men down in a brawl. “Either you take your girl home or I have someone do it for you. Seventeen and here this time of night is nonnegotiable.”
His eyes sway to beyond my shoulder and my stomach knots. Breanna. Fuck me, I forgot about Breanna. On the front porch steps, Emily has an arm around Breanna’s shoulders and the two prospects assigned to Emily’s protection have created a barrier at the bottom of the steps. I abandoned her, just like I promised I wouldn’t.
I swing my glare back at my father. “There was a code in the detective’s file. Two of them. I took pictures.”
There’s a muttered curse behind me as they solve the puzzle of how I figured it out.
“I never talked to the detective again. Doing it would have made life easier, but I’m loyal.” I shove the words like a knife into his heart. “Nice to know what everyone thinks of me.”
As I walk for my girl, Eli captures my arm and exerts enough force that I stop because I’m too fucking exhausted to throw a punch. “What?”
“There are moving parts to this problem. Shit you can’t begin to comprehend. You get her home, then you come back here. You’re still a part of this club and that is a fucking order.”
Am I still a part of this club? Was this cut mine to begin with? Was it nothing more than a pity offering from men who don’t respect me?
Eli releases me, and as I continue toward Breanna, I remember what she’s said about her family, about how happiness in numbers is an illusion. Maybe she’s right. Maybe no matter how much faith we try to put into the idea of family, in the end, we’re fucked.
RAZOR
I FLY INTO the open space near the clubhouse going double what I normally do. Kerosene’s running in my veins and I’m thirty seconds away from someone striking a match.
Breanna appeared lost when I dropped her off. She hugged me, I hugged her and it was difficult to let her go and return to this nest of liars. My fists are aching to punch someone for this entire damn day. Everything’s a fucking mess and I don’t know how to stem the bleeding from the multiple hits I’ve taken.
The party that was supposed to be for me is out of control, just like I am on the inside. I stalk through the crowd and a couple guys call my name, wondering where I’ve been, and one girl has the nerve to slip in front of me like I’ll skid to a halt because she’s wearing next to nothing. But I’m on the warpath, stopping for no one.
I’m up the stairs and don’t bother knocking as I enter the boardroom. There had been conversation, but it goes silent when the door shuts behind me. All of them are here, all of them seated at the long wooden table, and they all look at me. Each and every member of the board including Cyrus, Eli, Pigpen and my father.
Pigpen hooks his foot around the metal folding chair Eli sat in weeks before and it scrapes against the tiles. The floor beneath me pulses with the beat of the turned-up bass from the music downstairs. My steps fall in time with the rhythm. I take the seat, and this time it’s not Eli sitting across from me, but my father.
We’re eye to eye. His green ones peer into Mom’s blue ones. There’re a million questions in my head. A heart full of anger, rage that belongs to a man, but there are times when I’m before my father that a part of me feels like I’m ten.
A cramping in my gut.
Ten.
Years have passed. My body has aged. Knowledge has been gained, but a piece of my soul has remained frozen.
The board’s right—I’ve never moved past Mom.
“Did you love her?” I ask.
Dad jolts as if the question shocks him.
“You fought,” I continue. “A lot. So tell me if you fucking loved her.”
Dad rests his arms on the table and leans toward me. “I loved her more than I loved anything else in my life. You’re my son, and you’ve gone through hell, but ever question my love for her again and I’ll lay you out.”
I nod and on the outside I’m still as stone, but that ten-year-old boy on the inside collapses in tears. Lots of tears. Tears that I have never fucking shed.
“I was on the phone with her while they chased her,” he says. “I listened to her as she was begging for me to help. I listened as she understood we weren’t going to get there fast enough and I listened as she told me that she loved me and you more than she loved her own life. Did I love her? Yeah, I loved her and I had to listen helplessly as the woman I loved died.”
I drop my head into my hands and wetness burns my eyes. She loved me. My mother loved me.
“Your mother drew the Riot away,” says Cyrus in a quiet voice that’s too sorrowful for the loud noises seeping in from below. “When she came out of work, she found the code stuck under her windshield and she knew the Riot was near. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it was bad. She called your father, he told her to get to the clubhouse, but she refused to go there.”