“Bullshit,” my dad argues. “I didn’t pull that fucking trigger.”
I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of his words. He’s strung up in a fucking basement in the middle of the Ravens Ruin compound, and he’s arguing semantics? Molly mentioned her mother’s death before but only spoke of her being gone and how she was too young to remember much. She never went into details. I’d assumed it was a car accident or cancer. Before coming to the clubhouse, I presumed that’s how most people died too young. Now I know differently.
“I-I was p-planted,” I try to explain. The waver in my voice makes me think I’m lying myself. There’s no way anyone in this room is going to believe me. Their minds were made up long before TJ shoved me down here, but I can’t not try. I don’t want to die, but especially not for something I’m not guilty of. “I didn’t know anything about it until then, until my dad showed up and told me to get something on the club.”
I tap my foot on one of the pictures since TJ still has a death grip on my arms. I can’t worry about bruises since they won’t matter soon.
“So you’ve only been collecting intel for the last week and a half?”
“What?” My eyes meet Lynch’s. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”
The brokenness I saw on his face has faded away. He doesn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either. The evidence is pretty damning.
“I tried to leave,” I remind him. “You wouldn’t let me.”
TJ releases one of my arms, only to grab a chunk of my hair. He snaps my head back so hard my teeth dig into my bottom lip. The taste of blood fills my mouth a second later.
“We’re going to remedy that today,” TJ hisses in my ear.
Please let it be painless, I pray, knowing that my fate is already sealed.Chapter 37Lynch
“Let her go!” I roar when I see Candi’s tongue swipe her lips, leaving a trail of blood behind.
“Don’t go soft over a piece of pussy,” TJ counters with a chuckle I haven’t heard in years. His thirst for blood has grown over recent years, and the tone of his voice makes even me nervous.
“Dad always let the traitors explain,” I barter. Candi cringes at the title.
I know his knife is on his hip, right where it always is. In a split second, I could go from holding all the power in this room to being the one on my knees begging for my life. My baby brother is volatile, to say the least.
“She’s a whore, not a club member,” TJ argues. “The patch on those traitors’ backs is the only thing that has ever afforded them the luxury to explain. She doesn’t deserve another second alive for betraying us.”
“Let. Her. Go.”
To my surprise, TJ releases his brutal hold on her. The second she’s steady, her eyes find mine again. She’s silently begging me to save her, to not let my men tear her apart. If only she knew how little control I have over this situation. If only she knew the sacrifice I’ll make once her betrayal is avenged.
“How easy was this for you?” I ask instead. Tears fill her eyes, pooling on her dark lashes. “How disgusted you must have been last night telling me that you loved me.”
“Fucking whore,” Dietrich Miller spits behind me.
Spinning around, I sucker punch him in the nose so hard he almost falls off the stool. I stare, watching expectantly as he teeters before steadying himself. I expect to turn around and see her afraid for her dad, but her eyes are still on mine. She doesn’t spare him a glance. There’s something to that. Something thrilling about it that makes the angry tiger in me want to prove to him just how much control I have over her body, how it sings when I get close. Would she object if I stripped her bare and fucked her right in front of her dad? It may be enough to send the poor fucker leaping from the chair without one of us having to kick it out from underneath him.
“I didn’t say those things. I never would.”
Her denial rips me from the fantasy that’s only moments away from coming to fruition.
“Because it would be a lie?” My fists clench at my sides.
Her head drops, and her shoulders tremble with sobs. I almost reach for her, almost stretch out my hand to comfort her the way I did last night when she was sick.
“Because loving you is the only secret I have.” She tilts her tear-stained eyes in my direction. “Please do more research before you do this.”
I stand, staring at her for a lifetime without saying a word. Is it her hold on me, the tangled web I’ve been caught up in, or is it sincerity in her eyes? I’m too fucking emotionally damaged from the shit I’ve dealt with from birth to distinguish the difference. Whenever I’ve had these questions in the past, I go with instinct, seek and destroy, maim and kill, but this time I pause. Waiting for what? A divine intervention? A miraculous change in the evidence Hornet provided this morning before the sun even came up?