What about Shelly and what I’m going to have to do?
I pushed that thought down as far as it would go so I could focus on the here and now.
“Zip will act as president,” came Colt’s raspy voice. “Lockdown is back on. You’ll go back to the clubhouse and—”
“Like hell I will,” I replied.
Colt didn’t take his eyes off me when he said to Zip, “Give us a minute, will you?”
Zip wasn’t one to make a snarky reply; that was Boxer’s territory. The Blue Angels VP nodded and quietly exited the room, leaving Colt and I to duke it out in private.
“I can’t sit and wait, Colt,” I said. Though my tone was soft, it was threaded with steel. “I sit and I wait, and I worry. Do you know what it’s like to feel useless? To go from complete independence to not being able to make a single move without your boyfriend’s approval?”
“Dev is on a rampage,” he said, his tone laced with pain and anger. “He’ll stop at nothing now. Don’t you get it? He went after the innocent. He doesn’t give a shit now what happens. He started a war.”
“Yeah, and he made that war personal for me.” I pointed to the door. “Shelly is lying in a hospital bed and I have to—I have to sign the forms to let her go.”
Colt’s dark eyes brightened with intensity. “I get it, Mia. If anyone gets it, I do. I lost a brother today. We’re burying a twenty-five-year-old man who was as loyal as they come. You know what Zip told me? You know why Cheese died? Because he dove in front of his brother.”
My heart stuttered and then thawed a bit when I thought of Silas, Cheese’s younger sibling. Then my heart re-froze because Ihadto be cold. I had to stay clear headed.
“Have you cried?” Colt asked, pitching his voice low. “For your friend?”
“Cried? What good will that do?” I demanded.
He leaned back against the pillows and stared at me. “It’ll hurt worse, you know. Shoving it aside and dealing with it later.”
“I’ll deal with it when Dev is dead.”
He suddenly looked tired. In the span of a few minutes, Colt went from robust, iron fisted president to a man lying injured in a hospital bed.
“I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, am I?” Colt sighed, like he knew what was coming.
“I have to help get rid of him, Colt. I have to.”
“The truth, Mia. I want the entire truth.”
“That is the truth.”
“Is it? You just feel obligated to help get rid of him, or is there more to it than that?” he murmured.
I paused and then said, “He’s trying to take everything from me, Colt. My family, my freedom, my life. I have to… Iwantto…”
“Say it,” he growled. “Say it to me now. Tell me what it is you know you have to do or you’ll never be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”
“I have to see him die.”
The words slithered out of me like a snake hiding in the brush.
Foul, angry words.
Truthful words.
“It won’t bring Shelly back,” he said.
“No,” I agreed.
“I’m not sure it will make you feel any better, either.” He leaned his head back against the pillow and his eyes were glazed with pain. “But I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”