“I do understand. You’re one of the very few I trust at this point and I promise you we won’t jeopardize anything, okay?”
She hung up and shrugged at me, one palm swung up to the ceiling. “I guess we’re good to go. He’s covering.”
With her dark eyebrows raised and her gray eyes wide, I knew she was surprised. She didn’t realize her sway, how much power she had, but also how much she appealed to people. They wanted to be a part of Katalina’s inner circle, she just had to have the confidence to ask them. This was going to be bad but it was going to be fixed. I knew deep in my bones, I wasn’t getting rid of something we’d made together.
When we got to the club, two of the doormen held New Reign’s doors open for us.
Katie walked in but her footing faltered when she saw Dante, Cade, and Bastian in a room with Jett and Jax.
“You called everyone, didn’t you?” she grumbled under her breath.
“All your boys that matter.”
She sighed and her hand shook as she wiped it across her forehead. “I’ll be calling Ivan tonight, then, I guess. We need a plan with my family too.”
“The bratva isn’t your family. I am.” I wove my hand through hers. Katie put on a good show, but her heart was beating fast. Mine was too. My skin against hers seemed to soothe her shaking, and the beast in me calmed.
The queen and her monster.
We were power and chaos bound together. Our dark pasts drove us to darker futures, and we were going to have to fight through the dead of the night to come out on the other side. Or maybe it’d swallow us up and that’s where we’d remain: her ruling and me ripping apart those who threatened us.
Bastian sat at the head of the table and this time I hesitated to go stand behind him. Suddenly, I was pulled in two directions. Katie had always been someone who could take care of herself. Our relationship had been volatile, but I knew my loyalty lay next to Bastian and that she was protected under his rule. In all our hearts, she was still one of us even if she was part of the bratva too.
Now, though, there was an innocent bystander. A baby in her belly. In the belly of a woman Bastian wasn’t exactly sure he could trust. He wanted to. I saw how badly he wanted to, but they weren’t connected. Not like I was to her. No one felt Katalina’s claws and how she hooked them in quite like I did.
“Rome?” Bastian tilted his head at me, not sure why I stood there frozen.
* * *
The frigid nightwind bit into each of us as we stood in the rain near the loading docks. Storage crates the size of small homes surrounded us, the city traffic noise in the distance.
My father had been jittery all day and when he jumped at a car honking in the distance, I eyed him curiously.
“It’ll be time soon,” Mario murmured.
He was talking about a drug shipment coming in. It was the last of many that month, but we were slowing pulling out. The FBI had been tracking us too closely to continue and we’d embedded ourselves in other businesses. We had hackers controlling gas valves and security for nuclear bombs. We had access to laundering money, deals with big companies, casinos, and we had completely legal dealings with the Stonewoods. There was no reason to continue with the drugs.
“Yes, it’ll be time very soon.” My father said the words with venom and he moved quicker than most everyone.
Except my father’s every thought was one I could see coming.
He’d trained me.
But I’d gone beyond what he’d taught. I’d lived with him since birth. I’d endured beatings and whippings and burnings at his hand. I’d been left locked in closets for days. I’d moved just the way he wanted me to and learned his emotions to save myself.
When he found me too old to punish, he immersed me in this life. His praise for the way I killed drove me to kill even better. I avoided his punishment by inflicting my own.
At this point in my life, I met his cruelty with strategy and outmaneuvered him most of the time.
I saw his plan before he could implement and strike.
Before he could pull the trigger, I’d pulled mine.
He fell to the ground, the white in his eyes so bright in the night with surprise. “You shot me.”
“You betrayed the family.”
“I am your family,” he whispered, clutching his chest with one hand and looking down at the gun in his other hand. He gazed up at me and then back down at the weapon, as if measuring the time it would take to bring his own son down to death with him.