Page 14 of Dreadful

My gaze flicks to Rafe. Would he do it? Part of me wants to believe he’d look at her and say no. But hope is a luxury I stopped affording a long time ago. And if he refused… what would that cost him?

What does loyalty to this family actually demand?

Lola’s arm presses into mine, and the garage snaps back into focus.

“Devil’s Hand and Widowmakers.” Cruz’s brows lift. “Allies?”

“Seemed friendly enough.” Rafe rolls his neck once, slowly, like he’s working out a kink.

“To what end?” Bishop murmurs, his gaze narrowing like he’s trying to see the answer written on the garage door.

"Fuck if I know," Rafe drawls. He stands just behind my right shoulder. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him. I don’t remember him moving there.

Bishop keeps staring. "What'd they say?"

“The usual shit. Turned messy quick.”

Bishop’s gaze snaps to Rafe. “How messy?”

Something shifts at the corner of Rafe’s mouth. It’s not quite a smile but close. “Enough.”

Cruz lets out a slow breath through his nose. “Fuck.”

“Should we expect retaliation?” Bishop’s gaze cuts to Rafe, his grip shifting on the back of the chair until his knuckles go white again.

“Crowe’s been waiting a long time to take a shot at us,” Rafe says.

The words land somewhere in my chest. I heard Crowe say something almost exactly like that, right before the shooting started. The overhead light pulses once—or maybe that’s me. I press my weight into my back foot and the concrete tilts anyway.

Gage’s eyes find me over his shoulder. He looks at me for a beat, then shoves off the workbench. “It’s late. Everyone’s running hot. We pick this back up in the morning.”

“We’re not done,” Bishop says flatly.

“She took a bullet tonight, man,” Gage argues.

Something moves through Bishop’s expression, too fast to name. “Then maybe your little girlfriend should sit the grown-up conversations out. Or is she Rafe’s now? It’s hard to keep up.” His eyes don’t move to me when he says it. That’s almost worse.

The air in the garage changes.

Gage shifts to face Bishop fully, unfolding his arms and dropping to his sides. The deliberateness of it—the way his fingers curl closed, one at a time—is somehow louder than anything he could have said.

“The fuck is your problem.”

Bishop pivots toward him, taking a single step toward him. “My problem, brother, is that one unpredictable motorcycle club is a loaded gun. Two might as well be a fucking death sentence. We have four fucking people in our family to their hundred?”

I interrupt before I can stop myself. “Five.”

Bishop turns toward me. "What?"

“You said four.” I hold his stare. “But I'm standing right here.”

Something in me wants to take it back the second it leaves my mouth.

Bishop’s eyes settle on me with the particular patience of someone deciding how much to bother. “You took a bullet meant for Rafe, but that doesn’t make you family.” He turns back to his brothers like punctuation. “Don’t confuse the two.”

I don’t move. I keep my expression neutral the way I’ve learned to, the way that costs less than the alternative. But there’s a specific quality to being looked through by someone you’ve started to let matter, and Bishop has always been precise about it—like he knows exactly where to aim for efficiency.

I knew where I stood. I’ve always known where I stood.