Page 77 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
That scares me because that’s how I think about my sisters. When they were alive, ehh. Posey and I were like oil and water; we fought a lot. After she died, I would spend hours, I would spend days, obsessing over the color of her earrings on the night of her senior prom. Or the name of the guy she first slept with. Or maybe the way she always touched her throat when she laughed.
Cat raps his knuckles on the doorframe before stepping into the room. Technically, Sin is still in charge of me for the night, but he’s sitting on the balcony, looking at the stars. We both knew Cat would stop in at some point tonight.
“You still alive?” he asks as I lift my eyes up to his sun-weathered face. Cat’s a pale ass motherfucker, but he tans well. That means whenever he changes his favorite brand of t-shirt, there are distinct lines between gold skin and milk white. Same deal for me. We really do have a lot in common, physical and otherwise, much as I hate to admit it.
“I’m impossible to kill,” I quip back, but we both know that isn’t true. Cat could kill me whenever he wanted to. Shit, if he had any idea—any idea at all—about what I did, I wouldn’t be here.
He pauses near the bed, watching me with an inscrutable gaze.
“Your brother thinks you’re a double agent or some shit,” he grumbles, watching me in a way that promises this is no casual visit. I’m being studied, examined. It’s not unsurprising, considering what happened this morning, but it’s scary nonetheless. “Why do you suppose he thinks that?”
“Because Gaz is crazy, and he’s hated me since I turned ten?” I suggest, shrugging my shoulders loosely. “Do you think I’d willingly assist the people who killed my sisters?” My voice is like ice as the implication sits in the air between us like early morning fog. I never take my eyes off my father’s; that would be a sign of weakness. Gidget Kesselring is anything but weak.
Cat thinks about that for a while. He’s like that, actually, very careful with his decisions. You wouldn’t think it, considering his appearance and the way he handles me, but in every other aspect of his life, he’s a calculating man.
“I don’t,” he agrees, almost reluctantly. There’s something in his eyes as he studies me, a quiet sort of desperation that I’m not sure I understand. Does he wish I were a traitor? That he could kill me in front of the club, and they’d all applaud him for the effort?
“Cat is your father; he’s as gray as they come.”
That’s what Beast said. It’s what he believes. Cat raided that cathedral to save me? I don’t believe it for a second. If anything, it’s because he had to save face with the club. Letting a rival not only steal your hostage but also your daughter out from under your nose? Crown’s lie changed everything about the world as I knew it.
“Any news about Reba?” I query, but I already know the answer before Cat even gives it. There won’t be any news about Reba unless I figure out what that key means. What the Palm Motel represents.
For now, the war will go on, hot and violent, blood running in the streets. I shiver and close my eyes for a moment.
My father reaches out and tugs the book from my hands, turning it around so that he can see what I was most definitely not reading.
“Jane Austen?” he scoffs with a bit of a drawl. It isn’t much, but where my father grew up in central Oregon, there’s some sort of accent that creeps in every now and again. “You’re kidding me. Never pegged you for a romantic.” He gives me a look. “Never thought you’d fuck my enforcer either. Gotta give it to you girl, you’ve got chops. You know how to work with what you’ve got.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” I say, quoting Pride and Prejudice. I’ve never read it, but Reba was obsessed. She spent the entirety of our freshman year spouting lines and dreaming of her very own Mr. Darcy.
Cat quirks a brow at me and tosses the book back into my lap.
“The wives are already afraid of you, and you haven’t even joined their ranks yet.” He snorts and shakes his head at me, reaching up and removing the bandana he wears over his graying hair. “You sure you don’t have anything else to tell me? Any other reason that Grey boy will deal with you and only you?” he asks, and this time, it’s a warning.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.
