Page 65 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
No, no, Gidge, think! Think hard.
I’ve always been good at reading people, ever since I was a kid. Comes with the territory, I think. My sisters and I were always surrounded by monsters, but ones flying our banner, our colors. We had to look carefully, through the leather and the beards and the tattoos, to the hearts underneath.
Grey … there’s a heart there. I’ve seen it. He wouldn’t have declared his love for me after our capture if he didn’t have one. There were a million and one easier, much simpler ways for him to get out of being labelled a rat. Pretending to be head over heels for the daughter of a motorcycle club president who slaughtered his own brother for the very same reason … not the easiest. But, since it was the only way to save me, he did it.
There’s a similar thread here.
“They drove a van of explosives into the front gate,” Sin tells me after checking his phone. His silver eyes—so similar in color yet so different in composition when compared to Grey’s—zero in on me. “Never in my life have I wished so hard for you to be gone,” he adds, surprising me.
The abrupt change in subject makes me blink back at him in shock. All the while, my mind is spinning, desperately searching for ways to save my best friend’s life from … my other best friend? Ugh. Goddamn you, Grey. But if he picked Reba, then he did it for a reason. Likely, the Don had his people look into me. It wouldn’t take much digging to see that I have few friends, that Reba is one of the only constants in my crazy life.
“What?” I blurt, stepping back and hitting my knees against the edge of an old bench. I end up sitting down hard on its dusty surface. The basement, as such an obvious space to begin a search of any kind, is clean. And by clean, I simply mean that there aren’t any bodies in it, just a shit ton of my grandmother’s crap. Antique mirrors that reflect Sin and me back a million times over, bouncing our image from the back corner to the cracked glass near the stairs to the huge dressing mirror against the far wall.
“Fucking hell, Gidget,” he groans, putting his head in his hand. “This isn’t the life that I wanted for you.”
He’s the first one to say it. Nellie wants me here. Cat does. Even Beast and Crown and Grainger, they want me here, might even think this is the best place for me. But not Sin. Never Sin.
“Take me to Reba’s house,” I blurt back, but he just laughs at me, this twisted, awful sort of sound.
“Not on my life,” he growls right back, and I can see that he’s going to get stubborn with me. Sometimes, I forget that even though Sin is the youngest of these assholes, that he’s just as dangerous. You do not get to be an officer—even if it’s ‘just’ a road captain—in your early twenties unless you know how to play the right games, make the right allies, please the right old-timers.
When I said ‘Road Captain’ was like travel agent, I was being cheeky. Road captain is more like being a fixer, someone who watches political lines and is very, very careful not to cross them. Sin’s job is to scout routes for the club to travel on, ways to get to rallies, ways to meet with potential clients or negotiations with enemies. He picks what roads they ride on, what hotels they sleep in, even what bars they drink in.
In our world, if you visit the wrong bar or you fly colors on the wrong street, it can be akin to a declaration of war. It can get people killed. It can destroy allegiances. Don’t park in front of the wrong clubhouse, don’t travel on the wrong road after dark, don’t piss anybody off. That’s his job. It requires an attention to detail that’s staggering.
“Please,” I beg, because I know that if Grey left me a message, it’ll be there. Only I’ll understand it. Only I should see it. Besides, Fem … I can’t stop thinking about my damn dog. It makes me realize yet again how terribly weakening love can be. It’s this soft spot in your shell, this gentle place that answers the question what is the point of life? but also leaves you vulnerable in a way that aches.
That’s me, to these men. So if I have to kick them in the soft spot to get them to move, I’ll do it.
“You don’t understand—” I begin as I rise to my feet, but apparently, that was the absolute wrong thing to say. The sweet, gentle Sin that hugged me from behind the other day, he’s gone. He’s absolutely furious with me.
