Cat maintains his position, his face an unreadable mask, his pain hidden beneath all those pesky layers of his, the shields he puts up to protect himself from the dark nature of the life he lives.
With a dry, caustic laugh, Cat lowers the weapon, engages the safety, and slips it back into his holster.
“I should’ve fucking known,” he growls out, stroking his hand over his beard as Crown drops his own weapon. He doesn’t put it away, however, just points it at the floor. “I suspected as much, but I thought you had more brains than that.” Cat adjusts his stare over to his vice president. “Never pegged you as the sort of man who’d let pussy get ahold of his balls.”
“This is about more than that,” Crown tells my father, completely stone-faced, completely serious. That’s the thing about him. He’s a romantic. He’s also a cold-blooded killer who knows exactly what being a Daybreaker means. He’s just willing to use violence and dominance to protect the romance. “If it were just about sex, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
My father sneers at his vice president before turning back to me. He slides Gaz’s phone from his pocket and bile rises in my throat. Cat selects a photo before tossing the phone onto the coffee table in front of me. I hesitate before picking it up.
My father watches me like he wants to kill me.
“Take a look at this and tell me why I shouldn’t have the club come over here so the five of you can hang from a tree? I’ll even string your pretty redheaded friend up to sway in the wind beside you.”
“If you’re asking why I think you haven’t told the rest of the club yet, all I can say is that it’s a brilliant political move,” Crown continues, taking up the tense silence as I lift the phone up and stare down at a picture of myself on Crown’s bike, Grey clinging to me.
The photo was taken from in front of us, just as I rounded that corner into a roadblock of mafia men. This is dashcam footage from one of the Grey Wolfe Cadillacs; Gaz is an idiot. He helped put a nail in his own coffin by choosing to show this to our father.
Even though the details are a little blurry, if you know what you’re looking for, you can see everything. The teal and white Chieftain Classic, the bloodied mafia boy … me in a short skirt with pretty legs.
I turn the screen off and lift my gaze to meet Cat’s.
My entire future hinges on this moment.
“We can’t handle infighting and accusations while still battling the mafia,” Crown adds, refusing to put his weapon away. Can’t quite believe he actually put that gun to his president’s head for me, but … I’ll take it. I can’t fight my father on my own. “That, and we lost a lot of people today. How many? Fifty-two?”
Holy shit. Fifty-two?!
It’s close enough to the forty-six people that the club slaughtered during my wedding to Grey to be considered a fair trade.
I’m terrified to find out if there are any familiar faces among the dead. You know, besides the sibling that my father shot.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” I ask him, my voice low and disconnected. Cat stares at me in a way that he never has before, and that terrifies me. He’s still looking at me as if that’s a possibility. “I saved Grey; I’m not ashamed of that. You wanted me to hand you the last of my humanity; you wanted to tie me to the club with blood.”
Cat laughs at that, and I’m suddenly thankful for the coffee table between us. If he has to, Crown should be able to shoot my father before he lays a finger on me. My own gun was recovered from the clubhouse wreckage; I have it hanging on my hip, but I doubt I could ever outdraw Leroy Kesselring.
“All the while you’re fucking my officers?” he asks me, tilting his head like he’s trying to take my measure. Like I’ve surprised him, maybe. “You tied yourself to this club, baby doll.”
“I was willing to marry Grey and take over the mafia if that’s what had to happen.” I lift my chin, and even though I’m sure I look like a mess, and I still hurt all over, I’ve never felt stronger on the inside. Never. “So long as all the right people were punished for Queenie’s and Posey’s deaths.” I narrow my eyes on my father, voicing aloud for the first time everything I’ve bitten my tongue against. “You didn’t have to kill Kian. That’s on you. That’s on Gaz.”
My father smiles at me, and the expression makes me cold in a way that no warmth will ever be able to reach. Not the warmth of these men. Not the strength I’m finding in myself. It’s a void, like the darkness of space. Impossible. Endless. Terrifying.
