Looking up at the stars, I thought of Colt and the boys who were currently in a jail cell. I thought of the rough, thin blankets they had to sleep with and the men who might try to shank them in the night, or strangle them with their bare hands. It was a fight for life for them.
No one did well locked up, but I knew it was worse for Colt and his brothers. They rode on motorcycles so they could feel the wind on their cheeks, breathe in the fresh air as their bikes ate up miles of road and they believed in their souls that authority figures had no right to rule over sovereign men.
Lawless brothers penned in by laws.
The back door opened and my solitude was interrupted, but I didn’t mind. I hadn’t liked the direction of my thoughts, knowing any moment they’d slip from gentle musings to downright melancholic.
Knight pulled up a lawn chair and sat down beside me. I glanced at him, noting his exhaustion. Tension lined his mouth.
I silently handed him the bottle of Jack. He took it and drank.
“You don’t bother with cups?” he asked with a wry glint in his eyes.
“Just another dish to wash.”
He handed the bottle back to me. I’d never been the type of girl just to drink liquor straight from the bottle, but things changed.
I changed.
“He’s not going to be happy when he hears what’s about to go down—with you involved,” Knight said, his tone deceptively mild.
“Yeah, I don’t envy Gray being the one to tell him tomorrow.”
I’d wanted to visit Colt myself, but Gray and Torque quickly nixed the idea. Saying it would be worse for Colt, who didn’t want me to ever see him confined like a caged animal.
Oddly enough, I hadn’t pushed against the edict. My mind wandered through a weird state of limbo. It bounced around from past, to present, to future. To outcomes. To a time when we were all together, and this shit with Dev was a vision in the rearview mirror.
“I have no right,” he said softly, “to tell you what you can or can’t do. I have no right to tell you I wish you weren’t involved in any of this. I have no right to tell you that I think you should’ve taken Silas and run like hell of out Waco.”
I slowly turned my head to look at him. “But if you did have the right? Why would you tell me to run? This is my home. My family.” I paused. “My legacy.”
“This is also your life we’re talking about.” He leaned over and placed his elbows on his knees, his gaze dark, questioning.
“Say whatever you want to say,” I commanded. “Even if you don’t think you should.”
“I just met you, Mia. I just found out I have a kid. You don’t need a dad. You’re an adult. You grew up fine without me.” He swallowed like something painful was lodged in his throat. “But I am your father. And my job is to protect you. I can’t—I don’t know what’s going to happen with you being involved with all this shit, but it’s got me thinking the worst.”
I paused. “That I won’t live.”
He nodded his head in agreement. “If you die, it’ll break them. It’ll break us. Colt. Silas. Me.”
“Don’t put any of that on yourself. It’s not your choice.” My tone wasn’t forceful or even angry. It was flat, cool, like river water over pebbles.
He ran a hand across his face and then held out his other for the bottle, which I gave him.
“This is my shit to clean up,” I told him. “For Cheese. For Shelly. But most of all, for me. Dev will keep taking people from me unless I stop him. It’s more than that, though. I need to see it. With my own two eyes. I need to know he’s been put down and he can’t hurt me anymore. I can’t—I haven’t been able to grieve Shelly the way I need to. It’s like,”—I looked away from him to stare once again at the night sky—“there’s a wall and she’s behind it. There’s no door, no handle. She’s blocked off, and I can’t get to her to grieve until I do this.”
“You think being part of Dev’s death is the dynamite that will blast that wall down?”
I nodded. “I can do this. I have to do this. Or I’ll never find a way to be at peace with her death. Does that make me crazy? Does that sound insane?”
“No. It doesn’t sound insane,” he said softly. “But I’ve got news for you. You never really get over the pain of losing someone—you just figure out a way to live around it.”
I paused a moment. “Are you talking about my mother?”
“Maybe. But Scarlett didn’t die. I let her go. It’s different than what you’re going through.”
I nodded, getting lost in thought again.
“Do you want to be left alone?” he asked.
“Yeah. I do.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He stood and walked toward the back door.
His hand was on the knob when I called out, “Dad …”
Knight turned slowly. “Yeah?”
“You’re never too old to need a father.” I lifted the bottle to my lips and drank deeply. Knight waited another moment and then with a creak of the screen door, disappeared.
Chapter 29
The next evening I walked into an Iron Horsemen club wearing a little black dress. And because I was a biker’s woman, my little black dress was made of leather. It was a halter, and it clearly showed off the ink on my shoulder.
I’d paired the dress with leather ankle boots with silver metal studs and spikes and a matching black studded clutch. Unfortunately, the purple cast on my wrist detracted just a bit from the bad-assery. But Ramsey assured me it would absolutely make Dev think I was weak and incapable of taking him down. The cast, he said, was an asset.
There was no room for any sort of weapon on me anywhere, and though I didn’t like going into a wolf’s den unarmed, I knew I’d have to in order to set my plan in motion.
I passed the bar and ignored the writhing bodies on the dance floor. I glanced up at the second story of the club and saw two Iron Horsemen lording over their holdings.
I quickly found the stairs and slowly approached both men wearing leather cuts. Every square inch of skin that I could see, aside from their faces, was inked.
There was a door at the other end of the balcony, which I knew— thanks to a hacker friend of Flynn’s who got us the floor plans—was Dev’s private green room. An office and a place to play cards where he could kick back and relax.
The two men slid around me, halting my progress.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the one standing behind me purred.
“I’ve got a meeting with your president.”
The oaf looming in front of me clucked his tongue. “They’ve already got entertainment for the evening.”
“But we don’t.” The one behind me reached out to grasp my hip and pulled me back into his hard body. I felt the evidence of his enjoyment, but I didn’t react.
“He’ll want to see me. Tell him it’s Mia.” I looked at the peon in front, watching his eyes widen in understanding. The goon behind me released me like he’d grabbed a hot poker straight from a fire.
The thug turned to stride down the hall. He knocked once on the door and then entered, shutting the door behind him. A few moments later, the door opened again, this time all the way and he gestured for me to come forward.