Though I knew the situation was serious, I wanted to choke out a laugh. Asking Luke to forsake his badge and his morals by helping the club he despised to commit murder was like expecting Cade to cooperate with a police investigation.
Luke’s gaze and entire body hardened. “My father may do that shit, but not me. I can’t turn a blind eye to this.” I felt his pause, his struggle, when, for less than a second, his gaze flickered to me. He was putting the pieces together too. Hesitation. That hesitation gave me the hope I’d been waiting for all my life, that little piece to go with my collection of moments that told me maybe there was something inside him that felt what I felt.
I stopped believing in hope before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. That didn’t mean it didn’t puncture me when his shoulders stiffened and the gun continued to point in Lucky’s direction. “Don’t make me shoot you.”
Like me, Luke didn’t do empty threats. I knew he didn’t want to shoot Lucky. If pressed, like maybe if someone was removing some fingernails, he might admit he actually liked Lucky. It was impossible not to. Though he looked like a cold-blooded murderer, and certainly was one, he had an infectious smile and the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.
He was soft, under all that hard. With the biggest heart you’d ever see.
Which was why he was able to break every barrier Bex put up after she was attacked. Why he went through his own personal Hell after rescuing her too late. Why he waited months for her to even speak to him. Did everything in his power to heal her, give her whatever tainted happiness was left for her.
And she got that. My broken friend was put back together mostly thanks to her own strength, but also thanks to the kind of man who killed every single person responsible for hurting her.
She was his world. And he was hers.
Which was why she glared at Luke, looking ready to scratch his eyes out, gun or no gun. “Dude, in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s already been fucking shot,” she snapped, not betraying any outward trauma of being in the middle of yet another abduction. She was a diamond, she didn’t break easily. Or at all.
I wasn’t about to let Luke chip at that. I reached up to tug his shoulder, in a gesture to get his attention rather than actually physically stop him. I braced against the reaction I got from touching him.
“Luke, don’t do this. You know what he did. You know he deserves this. Just leave. Let us handle this.” My voice was small, as close to begging as I’d ever get.
Luke didn’t pause, didn’t react outwardly, if not for a twitch in his blue eyes. Not enough, though. “I can’t do that, Rosie,” he said, his voice still flat, simmering with doubt and unease. “I don’t want to, but I’ll shoot him if I have to.”
His voice may have been simmering with unease, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth. Whatever small changes were working within Luke weren’t going to destroy something that underpinned his entire character, his ultimate and unyielding view of the law.
My stomach was ash as I nodded, seeing that chasm between us once more, as if it had never been wider. “Yeah, I know,” I murmured, my hurt and heartbreak seeping into my voice.
I couldn’t let that moment be the one when I let this shit get me down. So I didn’t. I moved. Right in between Luke and Lucky, in front of the gun, shielding Lucky, shielding the club. I paused to give Luke a pointed look as his aim wavered. “But you won’t shoot me,” I said, that time with more strength and resolve.
I didn’t pause to regard what was in his eyes, the betrayal. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I had a job to do. One mustn’t think too much about the job of killing when it needed to be done. I learned that after, because I didn’t think hardly at all when I crossed the room, pulled my handgun out of my purse and discharged a single shot. One that found its home in Devon’s skull, ending it once and for all. Delivering the justice the club needed, while at the same time protecting them from the strong arm of the law.
A thick roar erupted in my ears after I did it. Killed a man. Despite my upbringing, I’d never done that before—well, at least not as intimately. I wasn’t sheltered. I’d seen a lot. Almost all there was to see.
But killing was, until recently, a man’s job. Feminism may have gotten us equal pay and the vote, but in the Sons of Templar, murder was still exclusively a male-dominated industry.
The girls and I were shaking that up a bit.
I didn’t want them to; in fact, I wanted anything but to see myself through Luke’s eyes. Regardless of want, my gaze locked with his. Bile crept up my throat, not at the act of killing itself but seeing my reflection on Luke’s face.
“Holy fuck,” Lucky muttered, pride in his voice as he broke the deafening silence.
“You got that right,” Bex agreed, in a ‘you go, girl’ kind of tone.
I fought hard to keep my composure, not to break down as I put the final nail not in Devon’s coffin but in the one of that secret Luke and Rosie fantasy that had been dying a very slow death.
“You going to arrest me?” I asked flatly, already knowing the answer, though it broke my heart.
Luke didn’t speak, or couldn’t, I didn’t know which. He shook his head. And then, as if a weight pushed it down, he lowered his gun in a gesture of defeat. His eyes stayed on mine, communicating everything and nothing at the same time.
Then he turned his back on me and walked out.
I saved the club.
And broke my own heart in the process.
Bravo, Rosie.
But wasn’t that what love was?
Destroying yourself for the sake of others?
My hands were shaking as I struggled to put the key in my lock.
The hands that pulled the trigger on a gun. Ending a man’s life.
Splattering his brains all over the floor.
I killed someone.
The sentence came from inside my head, spoken by a strange disembodied voice that didn’t seem at all familiar. Spoken by the person, the monster, I’d created in that split second.
I’d seen plenty of dead bodies. Kept company with plenty of murderers, otherwise known as my family. Death himself was like that horrible uncle who gave you the heebie-jeebies but turned up unexpectedly, never telling you how long he was staying before he left so you could relax, forgetting he existed until he returned again.
Now he was there, breathing down my neck as I fumbled with my keys, putting a shadow on the day that I was sure had been cloudless before.
Before I’d killed a man.
But the worst thing was that wasn’t why my hands were trembling, why my mouth was dry, stomach full of bile.
The killing itself was horrible, but not that horrible. Not something that would follow me around forever. Maybe it was because something was broken in me. Whether it was a product of my upbringing or just nature, it didn’t matter. The killing didn’t. Not really.
It was because Luke watched as I did it. Watched me transition, finally, into the embodiment of everything he so despised.
Before that, I was sure he thought of me as a participant of the life he loathed. An unwilling one who had nature and biology to thank for my place in the club, and was therefore somehow removed from it all. Somehow cleaner.
Ending that bastard’s life saved the club. It also killed, messily and violently, any small, miniscule chance Luke and I had.