Chapter 12
TWELVE
Ruin
“Can’t it wait, Prez?”
The way Mama says Prez has my hackles rising. Every time she calls Wolf that, it makes me realize she’s refused to call him Dane for the last two years. It’s either Prez, or Wolf on rare occasions.
“I…”
The man hesitates. God!
“It’s fine, Mama,” Charlotte whispers, gently squeezing her arm.
Jesus Christ. I didn’t know she had taken up calling my Mama, her Mama too. I thought she was still calling her ‘Mama Deb’ as others did.
I bet my cheeks are still sporting that stupid blush I can’t hide. Fuck, I should’ve decided to keep a beard this whole time.
Dad gives Charlotte and Wolf a quick, tight smile.
The moment seems more for her benefit than Wolf’s and I feel the warmth of it all.
At least this club has some people she still believes would stand beside her.
Even if she doesn’t consider me one of them, I’d still back her up.
But all that makes me realize I had failed once, for years.
The second she follows behind Wolf to his office, I gently press my hand at the small of her back without thinking. If I had, I’d have fucking anticipated her reaction. I freeze as her whole body flinches violently, yanking herself away from my touch.
I don’t miss the glare she throws at me before ramping up her pace toward the office.
I have no idea how to even get a word in, let alone apologize to her for all the shitty decisions I made.
Every time I try to plan it in my head, I imagine her as an impenetrable wall with blanked eyes.
Eyes that used to show a lot more before we all fucked up.
All my remorse and guilt momentarily vanishes when I see Spike at the corner of my vision. Rage consumed me again as it did a few minutes ago. I’d let Wolf handle it and even let Charlotte guide the decision. But the consequences don’t sit right in my gut.
I viciously grab him by his cut, while he’s turned away from me and pin him between the wall and my unforgiving arm. “See me in the ring in thirty minutes.”
His gaze darts toward a smirking Healer and I realize he’s looking for some level of backup. “Look at me, you asshole. You made a mistake with Charlotte. So now you meet me there in thirty. Got it?”
The thump is loud when I bang him against the wall again.
“Ruin, I—”
“Consider yourself a prospect for the next six months. We’ll reevaluate then,” I add, my face twisting with fury.
The moment I turn, I find myself face to face with a frowning Charlotte, arms crossed against her chest. She huffs loudly, glancing at Wolf. “You let your VP do anything, huh, Prez?”
I see a small wince take over Wolf’s face, but he’s aching to answer her. “When it comes to you, yes. I don’t want anyone—”
I see the moment her face does a one-eighty, from mild anger to a complete amusement.
“When it comes to me?” She raises a brow at her brother. Although I doubt she considers him as one. “Oh, you mean when—”
Wait… no. Jesus! Fuck no.
“—he dragged me out of his room and banned me from the club properties for a month? When you stood by and said nothing? Like then?”
Blood drains from my face. She omitted the part where I humiliated her with the way I dragged her out naked. I can see memory washing over her in a shiver.
With everything going on, how could I forget that one sin that changed the way Charlotte ever looked at me?
I remember when we went to grab her from Sinful Chugs.
Confident in our investigation she was skimming the register.
All I can see now is her horrified face whimpering her brother’s legal name.
What I don’t remember is my thought process. What was it? The jumbled words from Ryder saying he had confirmed the deposits into her and Glory’s bank accounts, were the only things running in my head.
I stare at Wolf who is equally at loss for words.
“Charlotte, can we—”
She cuts me off. “Let’s just get this conversation over with. Whatever you do with this club and its members doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
With that last parting shot, she shoulder-checks Wolf and sprints toward his office. Leaving me and my Prez wondering what the fuck can we do that seems even remotely in favor of our true self. Our… guilt.
A few minutes later, Charlotte, Wolf, and I settle into our chairs. I can feel nervous energy coming off of Charlotte.
Wolf isn’t faring any better, because he keeps opening and closing a certain folder on his desk. “I’ll just…” He sighs, digging the heels of his palms into his already wrecked eyes. “I’ll just go out and read this statement, okay?”
I sneak a glance at Charlotte who is completely rigid by this point. Wolf has gone through most of Savage’s will, including the funeral arrangements and cremation directives. But all she reacted with was boredom, at best.
Wolf clears his throat nervously. “To my sole heir, Dane Alexander Wentley, I leave one hundred percent of the following: my property assets, the stocks and the profits incurred from all the shares I own in the seventeen companies under my name, and my businesses under the corporation, Wardens Inc.” He looks up at her briefly.
“That’s the club, really, and its associated businesses. ”
She’s frowning at the table now, arms still crossed, eyes failing to stay in one spot.
“There’s more, but nothing that’s…” Wolf swallows hard, as if the words are as unfailingly futile as the letters he keeps sending his sister.
My mind whirrs with possibilities of what this means. The bastard left nothing for Charlotte. Even had the audacity to call Dane his sole heir. The only.
Fucking hell. Does that mean—
Charlotte scoffs, and I can see the tears pooling in her eyes even as she tries to shrug. “Makes sense why he treated me like I was nothing to this MC. I actually wasn’t, huh. He’s not my father, I’m guessing? I’m nothing, then? Yeah?”
My mouth parts at the way her immediate thoughts form. This is her only logical conclusion. I know it’s mine too—and probably Wolf’s—but the amount of self-focus it takes to arrive at this? I’m in awe of her. And thoroughly devastated.
Wolf narrows his eyes. “You are. You’re still my sister, Charlotte.”
“Half-sister.”
“My sister,” he grits out. “It doesn’t matter because he never explicitly said it, but—”
“It’s implied, Wolf,” she says, her voice taking a resigned tone I don’t like. “I didn’t need it anyway. Not his inheritance, not the stakes in the club, not the love he didn’t even have—”
“He didn’t love you, sure. In fact, he wasn’t capable of it, anyway, Charlotte.
” I finally speak up, my voice hardened to stone.
“But he’s not the one building this club anymore.
You’re Wardens’. End of.” I say it with more confidence than I feel, but I’m thoroughly put in my place when she plants a deadpan stare at me.
I hear Wolf, but my focus is on the way she’s dissecting my actions and words.
“It doesn’t matter what… Savage thought. You’re my sister regardless. And I won’t… I won’t let harm come to you, Charlotte.”
Her frown deepens before she looks over at her brother. “I understand I’m not entirely safe anywhere, but I’ll need you to be transparent. Apart from Glory, who’s after me? What club was she with? I need to know.”
“Ryder is still checking—” I start, but I’m effectively cut off by Wolf’s sharp tongue.
“I won’t hide anything from you. We think the patch you drew belongs to Hell’s Army.”
I hear her gasp, her eyes widening. And I know she knows who they are.
“…and we believe Glory might have been a plant since before you came to us. So my next questions really need to be—”
“About Glory? How I may have worked with her—”
“No!”
I hear Wolf as my gut blurts out, “Fucking hell!”
She leans back into her chair, studying the both of us with a gaze I’m not sure how to interpret. She looks terrified but also extremely confused.
“Charlotte, we just… we need to know what happened before you joined the Wardens.”
She rightfully huffs. “Before I was forcefully brought here by your father, you mean.”
Neither of us have any retort to her correction. So we just stare. Wolf looks at her with a plea I don’t fully understand. I know what I wish for, but I can’t comprehend what he wants from his sister who actively hates him.
“Well,” she says hesitantly. “I don’t know if this will help with the whole Glory situation, but I learned in the past two years she was definitely manipulating me. So much so that… I’m sorry, I can’t tell you what she’s really like. She just made herself look as abandoned by the club as I felt.”
I watch Wolf flinch, but I barely let myself experience that pain. My eyes close of their own accord. I recall all the times I laid the blame on a young teen, when she was all but being led astray by a whore.
“Before that,” she continues as she shrugs, “I don’t remember much.
My mother—our mother, I’m guessing—” She looks at Wolf blankly.
“—was a bitch. Sandra Wentley barely paid attention to anyone but herself. I’d go hungry for days at a time.
I was asking my neighbor to fill parental forms for the school, by the time I turned ten.
She was… busy. With men. Then later, I was here. That’s all I remember.”
Christ. She never had anyone. The shame coursing through me settles in like lead in my gut. I can’t imagine having a parent who didn’t give a fuck. My parents—even though they were strict—never neglected me. And Charlotte was handed the worst cards right from the beginning.
I glance at Wolf again, who’s looking every bit of a Prez right now. “Did you see anyone coming to your house when you were with your—our mother? Anyone suspicious?”
I nod to myself. The question seems more logical than I would’ve asked. Because everything in me is boiling with rage at what we did to a fourteen-year-old, who was thrusted into a life she was barely prepared for.
Which is why it takes me a second to realize Charlotte is adjusting—and readjusting—in her seat. Her fingers digging into her palm hard enough to leave indents.
“It was…” she croaks. “Just normal. Men coming in and out. I don’t remember it all.”
My God. She’s hiding something. What the fuck happened that she’s relegating to her vulnerable self in front of us, the men she considers the last people to care for her?
“Even a small detail, Charlotte,” Wolf says gently. “It might help. I wanna know who’s after you so I can protect y—”
“The club,” she sneers.
“You,” he says, not caring the way Charlotte is glaring at him, grimacing with distrust.
“Just men. That’s all. There were so many, I lost count. I knew it because I…” She pales and her body drains with a realization that doesn’t sit well with me. Her mouth drying up enough she rubs her lips together, her teeth and tongue brutally biting them with a frantic rhythm.
“Because?” I whisper after a tense pause. “Tell us, baby. We’ll figure it out.”
Something in my words makes her jolt out of the brittle stupor.
Rage takes over almost immediately. “Because the moment they came,” she snaps as she stands up, looming over me, “I was shoved into the back closet in the second bedroom. I couldn’t…
couldn’t make a fucking noise. For the f-first few times I did, I got punished.
My Maa—our Maa—” She almost spits at Wolf.
“—was embarrassed I kept crying and sobbing while she was… doing whatever the fuck she wanted. So it was easier.” A broken sobs escapes her, and I can see she’s barely holding on.
“Easier for her to just shove a-a sock in-in my m-mouth… s-so I don’t scream…
so my voice is… or…” She pauses. Her words, her glare, even her fucking breath.
Wolf vibrates with uncontrollable fury, but my focus isn’t on him. It’s on Charlotte and what she just revealed. God. We had her gagged. I asked a random prospect to shove a rag in her mouth when I thought she was guilty. And I can see as memories hit her. She’s not even covert anymore.
I jump when she lets out a strangled scream. Her hands gripping her hair like she’s barely ever voiced the things she just did.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. If that’s what was going on, then our club must’ve seemed like a fake sanctuary, the lesser evil.
“SHUT… SHUT UP!” she roars, her nostrils flaring, veins popping out her temple. It seems as though they’re not her words seething out her throat.
I want to hold her, make her pause before she collapses with the enraging past settling on her spine. But I’m too late.
She’s looking at the both of us, eyes clearing up with each second. She shrugs like none of it ever happened. “I don’t know who came in. Who left. Who stayed. I wasn’t there to see their fucking faces or hear their… their… names, I guess.” Her chest is heaving by the end.
And I don’t even realize I’ve already stood up, hovering near her even though she’s maintaining a colossal distance between us.
“Figure it out yourself, Prez. You’re all the fucking same.” Her last biting words echo through the walls, even when she walks out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame.
I stand there, unconcerned about what my fucking Prez thinks. Because my loyalty is shifting. It doesn’t belong to the club anymore.
It’s hers now. And I feel the shift snap into place with a clawing rupture.
But I’ve also finally realized I’m one of the men she now associates with them. The burn in my chest is reminiscent of the redness clouding Wolf’s eyes.
I don’t care anymore. I’m not moving at his fucking pace. I’ll find my own.