CHAPTER TWELVE
EDEN
I’ve never seen a grown man cry. I didn’t know my dad—not really—and Mum, who was basically both my parents rolled into one, never shed a tear, not even when the cancer pain made her scream into pillows.
Since joining the club, I’ve only ever seen men smash things, yell, drink, fight, fix, build. They don’t cry.
Until now.
Kade—my strong, solid, untouchable Kade—sits on the couch with his face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking silently.
I don’t go to him. I don’t touch him. I don’t even breathe too loudly. Because I genuinely don’t know how he feels about me right now. Maybe he’s disgusted. Maybe he sees me differently. Maybe he doesn’t believe me. And God knows, I barely believe myself.
So, I wait. I let him fall apart in his own time. And when his breathing finally steadies, I move quietly to the drink cabinet, and pour a large whisky.
He wipes his face. But his eyes remain swollen and red, and so full of pain.
“Will you tell me?” he murmurs.
I hand him the glass and sit beside him, but not too close. “All of it?”
He nods.
I swallow hard. “I remember being with the girls. They went to dance, and I sat with Martha. The barman brought over two glasses of wine, said a man at the bar bought them. It was too busy to see who. I shouldn’t have accepted it, but it was hot and the wine tasted nice.
” My voice shakes. “I’d never really seen the harm in it before.
” I force myself to continue. “Martha went to dance. I finished my drink. I went to find the toilets and everything just… twisted. My head. My eyes. I couldn’t focus.
A man told me the bathroom was through a door.
I didn’t see him clearly. I was so dizzy. The door led outside into an alley.”
I feel myself drifting, like I’m back there. Like I can smell the concrete and taste the panic.
“I remember I wanted to call Fern, to have her come find me. Then, I think I dropped my bag. He was suddenly there, and he smashed my phone on purpose. He called me Queenie.” A sob rips out of me before I can stop it.
“I thought it was you,” I whisper. “I couldn’t hear properly.
Everything echoed. I could barely stand. ”
“You were drugged?” Kade’s voice cracks.
I nod. “It’s taken me weeks to piece it together. Some of it felt so unreal, like I dreamt it. He… he got me on the ground. I couldn’t move. Or shout. I remember some of his words, and that horrible smell… his weight.” My hands shake violently. “I didn’t know what was happening. Not fully.”
Kade closes his eyes, agony twisting his features. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, voice thick with grief.
“Because I didn’t know at first. It sounds stupid, but my brain felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. When I came home and went to the bathroom—”
“The blood,” he whispers, cutting in. He covers his mouth, devastated.
I nod. “That’s when I knew something awful had happened.
I was so sore. Fern took me to a private doctor.
She did tests. She confirmed it.” Tears blur my vision.
“She said the bruising was consistent with assault. A few days later she called back and said I’d been drugged with Flunitrazepam or Rohypnol as it’s known. ”
Kade’s jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind.
“She gave me the morning-after pill. I told her we were trying for a baby. She said I couldn’t risk…
you know. I took a test first to check I wasn’t already pregnant, but she said it wouldn’t show anything that early.
And we’d had so much sex that week…” I try to smile but it shatters halfway. “I thought I killed our chance.”
Another sob breaks out of me. Kade’s hand lands on my knee—hesitant and gentle.
“You did the right thing,” he murmurs.
“I had my period because I took that pill. And now… now it’s late.”
He flinches but doesn’t probe.
“Christ,” he breathes. “I asked him to watch you.”
“He told me.”
“You confronted him?” His voice is horrified. “After everything he’d done?”
“I didn’t know it was him. I thought it was Rabbit. I wanted to know why someone was following me.” My throat tightens. “He grabbed me. Tried to do it again. I… I had to stop him.”
I break again, crying into my hands.
And then, slowly, Kade’s arm comes around me. Carefully. Like I’m made of glass.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he says, his voice raw. “You should have told me. I’ve been going crazy thinking you were leaving me for someone else.”
“I didn’t want to be the reason the club went back to bloodshed.”
“Eden, we never got out,” he snaps, not at me, but at the situation. “We’ve always been involved. I just kept you away from it.”
“I thought I was protecting you. Protecting everyone. You said you wanted the club clean. And Jimmy—Liam—you said it was nothing to worry about. Then you had him following me.”
“It’s a mess,” he mutters, running a hand through his hair. “A fucking mess.” He stands abruptly. “You need sleep. You haven’t slept properly in weeks.”
“Maybe I should go. Let you process everything.”
He scowls. “Go where? You’re not leaving.”
“But you said—”
“I didn’t know then.” He steps closer. “I know now.”
“Kade, you don’t have to feel sorry for me.”
“The only thing I’m sorry about,” he says darkly, “is that I didn’t get to kill him myself.”
My chest aches. He takes my hand gently and leads me from the office. The club seems quieter now, less chaotic. Almost like it knows we need time.
We go to the bedroom. “Rest,” he murmurs.
“Aren’t you staying?”
He shakes his head once. “Night, Queenie.”
He kisses my cheek lightly, and walks out, closing the door behind him. I stare at the wood, fighting the ache in my chest. He’s proving my worst fear true.
He’s looking at me differently.
KADE
I don’t remember walking down the hallway.
One minute I’m closing the bedroom door behind me, the next I’m shoving open my office door and stumbling inside like I’ve been beaten half to death. I’d welcome that right now.
The second the lock clicks behind me, my legs give out.
I drop into my chair, elbows on my knees, hands gripping the back of my neck like I can hold myself together if I just squeeze hard enough.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. My girl. My Queenie.
Drugged. Alone. Confused.
A broken fucking sob tears out of my throat before I can swallow it down. I slam my fist against the desk, a useless burst of rage, and my knuckles crack. “Fuck!”
Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I know?
All those nights I accused her. All the times I yelled. The suspicion. The doubt. The jealousy eating me alive. And she was trying to survive. My stomach lurches, and I dig my fingers into my hair.
“Fuck,” I whisper, pressing my palms to my eyes as tears burn hot and relentless. “Fuck, Eden…”
She’s been walking around this clubhouse terrified and in pain, and I thought she’d cheated on me. I thought she’d gone off with some other man. That would hurt less right now. Shit, how I wish she’d met another man instead of this… this fucking nightmare.
I was ready to throw her out. I packed her fucking bag and gave it to her with instructions to get the hell out of Nottingham. I wanted her far away so I didn’t have to see her again.
A sound escapes me—painful, hollow, a noise I’ve never made before.
I bend forward, my forehead pressing into my fists. The tears I’ve been trying to swallow back rise up and spill over.
I let them. For her. For what she’s been through. For what I failed to protect.
And for the fact that I know, deep down, nothing I do will ever erase the hurt I added to her pain.
My chest heaves, and I drag in a sharp breath that feels like glass going down my throat.
I groan in frustration, knowing if I’d have just followed her myself, this wouldn’t be our reality. Instead, I got too lazy, putting club shit before my own woman.
And then, instead of seeing the signs, instead of realising she was in torment, I sent a fucking predator to follow her.
I should have killed that motherfucker myself.
My tears hit the floor in silent drops. I grip the edge of the desk so hard the wood creaks beneath my fingers. “I’m sorry,” I choke out, even though she’s not here to hear me. “I’m so fucking sorry, Queenie.”
For once, being president means nothing. All the strength, the power, the reputation, it’s useless. Because the only thing I care about in this world walked through hell while I stood on the sidelines pointing blame.
And now, I can never take it back.
Some time passes before I dry my face with the heel of my hand and force myself to stand. My legs feel unsteady, like I ran a marathon inside my own mind and lost, but I straighten my back anyway. I’m the President. I have to fucking act like one now.
There’s only one way I know how to handle this, as a club. Because what happened to Eden wasn’t just an attack on her. It was an attack on us. On my family. On the Satan Kings.
And I’ll be damned if I sit here crying while the bastard who did this to her rots in some alley without a reckoning.
I unlock my office door and step out into the quiet hallway. The clubhouse is mostly dark with the lights low, and brothers asleep in their rooms after another long day.
But peace isn’t something we get tonight.
I draw in a steadying breath, wipe the last trace of weakness from my face, and head for the stairwell. My throat burns from everything that’s come out of me; pain, guilt, rage, but I force my voice to work.
“Church!” I bellow, loud enough to shake the walls. “Up now! Everyone in church—now!”
Doors slam open instantly, confused shouts echoing through the corridor.
Diesel appears first, half-dressed, face lined with worry. “Pres? What’s going on?”
“Wake them all,” I grind out. “Every brother. Five minutes.”
He studies me, and something in my expression must tell him this isn’t club politics. This is war.
He nods sharply. “On it.”