2. Kane
TWO
KANE
Bella comes through the compound gates just after midnight with fury in every step. I sent Judge, my VP, to her house to make sure she got here safely.
He rides behind her car and waits until the gates close before killing his engine.
Two brothers stand near the clubhouse doors, cuts on and hands loose at their sides, while more shapes move beyond the windows.
Every man in there is pretending he hasn't come out to see whether Red Rourke's daughter really called the club for help.
She did, and she hates that she did. I see it in the way she climbs out and slams the door hard enough to rattle the glass.
My eyes go straight to the dent along the passenger side, then back to her. "You hurt?"
"I'm fine. The truck clipped me. I stayed on the road."
Barely, judging by the mud sprayed across the tires and the scrape running from the rear door to the front fender. Rage moves through me.
"Did you see who was driving?"
"No."
"The truck? What did it look like?"
"Black. No plate on the front." She folds her arms. "Can we do this somewhere that doesn't have an audience?"
A few brothers suddenly find reasons to look elsewhere.
I glance toward Judge. "Get the car inside the shop and check it over."
Bella's head turns. "I'm driving it to work tomorrow."
"Not until we know it's safe."
"It's dented, not dying."
"Then the check won't take long."
Her eyes narrow and I gesture toward the clubhouse. "Come inside."
For a second, I think she'll refuse even now. She looks past me at the painted crown above the doors, at KINGDOM COME arched over it and LIVE FREE DIE FREE beneath. Her father rode through these gates for most of his life. She grew up behind them, until King decided neither of them belonged.
Bella lifts her chin and walks past me, every step costing her a little bit of pride.
I follow her into the common room and stop where every man can see us. "Bella's staying in my quarters. She works the Landing under escort and comes back behind these gates before dark. She's under Kingdom Come protection. Anybody needs that explained, they come to me."
Nobody asks for an explanation. A couple of brothers nod. Others keep their faces blank, but the message lands where it needs to. Bella looks at me as if she can't decide whether to be angry that I've claimed the problem or relieved that I've made the protection public. Probably both.
The clubhouse is quieter than usual. Brothers sit at the bar and around the pool table, beer bottles in hand, conversation running low beneath the music.
Tank leans against the far wall. Cash is near the kitchen with Wilder.
Griz watches from his usual place at the end of the bar, while Chains stands beside him taking it all in.
Bella still knows exactly how to enter a room like this. I see the moment she recognizes the muscle memory, and her jaw tightens.
"Your room's ready," I say.
She turns. "My room?"
I nod toward the hall. “Well, mine, but you can use it.”
“No. I'm not sleeping in your bed."
"I didn't ask you to."
A few of the men hear that, some of them smirk.
Bella's cheeks warm, which does nothing useful for my control. "Where are you sleeping?"
"Couch."
She looks toward the common room, where the couch sits in full view of the bar, the hall and every brother who'll walk through at dawn. "You're the president."
"I'm aware of that."
"You can't sleep there."
"I can sleep wherever I want, because as you just mentioned. I'm the president."
"That's ridiculous."
"It's also settled."
Her gaze holds mine, searching for the trap. There isn't one.
I've wanted Bella Rourke since before wanting had a name, before King and Red tore the world between us into sides, before I knew the girl who followed us around the compound would become the woman I'd spend years crossing streets to avoid looking at too long.
Putting her in my room isn't generosity. It's survival, mine maybe more than hers.
I've known the shape of her life from the edges for years.
The cafe she opened after Red died, the house she bought herself.
I stayed away because wanting her felt like reaching into the wreckage my father left and taking whatever still belonged to Red.
Now she's standing in my clubhouse because somebody tried to drive her into the river. Distance isn't protecting her anymore.
"Judge will show you where everything is," I say. "I've got church to prepare for."
Her expression hardens at the word. "Of course you do."
She starts down the hall without waiting for Judge.
He looks at me. "She remembers the way." He shrugs.
"Yeah." That's the problem.
Judge closes the church door behind us.
Every chair around the table is filled. Every single patched member is here, and the room feels smaller for it.
My father's chair at the head remains empty while I stand behind it, palms resting against the scarred wood.
Judge takes his place at my right. Griz sits three seats down, with Chains opposite him, quiet as usual.
"Bella Rourke's under club protection," I say. "Effective now."
The reaction moves around the table in small ways. A glance, a shift, one man leaning back while another folds his arms. Griz doesn't bother hiding his.
"On what grounds?"
"She was run off River Road tonight."
"That's not what I asked, you know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do."
His mouth hardens. "Red lost his patch." He looks around to see which brothers will agree with him.
"Red wore the club patch for thirty years," I remind him.
"Yeah, then King stripped it. Club law says she ain't kin and not our problem."
There it is. King's rules still walking around in men who survived him.
"She grew up here," Judge says.
Griz turns toward him. "So did a lot of people who don't get a guard detail."
A few men murmur agreement, though not many. Most of the younger brothers sit still, watching me. Tank's expression gives nothing. Cash looks bored in the way he does when he's paying attention to every word. Gray rubs a thumb along the edge of the table, while Wilder keeps his eyes on Griz.
"King settled Red's standing," Griz says. "You reopening every decision your father made?"
"Only the ones he got wrong."
The room quiets. Griz's eyes sharpen. "And what's the hold she's got over you?"
Judge glances toward me, but I don't look away from Griz. "That's your one."
"My one what?"
"Your one chance to test me to see if I'm weak."
His jaw works while I keep my voice level. "Somebody picked Bella because they think this club won't protect Red Rourke's family. They're testing us. If they squeeze her, and nothing happens? Then every business in Ransom knows they'll be next."
That lands differently. These men understand territory, reputation and the price of letting weakness become public.
"Red was one of ours for over thirty years," I continue. "King decided the last two mattered more than the first thirty. I don't agree with him."
Griz leans back. "She won't thank us for it.vShe hates this club," he says, folding his arms once again.
"She's got good reason, wouldn't you say?"
That draws a few looks. My father would've punished the admission, treating criticism like treason even when he'd earned every word. I let it sit.
"She works her days at the Landing," I say. "Two men take her in, one stays until close, and two bring her back. Nobody leaves her alone, and nobody makes a show unless there's a reason."
"Who's paying for that manpower?" Griz asks. "It's gonna take them away from other shit we need to be doing."
"I am."
"With what?"
"My authority."
The silence that follows isn't agreement, but it's final. I look around the table. "If anybody's got a problem following the order, say it now."
Nobody does. Griz stares at me for another few seconds, then gives one hard dip of his chin. He's not convinced, only loyal enough.
"I hear your concerns," I say, and his mouth twists because he knows what comes next. "We're doing it anyway."
Church ends twenty minutes later. Judge stays behind while the others file out.
"Two at open is heavy," he says.
"She nearly went into the river tonight," I remind him.
"I know.” He says and studies me. I know exactly what he's thinking.
"Cash and Wilder can take the morning," he says. "Tank'll stay through lunch. I'll bring her back."
“No, won’t be necessary."
His eyebrows lift.
"I'll bring her back. I'm going to the Landing later."
A faint, knowing look moves across his face.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"Wouldn't dare."
He leaves before I can say another word. The clubhouse has thinned when I step out. A few brothers remain at the bar; others have gone to their rooms or crossed the yard to the workshop. Bella's nowhere in sight, but my bed is forty feet down the hall and I feel every inch of it.
I take a blanket from the linen closet and drop it on the couch. Cash watches from the bar.
"You got something to say?"
"No, Prez." He drinks his beer with too much concentration.
I sit to pull off my boots, and the hallway door opens. Bella stands there wearing jeans and a shirt, her overnight bag hanging from one hand. She looks tired enough that the anger has worn thin around the edges.
"I'm not staying indefinitely," she says.
"Of course not."
"I'm working tomorrow."
"I know that too."
"And I'm not having two bikers sit in the cafe frightening my customers."
"Ah, Judge told you the plan then. Two to take you, one will stay.”
Her eyes narrow. "That's still two."
"Then we agree on the number."
She exhales through her nose, and I almost smile. Somehow, Bella is just as attractive to me when she's mad. I swear, I used to make her mad on purpose when we were teenagers.
"The structure isn't negotiable," I say. "You work days. You're back inside the gates before dark."
"I close at three."
"Then that shouldn't be too hard, should it?"
"I don't need a prison schedule."
"You're not a prisoner."
I stand, and Bella doesn't step back, though I see the awareness move through her when I'm close. It mirrors my own, hot and immediate.
"Those men tested the Landing because they think nobody claims you," I say.
Her chin lifts. "And nobody does."
The answer lands deeper than it should, but I keep my face still. "Protection isn't ownership."
"Tell your club that."
"I just did."
Something flickers in her expression; she hadn't expected that.
"Griz objected," I add. "He lost."
"Did you enjoy that?"
"No."
"Liar."
"I enjoyed part of it."
There she is. The corner of her mouth threatens to move into a smile before she catches it. She looks past me at the couch. "You're really sleeping there."
"Looks that way."
"Your feet will hang off."
"I'll survive, I'm sure, but I’m touched by your concern.
“I'm concerned I'll be blamed when the president can't stand upright because his back hurts."
"You won’t be. There are at least ten other things they'll blame you for first."
She steps toward the hall just as I move to let her pass, and we end up in the doorway together, too close.
Her shoulder brushes my chest, and the contact runs through me like a current finding ground.
Her warmth presses along my side, and my body answers without permission.
Muscles tighten, blood redirects, every nerve strains toward the place where her hip nearly touches mine.
Every thought in my head narrows to the shape of her mouth. Bella's breath catches, shallow and uneven, and she looks up at me while the whole clubhouse falls away.
I could touch her. I've imagined it often enough to know exactly how. My hand at the back of her neck, my mouth on hers while twenty years of restraint finally burns itself out.
Her gaze drops to my lips. Want moves over her face before anger comes to cover it, and that's what saves us.
I step back, feeling the cost of it through every muscle I've got. Bella notices. Of course she does.
"Good night," I say.
Her fingers tighten around the strap of her bag. "Good night."
She walks down the hall and closes my bedroom door behind her. I lie on the couch beneath the eyes of every brother still awake, hanging around the clubhouse and stare at the ceiling.
My father has been dead just over three weeks.
Sometimes I wake before dawn and feel his absence like a missing stair.
For one clean second, I'm relieved; then grief arrives behind it and turns the relief ugly.
Bella being here tangles both feelings tighter.
King is gone, but everything he broke keeps walking through my doors.
Of all the women I could've wanted, it had to be her. Red's daughter. The woman my father's club taught to hate us. The girl I've loved since long before I understood what loving her would cost.
My rule was always simple. Not her. It's the only one I've never trusted myself to keep.