Chapter 8
Cillian
Which happened first, she left me or the club left her to fend for herself?
My text goes unanswered. Reed saw it, though; it’s marked as seen. He’s my best friend. Betrayal ran deep during the drive over as I constantly checked to be sure he hadn’t responded. I grew up in the life of loyalty and family.
Where the fuck was that for me? Where was it for Kat? She’s not the one who betrayed the club. We were kids at best. My father’s words scream at me as I recall that night.
He begged me to run, to be anywhere but on the scene when the cops arrived. I should have listened to my old man. Regret is a bitch but betrayal … it’s unforgivable in this world.
The entire way to the club, Kat was silent and if I pressed a subject, she’d only give me one-word answers. She was too busy picking at the sleeves of her burgundy sweater and a hole in her torn skinny jeans. She was too busy avoiding me and the conversation.
My leather jacket was laid in the back seat of her car and I left it there.
Being home is nothing like I thought it would be. There’s a constant anxiousness that has me on edge. Even as I drove Kat’s car, taking her back here to the club, I struggled with reaching out to hold her hand.
There’s a part of me that’s dead and gone. And a part that’s mourning what used to be. More than anything I want it back, but as her pace slows with us nearing the club, I question what it used to be. What loyalty meant and whether or not it ever existed.
It hit hard when Kat asked if we were taking my bike.
The dreams of her on the back of my bike carried me through hell and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not for this.
None of this feels right. It’s not what I was told it was. It’s as if I’ve been living a lie. It’s eerie as I slip my fingers through her hand and walk through the same door that led to our end four years ago.
“Cillian?” My name on Kat’s lips holds fear, insecurity and the threat of her turning around and leaving me as I push open the door.
She pulls back, her boots stumbling in the gravel and her hand leaving mine.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” I say and the words leave me before I’m able to stop them. With my pulse pounding in my ears, I tell her with a gravelly tone, “You are mine.”
Her hazel eyes peer back with more concern than I anticipated, more fear, like it’ll kill her to go back to what used to be our home, our haven, the place of nearly all our firsts. “Cill, please,” she begs me in a whisper, and it’s my undoing.
With one hand wrapping under her thigh and the other on her waist, I lift her up in a swift movement and brace her back against the wall, capturing her lips and reminding her who she belongs to. Even if neither of us will say it out loud. I love her. I need her.
And this hell the club put her through? Seeing her write that she hated the club and feeling deep down that I do too? I can’t fucking stand it.
It only takes my lips on hers for my little hellcat to mold her lips to mine. To part the seam of them and grant me entry. Although I’m hard with my kiss at first, my touch softens, her body heats and soft moans pour from her like they used to.
It’s only once I’m satisfied she won’t run that I pull back and stare into the haze of emotions in her gorgeous eyes.
“The club had no right to leave you.” All I keep thinking today, the one thought that won’t stop demanding to be heard, is that she would have stayed with me if only they did what the club stands for.
If only they’d protected her. She was more mine than she was her father’s daughter.
She was supposed to be my wife, my everything.
“They should have stayed by you until I was out.”
A concoction of emotion swirls in her green and gold eyes that I can’t place. “I don’t know that that’s true.”
“I do.” There’s not a second of hesitation. “They knew what you meant to me. Every single one of them.” They knew I was going to propose. They all fucking knew. “And that’s enough. Do you hear me?”
She nods, swallowing thickly as I slowly lower her to stand on her own, her back still against the old brick wall of the club.
“They need to accept you because you’re mine,” I tell her firmly and the lack of her denying that is what fuels me to say and do whatever the fuck I have to in order to make this right.
“I am,” she murmurs, her gaze still captured in mine.
This time when I gather her hand, she holds it back, walking beside me as I push open the door and lead the way past the garage and upstairs to the rec room.
“Cillian?” my uncle calls out when he first sees me.
Standing by the pool table, a whiskey glass in hand, there’s not a billiard ball in sight because some kind of plans are laid out on the table.
He’s quick to gather them, as if they’re not for me to see.
“You’re early,” he adds, his voice dropping and his gaze lowering to land on Kat.
His nondescript tee and worn jeans are at odds with how I remember this place. It feels empty and cold.
“And you brought company,” he states and his voice drops even lower.
Heat blazes across my skin. “Yeah, church isn’t for another hour,” Finn calls out from the other side of the room. Unlike my uncle, Finn’s got his leathers on as well as a pair of reading glasses and a yellow legal pad.
“We’re just going over the numbers, something’s off,” Finn adds, his Irish accent thick, and then sets the pad down on the kitchen counter. It’s all the same in this place. The same but older; less thrilling, less wanting.
Is that what they’re doing? The fucking accounting?
“Where is everyone?” I call out. It’s Sunday so the garage is closed, but this place …
it was never empty. There was always someone here.
Footsteps echo down from the stairwell to my right in the narrow hall, the one that leads to the third floor.
They’re fast paced and light, and it doesn’t take long for Reed to come into view.
His expression not at all surprised, and very much carrying the guilt of what my last message said to him.
“You should probably wait for church to start …” My uncle’s voice gathers my attention, “… so you can find your place.”
My teeth grind as I take a step forward, Kat protesting slightly as I pull her in behind me.
“You get my message?” I question Reed, who stalks in after us, carefully following.
“Yeah, I got it,” he answers, his glance moving between myself and Kat. They share a look and it’s one I don’t fucking like.
“Maybe we should go?” Kat asks as I walk to the right of the hall. To the left is the pool table, the television and a sofa which is new and takes up the depth of the room. To the right is the kitchen and before that, the dinner table.
Ignoring Kat, I count the seats and then glance up at my uncle to say, “How many are coming to dinner?”
“Cill–” Kat starts, raising a hand but Reed stops her, murmuring softly, “It’s okay.” I don’t have time to react to them as my uncle answers, “The same as always. Ten.”
“We’ll need to make that eleven,” I state and then stalk to the back where two armchairs with old rubbed leather are seated under the windows.
Snatching one of them, I drag it across the room to make eleven chairs around the table. “I hadn’t realized Kat stopped coming, but that mistake has been rectified,” I call out across the empty room. It’s maybe fifty feet from my uncle to me, but there’s not a damn thing that separates the tension.
In only hours all the patched men will be upstairs in the office for church and after that, it’s Sunday dinner with all our families. Or that’s how it used to be.
Ten.
The number is so damn low.
When did the club dwindle to that? It’s not until the legs of the chair are under the table that it hits me. There used to be nine in church alone.
What the fuck happened?
“I can go,” Kat speaks and Reed silently watches her.
“You’re not going.”
As she stares back at me wide eyed and Reed glances between the two of us, the only thing that races through my mind is that I should be the one leading church. I was lined up to be president.
“We need to talk,” I announce to my uncle and he’s silent, his deep brown eyes boring into mine. I add, “When are we talking?”
“With her here?” the prick dares to question.
Agitation wars with my common sense and anger bristles within me.
“Cillian, calm down.” Kat’s voice is meek, so unlike her.
“Calm down, man. Let’s talk,” Reed adds. All the while, my uncle only watches. Finn does the same although it’s different. Finn has the decency to look confused and lost. His hands raise and he asks what’s going on. He doesn’t know what’s wrong and that’s obvious.
My uncle does, though.
“I left and you turned your back on her,” I say, then look my best friend in the eye and he stares back at me like I’ve sucker punched him.
“It’s not like that, and you know it.”
Just as I make my move toward Reed there’s a crash downstairs from the door being thrown wide open and a deep voice I don’t recognize bellows, “We have a warrant to search the premises!” The stairwell of this old place is narrow and the four cops who climb the stairs show one by one, guns pulled and at the ready.
Three men, one woman, and none of them look friendly to me.
My heart pounds as I take them in, knowing full damn well I’m on probation and that there’s a gun in the waistline of my pants.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What the fuck?” Finn roars from behind me, and Reed takes Kat by the shoulders, pulling her back as the cops enter. Two continue up the stairs and two stand in the doorway as we each raise our hands in the air.
“We’re unarmed,” Finn tells the two male officers at the same time the pres questions, “Warrant for what, exactly?”
I can’t stop staring at Kat. I’m about to lose her again. In the same goddamn place I did years ago, and she didn’t want to come in here. She didn’t want to do it.
Fuck, I fucking hate myself. Heat flows over my skin. Reed’s look of shock must match my own.
Poor Kat stares up at me as I walk quietly to her with eyes full of terror that dart to my waistline. She knows all too well I never leave unarmed. You never know, in this life, when you might need it. Especially when you’re fresh out of prison with blood on your hands.
After a round of clears the officers lower their weapons. The two upstairs slowly make their way down.
Uncle Eamon holds an expression of near annoyance. “The fuck is this?” he asks and snatches the warrant from the tallest of officers who holds it out. They’re all dressed in their blues and make their way in just as Kat backs up and presses her back into my chest, like she can hide me from them.
My poor hellcat. Regret won’t let go of me as it continues to bury itself deep down.
With both of my hands steadying her shoulders, I’m prepared to tell her I love her and I’m sorry. To whisper it into her ear as the officers ask for identification for each of us and Finn argues that we don’t have to give them that.
Instead I’m met with her hand, reaching up my back and then into my waistband. I struggle to keep a straight face as she takes the gun.
“Unless the warrant–”
“It’s a search and seizure and includes the persons of any Cavanaugh East club members who are on the premises,” the cop who seems to be leading the pack announces clear enough for all of us to hear.
Kat quietly slips the gun into her purse and stills, with the top flap of it open as the officers approach us.
“I assume that includes everyone here?” he questions, taking a moment to look each one of us in the eye.
“You’re his son, aren’t you?” the officer asks me, the skin between his eyebrows wrinkling as he narrows his eyes at me.
“Who do you mean?” His son. Anger boils inside of me, this prick bringing up my father when he’s long gone.
“The founder of the club, Ronan Cavanaugh.”
“Yeah, I’m his son.”
“I figured, you look just like him.” His gaze moves to Kat and every muscle in my body tightens. “And you?”
“She’s my girlfriend. I don’t imagine the warrant includes who we’re fucking, does it?” I ask as I lay a hand on her shoulders, moving closer, and closing the flap at the same time as I step forward to muffle the noise.
“I’ll start with you then?” the officer says.
He’s got a hard jaw and a clean shave, unlike his partner, whose beard is neatly trimmed and who calls over Reed.
Reed stands with his arms out and we both allow the officers to do their job.
All the while I watch Reed, who keeps looking at my uncle, who’s waiting his turn for the pat down as the other officers search this floor of the club.
With my own hands held out, the officer frisks me, then grabs my wallet and calls in my ID. I know he can’t arrest me; I don’t have shit on me, but I don’t know what the hell is in the club. There shouldn’t be a damn thing here.
As if reading my mind, Reed glances up at me and shakes his head, letting me know we’re safe as the officer calls in our names, asking if there are any warrants for arrest. Fucking prick.
“There’s nothing here,” Finn states as he takes the paper from the pres and then flicks it. “Fucking harassment from the DA. Search whatever the fuck you’d like, then get the hell out.”
Although the three of us are silent, Finn doesn’t let it go. “The hell is this about, anyway?”
“We received an anonymous tip,” the lone woman officer answers, standing in the doorway. Her makeup is minimal, her hair pulled back into a tight bun at the base of her neck.
I don’t recognize any of these faces. Not from growing up, when I had plenty of run-ins with the law. And not from that fucking night four years ago.
It doesn’t take long for the officer to hand back my wallet and ID.
“You okay?” Kat whispers, breaking up my thoughts. Her arm wraps around my waist as she presses herself into me, her grip tight like she refuses to let me go.
“There’s nothing here, Daniels,” an officer speaks across the room to the head officer in charge. His voice is low and I can’t help but note that it was damn fast that they searched. It’s almost like they were told where to look. And whatever it was, wasn’t there.
“Keep looking.” The officer lets out a long exhale, giving out more commands. It’s quiet as we stand in silence, watching the men of the law make chaos of the rec room, searching through every cabinet, ripping up every cushion. They don’t leave any inch unturned.
“Church is canceled until further notice,” the pres, my uncle, says beneath his breath, his eyes focused on the officer leading the charge, Daniels.
“Yeah,” Finn confirms as the rev of motorcycle engines can be heard pulling up to the garage.
Reed’s busy texting away, most likely warning whoever it is who showed up at the same time an officer takes the stairs down two by two.