Chapter 4
Sophie
I’m two seconds away from burning this whole goddamn clubhouse down to the cinderblock foundation.
The bourbon bottle in my hand drips sweat down my wrist as I stalk across the common room.
The brothers don’t look at me directly. Nobody with half a brain makes eye contact with a woman in this mood.
But I feel their nervous glances scraping over me.
They watch like men standing too close to a live wire.
Like they expect sparks. Like they know someone’s about to get lit up and pray it ain’t them.
Becki Crowley is still here.
Still chained up in Royal’s room like she belongs to us. Still breathing our air. Still feeding off every crack in this club like mold in a wet wall. And what pisses me off the most? Everyone’s pretending this is normal.
I slam the bottle down on the counter so hard the glass rattles. Oaks flinches mid pool shot. Whiskey and Lex exchange looks. Derby’s dart flies in the wrong direction.
“Oaks.” My voice snaps like a whip. “Where the hell is Legend?”
He blinks at the red felt like it might save him. “In the old warden’s office, I think.”
Of course he is. When the Kings of Anarchy need to hide something from me, plot, argue, lie, they go to church. Not a holy chapel. Their war room. The place outlaws whisper about what lines they’re willing to cross.
They never think I hear the thunder behind those doors.
I spin, storming down the hallway. The Lockup is quiet this early, too quiet. A hush that feels like breath held under water.
I stop at the end of the hall, facing the locked door.
Royal’s room.
That’s where she is.
Becki Crowley.
Ezekiel’s brat. My enemy long before she tried to blackmail me out of my own birthright.
She stood in Paradise Falls in my mama’s wedding gown with her lips curled like a snake about to strike and told me she’d marry my father, using her daddy, the Reverend Crowley, as officiant.
She said she’d own everything I had, everything I loved, that all she had to do was whisper the right words into the right ear.
She threatened my whole life without touching me.
Threatened my family with a smile.
Threatened my relationship with Legend just by saying his name. Kept me from him. Had me kidnapped, beaten by the Depraved Sinners MC. And now she’s here. In our clubhouse. In a bed ten feet away from where I’m expected to sleep.
Legend proposed. But now, the woman I almost lost him to is under our roof, eating our food, wrapped up in Royal’s dark silence like it’s a fluffy black blanket.
My hand fists against the door. I want to tear it off the hinges and drag her out by her petty short hair, but I don’t.
Because I know Royal’s on the other side. And Royal’s the one man in this club whose quiet scares me more than everyone else’s shouting. I’ve seen the way he looks at her.
Not with hate.
Not with disgust.
With hunger.
Like he’s been starving, and someone finally threw a bleeding deer into his damn cage.
My stomach twists as I pray, he can control her.
Footsteps echo behind me, heavy and familiar. I don’t turn right away. I don’t need to. Legend fills the hallway like heat before a summer rain.
“Sophie,” he says, voice low and careful.
“Don’t.” My voice cracks from the strain of holding myself together. “Don’t talk to me like I’m overreacting.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“She’s still here.”
“I know.”
He steps closer, shirtless, jeans hanging low like he just got out of bed or out of a fight. Sweat glistens across his chest, down the line of his stomach. Normally I’d climb him like a tree. Today I feel like hitting him with the bourbon bottle.
“You said she was staying for answers,” I snap. “It’s been days. What have you figured out except that Royal watches her like he wants to fuck her straight through the floor?”
His eyes narrow. “Careful.”
“No,” I spit. “You don’t get to defend her. Not after everything she did. Not after the threats. I won’t sleep another night with her my neighbor.”
“She’s locked up.”
“And still manipulating everyone,” I hiss. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
Legend’s jaw works like he’s chewing broken glass.
“She goes,” I say. “Or I do.”
Silence.
Just the two of us standing in a hallway full of ghosts we never buried right.
He doesn’t answer.
And that silence… that silence slices deeper than anything Becki ever said.
I turn and walk away because if I stay, I’ll shatter.
The rec room seems too bright. Too loud. Too full of eyes. I push through the back door onto the porch. The Kentucky heat slaps me in the face, thick and humid, humming with cicadas and secrets.
A couple of the club girls, bunnies they’re called, Candy and Tawny, I think, sit at a patio table smoking and gossiping.
No, Kandddy, with three d’s, I remember as I can’t help but notice. Those are bigger than triple, but crude bikers don’t know better. Ladies, if you can call them that, quiet when I step out. But not before I hear my own name.
I raise a brow. “Want to say that shit louder?”
Kandddy flicks ash off her cigarette. “We just said it’s funny.”
“What is?”
She leans in, voice dropping. “How Becki’s daddy always gets what he wants. Even here in Hell.”
My throat goes tight. “What the hell does that mean?”
Tawny shrugs. “People say the Reverend’s got something on the Kings. That he’s blackmailing someone.”
Remembering the file the Reverend had, I bark a laugh. “The Kings don’t get blackmailed.”
“Maybe not all of them.” Kandddy lowers her gaze. “But the older ones… they made deals back in the day. And Reverend Crowley keeps records. Files. Secrets.”
The porch feels hotter. My pulse thumps in my ears. Because I’m not the only one that knows. I’ve seen Crowley play puppet master. He blackmailed my father. He’s a holy man the way a butcher is a chef.
Girls go missing. Girls who were part of his flock. Girls who trusted him. Girls he kept close. And Becki, his golden child turned rebel, is right in the center of everything. And Legend got on one knee and made a promise we’d figure things out. But he’s let the woman who tried to kill me live.
I walk back inside before they see me break.
Hours pass like slow poison. I drink more than I should. Pace until my feet hurt. Each shade here seems off. Every whisper seems like it’s about me. Legend finds me again near dusk.
“She’s staying,” he says his brown eyes firm.
I laugh, but it sounds like something dying. “Of course she is.”
“Just until Royal gets what he needs.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” I ask, stepping close enough he can feel my fury. “Is that what he’s doing when he stares at her like he desires to drag her into the dark and tear her apart?”
Legend doesn’t deny it.
He doesn’t say a goddamn thing.
The betrayal stings worse than if he’d touched her.
I shove past him and don’t look back, because if I do, I’ll see the guilt on his face, and it’ll break me clean in half.
Becki Crowley walks into a room and everything starts to rot.
If no one else will do something about it, I will.
Even if I have to burn every inch of this kingdom down to the bone.
The hallway spins as I shove past Legend, my pulse thundering in my throat. I need air. Space. Something that doesn’t have his odor. But he follows, of course he does, his boots pounding behind me like he owns the floors, the walls, the very breath in my lungs.
“Sophie,” he growls.
“No.” I don’t turn. If I do, I’ll break or I’ll burn. “I’m done talking.”
“Then don’t talk.”
His hand closes around my wrist before I reach the end of the hall. Hard. Claiming. Desperate in that way he only gets when he’s losing control.
I whirl on him, fury and heartbreak colliding hard enough to make my vision blur. “I’m going home. To Paradise Falls. Let go of me.”
He doesn’t.
He pulls me into the dark corner beside Royal’s room.
Irony burns my tongue.
“You think I don’t see what’s happening?” I spit. “You think I don’t feel it every time you look at that door?”
His bearded jaw clenches. “I’m looking out for the club.”
“You’re lying,” I whisper, the words breaking against his chest.
His hand slams the wall beside my head. “Say it again.”
“You’re lying.”
That’s all it takes.
He kisses me like he wants to punish me.
Teeth and breath and the kind of hunger that comes from fear, not lust. I shove him back.
He drags me forward. Our bodies crash, fight, fuse.
It’s not love. It’s not even comfort. It’s two wounded animals tearing each other open because they don’t know what else to do.
His mouth devours mine, bruising, claiming.
I hit his chest, hard, but he only groans like pain makes him want more.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” I hiss against his lips.
“It’s not supposed to.”
He presses my back to the wall. My legs wrap around his waist before my brain can protest. He yanks my hips forward, grinding against me like he’s trying to erase every memory of Becki from the air between us.
“You’re mine,” he snarls into my throat.
“Then act like it,” I snap, dragging his belt hard enough the leather bites my palm.
His breath stutters. My name leaves his mouth like a curse. His hands slide under my shirt, rough palms, possessive, shaking. He’s shaking. Legend doesn’t shake.
I grab his hair and pull his face up to mine. “If you want me,” I whisper. “Then fucking choose me.”
He doesn’t answer with words.
He kisses me again, violent, starving, terrified.
His hips drive against mine, the friction sending a shockwave through my spine.
It’s filthy and angry and wrong. And I want him like this, raw, cornered, undone.
“Please get rid of her. I don’t care how,” I say in a hush.
But then. He slows. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough for shame to flicker in his eyes. I feel it hit him before he speaks. He hesitates. And that hesitation is a knife.
I shove him away, the loss of his heat suddenly unbearable.
“This is why she’s still here,” I whisper, throat tight. “Not Crowley. Not answers. Her.”
“Soph…”
“No.”
I step back like he burned me. Maybe he did. Maybe I burned myself.
“We can’t fix this tonight,” I say. “Not like this. Not while she’s breathing the same air.”
He reaches for me. I dodge him. For the first time, Legend looks like he doesn’t know how to win.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, his taste, my anger, our mess smeared together.
“We’re not done,” I tell him. “But this? This ain’t saving us. I’m leaving.”
I turn and walk away before it all overwhelms me.
Behind me, I hear him punch the wall.
It doesn’t make me feel any better.