Chapter 17
The heavy oak doors slammed shut behind us, cutting off daylight and sealing us inside. The air was thick with old timber, stale beer, oil, and something else – the heavy raw weight of power.
Before I could even draw breath to steady myself, the whole room shifted.
“Church! Right now, men – move!”
Reaper’s voice boomed off the high vaulted ceiling like thunder.
He didn’t slow or look around, just marched straight past the bar toward the chapel doors, face set hard as flint.
Every brother in the room moved as one: glasses down, chairs scraped back, falling into silent ordered line behind their President.
Rage paused only a heartbeat. He set my bag down gently by the archway, dark eyes locking to mine with a look so heavy it felt like a promise. Stay. Then he turned and vanished after them, the doors clicking solidly shut.
I stood frozen, confused. “Where are they going? What’s Church?”
Ivy gave a soft knowing chuckle, slipping her arm through mine. “Don’t worry. That’s just what we call their private council meetings. The patched brothers go to discuss strategy and club business – us women wait out here. We don’t get told what goes on inside.”
“Come on, sit down, let’s get you a drink,” Rose added, guiding me toward the big stone fireplace and leather sofas.
But the warm welcome had worn thin. As soon as we stepped into the seating area, I felt it – a wave of cold sharp suspicion rolling off the older women already gathered there.
They sat rigid, faces shuttered, eyes tracking every step I took like hawks sizing up an intruder.
The silence pressed in until my skin prickled.
Ivy took me to a table off to one side, and Rose stepped away briefly.
Sitting there alone, I let my thoughts run wild. I’d fought my demons harder here than anywhere else – but these women feared what I brought with me. The men protected blindly; the women guarded what was theirs. Everyone except Rose, Ivy, Bones, Pres, Rage, Tiny and Swift treated me like a threat.
And I understood it. I was the rich girl walking in, bringing trouble straight to their door.
For days I’d got nothing but cold shoulders or clipped words.
Rose never seemed to notice – too kind, too trusting to see the way they pulled her away from me, silently warning her off. But Ivy saw. Ivy understood.
Things finally snapped one evening when the men were all called away to Church.
“So,” one of the old ladies spoke up, her name Raven, tone like broken glass.
“Enjoying yourself, runaway? Dragging danger right to our door? Does Pres think we should just throw our gates open to anyone? You have any idea what heat a name like yours brings down on people like us? If your father sends his private army, our men are the ones standing in the line. We’re the ones left to pick up the pieces. Has no one told you that yet?”
“That’s enough!” Ivy stood straight up, voice cracking with raw protective fire, planting herself right between me and them. “She is safe! She is one of us now! How dare you look at her like she’s the enemy!”
“She’s an outsider,” another old lady Roxy replied flatly. “She looks like trouble.”
Then glass shattered. Rose stepped forward, not even flinching as shards crunched under her boots. Her voice broke with the weight of everything she’d survived.
“And what did I look like?” she asked, and the whole room went dead still. “When Leo carried me through these gates two years ago, did I look like a victim? I had monsters hunting me too. I brought violence right here. Did you welcome me? Or did you stand where you stand now and judge me too?”
She paused, breath ragged, hand resting over her bump. “Is it only bruises you accept? If the scars are here,” she tapped her temple, “instead of on show – you turn your backs? Why won’t you see her too?”
Silence crashed over the room. The women looked at one another, and for the first time, guilt flickered plain to see.
From the far corner, a striking older woman stood slowly. She carried herself with a quiet unspoken authority that made everyone else straighten up instinctively.
Rose didn’t wait for anyone to answer. She turned and ran. I got up following her, managing to catch up with her in the hallway, heading for the exit. I managed to stop her before she walked out into the dark.
Whatever had been said had cut her deep. She was crying, heartbroken, and I knew if she left like that she’d lose the baby from the stress.
“I can’t believe… they’ve hated me this whole time,” she sobbed.
I pulled her close, holding her tight while she shook.
“Rose, listen to me – believe me when I tell you, those women love you more than they love their own lives. They don’t hate you,” I said soft but firm. “You just have to see the truth of it.”
“How can you say that?” she cried. “I was the same as you –”
I stopped her gently. “Rose… where I come from, love isn’t something you earn.
I was born into a world without it, what was displayed, it was never real.
My parents were old money, bound together only by contracts and business.
It took me so long to understand why it felt so different everywhere else I went.
But I know what it looks like when people truly care.
And that… that in there – that’s fear, not hate. ”