Chapter Twenty-Eight
Derek
The concrete was cold beneath me. I’d stopped feeling it days ago, stopped feeling much of anything except the dull throb in my ribs and the sharper sting across my knuckles where the skin had split open.
Time had become meaningless in this cell. Days blurred into one another, marked only by the fluorescent light that never dimmed and the silence that pressed down like a physical weight.
Jack had come down on the first day with a tray of food.
He’d set it on the floor without a word, but his jaw was tight, his eyes disappointed.
Sam had followed him the next morning, her expression a mixture of concern and frustration.
She’d left another tray, sandwiches, fruit, water, and stood in the doorway for a long moment before speaking.
“You need to eat,” she’d said quietly. “You need to talk to Haizley.”
I hadn’t responded. Hadn’t even looked at her.
By the third day, they’d stopped trying to convince me with words. Jack just left the food and walked away. Sam came less frequently, but when she did, I could see the worry etched into her face. They were wasting their time. Both of them. I wasn’t worth saving.
Blood had dried on my hands. Zero’s blood, mostly. Some of it mine.
I sat with my back against the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed like an angry wasp, relentless and grating. I didn’t bother opening my eyes to look at it.
What was the point?
The cell door was locked. I was alone. And somewhere out there, Kat was telling Frankie that I was a monster who beat people when I lost control.
She wasn’t wrong.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway, heavy and deliberate. Not Haizley’s measured stride or Jack’s familiar gait. These steps carried weight. Authority.
I didn’t move.
The footsteps stopped outside the cell door. A key turned in the lock, metal scraping against metal, and then the door swung open with a groan.
“Get up.”
King’s voice cut through the silence like a blade.
I opened my eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the light. He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, his expression carved from stone. The president of the club. The man who’d given me a place here when I had nowhere else to go.
And I’d repaid him by beating one of his members half to death in his own clubhouse.
“I said get up,” King repeated, his tone dropping lower.
I pushed myself off the floor, my body protesting every movement. My ribs screamed. My jaw ached. My hands felt like they’d been put through a meat grinder.
But I stood.
King’s eyes swept over me, taking in the blood on my shirt, the bruises blooming across my face, the split skin on my knuckles. His jaw tightened.
“You look like shit,” he said flatly.
“Thanks for the observation.” My voice came out rough, scraped raw. “Real insightful.”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to try that again?”
I met his gaze and held it. “Not particularly.”
The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. King didn’t move, didn’t blink. He just stared at me like he was trying to decide whether I was worth the effort of this conversation.
Finally, he stepped into the cell and let the door swing shut behind him.
“I leave for a couple of days,” King said, his voice cold, “and I come back to find Zero in the infirmary with a broken nose, fractured orbital bone, three cracked ribs, and a concussion. You’re locked in the basement.
” He paused, his jaw clenching. “Seems everything went to shit while I was in Arkansas.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t look away. What else could I say?
“Cash wants you out. Permanently.”
I laughed, a bitter, hollow sound that scraped against my throat. “Can’t say I blame him.”
King’s expression didn’t change. “Jack’s fighting for you. Says there’s more to the story. Says Zero provoked you.”
“Jack’s too fucking optimistic.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, wincing when my knuckles brushed against the dried blood matted in the strands. “You want the truth? Fine. I lost my shit. Zero said something, and I snapped. Beat the fuck out of him until they pulled me off. That’s the story.”
“What did he say?”
My jaw clenched. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
I stared at him, searching for some hint of what he wanted to hear. But King’s face gave nothing away. He just stood there, waiting, his presence filling the small cell like a storm cloud.
“He wanted her,” I said finally, the words tasting like ash.
“Zero wanted Kat. And when he realized she was choosing me, he decided to burn it all down. Threw my past with Sam in her face, and made sure she knew exactly what I’d done, how brutal I could be.
He calculated every word to destroy any chance I had with her.
It was pure jealousy. He wanted to sabotage me because he couldn’t have her himself. ”
King’s expression didn’t shift. He already knew. They all knew.
“He destroyed any chance she had of seeing me as anything other than the bastard I used to be,” I continued, my voice rough. “And now she’s gone, and Frankie thinks I’m a monster, and I can’t...” My voice cracked. I stopped, swallowing hard against the tightness in my throat.
King studied me for a long moment, his jaw tight.
“You’re ashamed,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a question.
I looked down at my hands. At the blood still caked under my nails.
“I beat my wife. Put her in the hospital. Nearly killed her.” The words felt like poison on my tongue.
“Zero made sure Kat knew exactly what I’m capable of.
Made sure she understood that the man who stood in front of her, the one she was starting to trust, is the same monster who did that. ”
The silence that followed felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.
“That was a long time ago,” King said.
“Doesn’t matter.” I looked up at him. “She knows now. She knows what I really am. And she’s right to keep Frankie away from me.”
King studied me for a long moment. Then he moved to the wall opposite me and leaned against it, crossing his arms.
“Grew up thinking my grandparents were my parents.” King continued, his voice carrying the weight of old grief.
“They died when I was ten. After that, my brother raised me. Tried to keep me on the right path. Gave me everything a kid could want. A role model. Structure. Someone who believed in me.” He paused, his jaw clenching.
“And I still became a criminal anyway. Still chose this life, this club, this path. Thought maybe I was just broken, you know? That no matter what good influence I had, something in me was rotten.”
He looked at me then, and I saw the raw understanding in his eyes.
“Then, eleven months ago, I found out my biological father is the head of the Irish Mob. The worst version of everything I was afraid I might become. And I had to ask myself, was it always in my blood? Was I always going to end up here no matter what my brother did, no matter how hard he tried to save me? Or did I just make my own choices and they happened to lead me to the same place?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
King’s eyes locked onto mine. “I get it, Derek. The fear. The anger. The certainty that you’re one bad day away from turning into the monster you’ve been running from your whole life.”
Something twisted in my chest. “Then you know why I can’t—”
“I know why you think you can’t,” King interrupted.
“But here’s the difference between you and me.
When I found out about my father, I didn’t run.
I didn’t lock myself in a cell and decide I was too broken to be saved.
I looked at the man I’d become, the choices I’d made, the people I’d protected, and I realized I’m not him. I never will be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.” King pushed off the wall and took a step closer. “Gunner told me what you did in Pennsylvania. You beat a man who was hurting a child. That’s not losing control. That’s choosing to be dangerous for the right reasons.”
“I didn’t choose anything,” I said bitterly. “I just reacted.”
“Bullshit.” King’s voice hardened. “You think I haven’t seen men lose control? You think I don’t know the difference between rage and purpose? You went after that man because you couldn’t stand by and let him hurt her. That’s not the same as being your father.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him.
But all I could see was Kat’s face when she looked at me in that hallway. The fear. The disgust.
“She’s gone,” I said quietly. “Took Frankie and left. And I don’t blame her.”
King’s expression shifted again, this time into something colder. Harder.
“You know what pisses me off about this whole situation?” he asked.
I waited.
“You had people in your corner,” King said, his voice dropping into something dangerous.
“People who actually gave a shit about you. Jack, who has only ever wanted a family. Sam, who fucking forgave you. Who has fought for you to be accepted here. Haizley, who spent months, months, trying to teach you how to manage your rage, how to be better than your impulses. And you threw it all back in their faces the moment things got hard.”
He stepped closer, his presence suffocating in the small cell.
“You proved every single thing they tried to help you overcome. You proved that all the work was for nothing. That you learned nothing. That their investment in you meant absolutely nothing because the second you got angry, you reverted right back to being exactly what you claim to fear: a man who uses his fists when something doesn’t go his way. ”
King’s jaw clenched. “You didn’t just betray Kat and Frankie. You betrayed them. You looked all three of them in the eye and told them you were doing the work, and then you went out and proved you’re a goddamn liar. That all of it was meaningless.”
The words landed like a blade.
“You wasted their time. You wasted their effort. You wasted a genuine attempt to help you become better than you were. And for what? So you could shit all over them and prove you are irredeemable?”
King’s voice was ice. “That’s what pisses me off. Not that you made a mistake. That you made a choice to throw away someone’s genuine attempt to save you.”
The words hit like a punch to the gut.
My hands curled into fists at my sides. “You want me to apologize? Fine. I’m sorry I wasted everyone’s fucking time pretending I could change. I’m sorry I wasn’t fucking strong enough to be what they wanted me to be.”
“Cut the self-pity bullshit,” King snapped. “You think I don’t see what you’re doing? You’re sitting in this cell feeling sorry for yourself, convincing yourself you’re too broken to be fixed. It’s pathetic.”
Anger flared hot in my chest. “You don’t know a damn thing about me.”
“I know you’re wasting the second chance you’ve been given.” King stepped closer, his presence overwhelming in the small space. “I know you’ve got a woman out there who’s terrified of you, a kid who thinks you’re a monster, and instead of fighting for them, you’re sitting in here wallowing.”
“What the hell do you want me to do?” I demanded, my voice rising. “She’s gone. She doesn’t want me near her or Frankie. And she’s right. I’m dangerous. I’m unpredictable. I’m exactly what she’s afraid of.”
“Then prove her wrong.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.” King’s eyes blazed. “There’s a difference.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words died in my throat.
Because he was right.
I wasn’t staying in this cell because I couldn’t leave. I was staying because it was easier than facing what I’d done. Easier than looking Kat in the eye and admitting I was terrified of losing her. Easier than fighting for something I didn’t think I deserved.
King must have seen something shift in my expression because his voice softened slightly.
“You’re not your father, Derek,” he said. “But if you keep running from the man you could be, you might end up dying in prison just like him.”
The weight of his words settled over me like a shroud.
Before I could respond, footsteps echoed down the hallway again, faster this time, urgent.
The basement door flew open, and Jack appeared in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes wide.
“Derek,” he said, his voice tight. “Frankie’s missing.”
The world stopped.
“What?” The word came out strangled.
“She’s gone,” Jack said. “Sam just called. Frankie and Nox took off sometime last night. They don’t know where she is.”
Everything else, the fight, the blood, the fear, it all vanished in an instant.
All that remained was a single, primal need.
Find her.
I moved toward the door, but King’s hand shot out, stopping me.
“You go out there like this,” he said quietly, “covered in blood, looking like you just crawled out of Hell, and you’ll scare her more than you already have.”
I looked down at myself. At the blood on my hands. The bruises. The evidence of my violence written across every inch of my body.
He was right.
“Clean up,” King ordered. “Then we find her.”
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.
Jack stepped aside, and I walked out of the cell on unsteady legs.
Frankie was out there somewhere.
And I was going to find her.
Even if it was the last thing I did.