Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Popeye
The words blurred.
I read them again. Then again. My brain kept trying to make them say something different, something that made sense with what I’d believed for fucking years.
But that woman died long before Titan did.
Titan.
Titan Ward. President of the Silver Shadows’ Mother Chapter. Murdered in his bed alongside his old lady while they were sleeping.
For twelve years, twelve goddamn years, we’d believed it was a rival club. Some retaliation hit. Then last year we found out it was Steele and Stone. That they’d killed their father to take over the club.
But it wasn’t them.
I walked into that room, and I made it happen and I walked back out.
Christina killed him.
Not Steele. Not Stone. Not some rival club enforcer in the night.
Christina.
My hands were shaking. The journal trembled in my grip, and I couldn’t make it stop. Around me, the bakery kept moving, voices, footsteps, the hiss of the espresso machine, but it all sounded like it was coming from underwater. Distant. Wrong.
She killed him.
I tried to think back to where I had been when I heard.
George’s Retirement Party. What had I been told?
The details felt slippery now, like trying to hold water.
I remembered the call. Remembered someone telling me Titan was dead.
Who the fuck had it been? The clubhouse was in chaos.
Blood everywhere. The club was locking down, investigating, looking for whoever did it.
I’d believed it. Everyone did. Why wouldn’t we? Titan had enemies. The club had enemies. It made sense.
Except it hadn’t been enemies.
It had been Christina.
Sweet, quiet Christina, who’d looked at me like I hung the moon. Who’d smiled soft and careful, who’d held our daughter and sang to her, who’d let me believe she was just a woman trying to survive in a world too rough for her.
She’d walked into Titan’s bedroom and murdered him in cold blood.
The rage hit so hard I couldn’t breathe.
That story had made sense. It fit.
But it was bullshit.
I wanted to put my fist through the table.
Across the bakery, Trudy was at the counter with Pati, boxing up something for a customer.
But her eyes kept flicking toward me. She knew.
Maybe not the details, but she knew something was wrong.
I could see it in the way her shoulders had gone tight, the way her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes when she handed over the box.
I looked back down at the journal.
I’m sorry, Stephen.
Sorry.
She was sorry.
Like that fixed it. Like an apology scrawled in a journal I wouldn’t read until years after she died, maybe never, could undo years of lies and betrayal.
I’d mourned her. When Grace told me she had died, I’d mourned her. Grieved the woman I’d loved, the mother of my daughter, the life we could’ve had if things had been different.
But I hadn’t known her at all.
The woman I’d loved didn’t exist. Or maybe she had, once, but she’d died long before her body did. She’d said as much herself.
But that woman died long before Titan did.
I wanted to scream. Wanted to throw the journal across the room, watch it hit the wall and fall apart. Wanted to rage at someone, anyone, but they were all dead. Titan. Steele. Stone. George. William. Caroline.
Christina.
All of them gone, and I was left holding their secrets like they were mine to carry.
The worst part, the part that made my chest feel like it was caving in, was that I understood.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to be furious, self-righteous, justified in my anger. But underneath the rage was something uglier: comprehension.
If someone had told me the only way to save Grace was to kill a man, I would’ve done it. No hesitation. No moral crisis. I would’ve pulled the trigger or swung the blade or done whatever needed doing, and I would’ve lived with it after.
So how could I hate Christina for doing the same thing?
My only regret was, I hadn’t thought of it myself, hadn’t thought of doing it sooner.
I heard footsteps and looked up.
Trudy was walking toward me, her face set in that expression I was learning meant she’d made up her mind about something, and I could either get on board or get out of the way.
She stopped beside the table, her eyes dropping to the journal before lifting to my face.
“Stephen.”
Just my name. Quiet. Careful.
I tried to answer and couldn’t. My throat had closed up.
Her expression shifted, not to pity, thank Christ, but to something sharper. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition. Like she’d seen this kind of pain before and knew what it looked like.
“What happened?” she asked.
I looked down at the journal, then back up at her. “She killed him.”
Trudy went still. “Who?”
“Titan Ward.” My voice sounded flat. Dead. “She walked into his room and killed him and his wife while they were asleep.”
Trudy’s face went pale. “Jesus.”
“His sons planned it,” I continued, the words coming faster now, like a dam breaking. “They told her what to do. How to do it. How to make it look like something else. And she did it. Then she ran. Took Grace and disappeared.”
“Stephen—”
Trudy glanced toward the counter, then back at me. Her voice dropped. “You need to come with me.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I said you’re not.” She reached down and put her hand over mine where it was gripping the edge of the journal. “Come with me before you lose it in front of everyone.”
That got through. Not because I cared what strangers thought, but because she was right. I was about two seconds from losing my shit and doing it in the middle of the bakery would only make things worse.
I closed the journal, shoved it under my arm, and stood. My legs felt unsteady, but I made them work.
Trudy didn’t touch me again until we were behind the counter, then she led me through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
The heat back here was thick, the air heavy with sugar and yeast. Pati was pulling a tray of muffins from the oven, but when she saw my face, whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips.
“Watch the front,” Trudy said.
Pati nodded and left without a word.
The door swung shut behind her, and the silence that followed felt like pressure against my skull.
Trudy turned to face me, arms crossed. “Talk.”
I stared at her. “What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you need to.”
I let out a harsh laugh. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Start with what’s making you look like you want to put your fist through my wall.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “When Titan died, everyone said it was a rival club. Retaliation. Business as usual in the MC world. And I believed it because why wouldn’t I?
Christina was already gone. She’d been gone ten years by then.
So I never connected his death to her running.
Not until last year when I found out Steele and Stone were actually responsible.
And even then, it didn’t involve her. She’d already disappeared with Grace a decade earlier, or so I thought.
So this doesn’t make sense. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
She couldn’t have—” I stopped. Stared at the journal. “She wasn’t there.”
“But she was there,” Trudy said quietly.
“Yeah.” The word came out bitter. “When Titan told me she took off, she’d only moved to the next town. She had nothing in her name, no way to trace her, no way to find her. Because the fucking club still had her. Titan fucking hid her from me.”
Trudy’s jaw tightened. “Who else knew?”
“I don’t know.” That was the worst part. “Steele and Stone, obviously. But who else? Did the whole club know? Did they all sit around laughing at me while I tried to piece together where they went? Did they?—”
“Stop.” Trudy’s voice cut through the spiral. “You don’t know who knew. You’re guessing.”
I stared at the journal, my hands shaking.
“Titan told me she ran. He lied and said she took Grace and disappeared. That she was gone. And I believed him. I spent years looking for her, years wondering where she went, why she left me. And the whole time—” My voice cracked.
“The whole time she was still in Arkansas. With him. She was there, being used by the man I fucking trusted to protect my family.”
The words hung in the air between us, heavy and impossible.
“She was there when I was searching,” I continued, my voice rough.
“She was there when I gave up. She was there the entire fucking time, and nobody told me. They all lied to me about when she left, about where she was. They let me believe she was gone when she was still...” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Trudy stepped closer. “She was protecting Grace.”
“I know!” The rage was back, sharper now.
“I know that’s what she was doing. I know she was desperate.
I know she made impossible choices. But this...
” I gestured at the journal. “This wasn’t just about protection.
This was about survival. And she did it alone.
She lived with this alone. She was there for a decade and never reached out.
Never told me the truth. Never gave me a chance to help her or understand or—” I stopped, my chest heaving.
“And now she’s dead and I can’t ask her why she thought she had to become this.
Why she thought she had to do it alone.”
Trudy didn’t flinch. She just stood there, watching me with those sharp eyes that saw too much.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“Of course I’m fucking angry.”
“You’re also hurt.”
That stopped me cold.
She stepped closer, her voice softening. “You’re hurt because you loved her, and she didn’t trust you enough to tell you the truth.”
I wanted to deny it. Wanted to say it wasn’t about trust; it was about the lies, the deception, the years of believing something that wasn’t real.
But she was right.
Christina hadn’t trusted me. Not with this. Not with the worst thing she’d ever done. She’d carried it alone, written it down in a journal she knew I’d only read after she was gone, and left me to deal with the fallout.
“I would’ve understood,” I said, and my voice cracked on the words. “If she’d told me, if she’d come to me and said she needed help, that she needed out, that Titan wouldn’t let her go, I would’ve fucking helped her. I would’ve found another way.”
“Would you have?” Trudy asked gently.
I opened my mouth to say yes. Of course yes. But the word stuck in my throat.
Christ. Would I have?
She let them use her; she let them fuck her to keep Grace safe. To survive. And if she’d come to me and told me that? Told me what she was willing to do?
I don’t know if I could’ve handled it.
That was the fucking truth I didn’t want to admit.
Back then, I was possessive as hell. Just like I was now.
The thought of another man’s hands on her made my blood boil even now, even knowing she was gone, even knowing it was survival.
So what would I have done then? When I was younger, angrier, more convinced I could fix everything with my fists and my will?
Would I have understood? Or would I have lost my mind?
Would I have understood what she had to do? Or would I have blamed her for using her body instead of coming to me first?
I didn’t know.
And maybe, just maybe, that was exactly why she didn’t tell me. Maybe she knew me well enough to know I couldn’t handle it. So she cut me off. Took Grace and disappeared. Carried that alone because she knew I couldn’t carry it with her.
That was what was killing me. Not that she lied. But that she knew me that well. Knew I wasn’t strong enough for the truth.
I closed my eyes and admitted, “I don’t know.”