9. Chapter 9
Grim
My father looks old.
It is the first thing I notice after he takes the empty chair at the far end of the meeting table.
I resent him for it. Age suggests weakness, and weakness invites mercy. He offered none to my mother. He gets none from me.
McKenna stands near my right shoulder. Her heat reaches me across the few inches separating us, and every instinct I have wants her closer.
I keep my hands to myself.
My name is printed on the contract that stole her freedom. My father’s money paid the men who frightened her. The protection job came to my club because he placed it there.
Every part of the trap carries a St. Valecourt name.
“I asked you a question.”
My father looks at the Sinners surrounding the table. “This is a family matter.”
Striker leans back in his chair. “His family is already in the room.”
The words hit their target.
My father has no authority here.
“Why did you purchase McKenna’s contract?” Torch asks.
My father looks at me. “For John.”
Chairs scrape against the floor.
I reach him before anyone else rises. My hands close around his coat, and I drag him out of the chair.
“Explain.”
Fear flickers across his face. “I intended her to become your wife.”
I drive him against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed photographs.
“You bought a woman and put my name on the receipt.”
“She was already being sold.”
McKenna’s voice cuts through the violence roaring in my head. “Once the contract belonged to you, you could have destroyed it.”
My father looks at her. “I did not purchase it to free you.”
The cruelty of his honesty stills the room.
“You bought it to use me,” she says.
“I bought it because John had closed every door between us. You were a nurse from Black Pines, entirely outside his world and nothing like the women he usually kept near him. They accepted whatever part of him he offered. I gambled that you would make him want to offer more.”
My fist tightens in his coat. “You turned her into a key.”
“Yes.”
“To force your way back into my life.”
His gaze holds mine. “Yes.”
My hands want his throat.
I keep them buried in his coat because McKenna does not need to watch me kill an old man.
“I knew you would never force her.”
“You know nothing about the man I am.”
“I know more than you think.”
The answer sends cold through my blood.
“How long have you watched me?”
“Since your final year in the military.”
Striker swears.
My father continues before I can stop him. “I knew about the club, the shelter, your security work, and the men you brought into the Sinners.”
“You had me followed.”
“I kept my distance.”
“You invaded my life from a distance.”
His gaze drops. “Yes.”
I let him go before restraint runs out. Hound moves between him and the door while my father straightens his coat.
“Explain the station.”
“I instructed Rivers to create a confrontation and withdraw once you intervened. His men were supposed to frighten Miss Crane long enough for you to understand that she was being taken against her will.”
“The man we caught believed he was taking me to Vegas,” McKenna says.
“Rivers kept the complete plan from his crew. Their reactions had to appear genuine.”
I stare at him. “You handed her to men who believed they had permission to take her.”
“Rivers was ordered to control them. They were forbidden to injure her.”
“One of them bruised my wrist,” McKenna says.
“That was not authorized.”
“Her bruises do not give a damn what you authorized.”
He flinches.
“They put their hands on her,” I continue. “The harm started there.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew enough when you hired them.”
He has no answer.
McKenna steps closer to the table. “What would have happened if I had agreed to go with them?”
“Rivers was instructed to provoke a confrontation before you left town. Your refusal made that unnecessary.”
“My choices only changed the shape of your trap.”
My father lowers his gaze.
Lock turns the screen toward him. The contract remains open, my legal name sitting beside McKenna’s like a fresh wound.
“Why Grim?” Lock asks. “Why create a protection job instead of telling either of them the truth?”
“Because John would save her.”
His confidence is a match held over gasoline.
“You believed you could predict me.”
“I believed the boy I failed became a better man than I ever was. I knew a woman asking for protection would get past every wall you built.”
“You do not get credit for the man I became after you abandoned me.”
McKenna goes still beside me.
“You did not know her,” I say.
“I investigated her before purchasing the contract. She had completed nursing school. She volunteered at a domestic-violence clinic. Every reference described her as compassionate, loyal, and stronger than she understood.”
“I was a woman in danger,” McKenna says. “You treated me like an item in a catalog and decided I suited your son.”
My father’s silence confirms it.
“You decided the outcome made the method acceptable.”
“I did.”
“And now?”
“Now I understand that I had no right to choose an outcome for either of you.”
“For once, we agree,” I say.
My father looks at me. “John…”
“Why are you here tonight?”
“Because Rivers stopped following my instructions after your club returned the money. The drone was his. I ordered him to end the operation, but his reputation mattered more to him than our agreement.”
“You hired a trafficker and expected him to follow rules.”
“I made a catastrophic mistake.”
“A mistake is missing a turn. You built this.”
His jaw tightens. “When Rivers stopped answering me, I knew he would destroy the records or use them against you. I also knew you would uncover my involvement as soon as you opened that safe.”
“That explains why you came. It does not explain why you started.”
He looks down at his hands.
“The woman I left your mother for divorced me,” he says. “She took enough money to make the settlement public and gave every reporter a reason to print the details of our marriage.”
Striker’s laugh contains no humor. “Karma finally found your address.”
“Public humiliation taught you remorse?” I ask.
“Losing the illusion that I was loved forced me to look at what I did to your mother.”
My mother’s funeral rises behind my eyes. Pale flowers. Wet ground. A coffin holding the only person who ever loved John St. Valecourt without wanting his name or his money.
“She died believing she was not enough because you betrayed her, humiliated her, and left her alone with the wreckage.”
McKenna’s breath catches.
My father looks smaller. “I know.”
“Your regret changes nothing for her. It changes nothing for me.”
“I thought if I could give you the kind of woman you might build a life with…”
“You thought a wife could replace an apology.”
His face folds around the truth.
I turn away before I find my mother in his regret.
McKenna stands at the edge of the table. Hurt fills her eyes, but none of it is directed at me.
It should be.
“Did Grim know anything about the contract before tonight?” she asks my father.
“No.”
“Did he receive money from the purchase?”
“Only the protection fee sent to the club. He returned it.”
“Did he ever agree to marry me?”
“No.”
McKenna comes to me and takes my hand.
Everything in me wants to close my fingers around hers and use her touch to silence the guilt.
I pull away.
Pain crosses her face.
“Do not make his choices mine,” she says.
“His plan put you in my path.”
“His plan brought you to the station. You decided what happened when I said no.”
“Because he knew what I would do.”
“He predicted your character. He did not create it.”
Her words are clean, sharp, and true.
The guilt does not care.
“If I claim what is between us now, I give him the ending he bought.”
“You do not claim my decisions.”
The correction lands hard.
“I know.”
“Then stop talking as if staying with you is something you take.”
I force air into my lungs. “I need to know what belongs to us. The job was arranged. The first danger was engineered. Even the cabin became part of the path he paid to create.”
“What happened inside that cabin was ours.”
The memory of her wrapped around me strikes hard enough to shake my control.
“You cannot know what you would have felt if he had not made me your rescuer.”
“Neither can you. That does not make what I feel false.”
My father watches us with grief in his eyes. Maybe he finally understands that arranging love is another way to poison it.
I turn on him.
“You wanted to repair what you did to me? Here is what you bought.”
His face pales.
“McKenna is the first woman I wanted beside me after morning came. The first I wanted in my home, my bed, and my future. You put your money beneath our first step. Now I have to wonder if every step after it was ours.”
“John, I am sorry.”
“My name is Grim. You lost the right to the other one long before we lowered my mother into the ground.”
Silence follows.
Torch breaks it. “Ghost sent coordinates. He may have found Rivers.”
Duty gives me somewhere to put the violence.
“Striker, put St. Valecourt in a guest room under guard. Torch, assemble the search teams. Hound, verify the location.”
My brothers move immediately.
McKenna steps into my path. “And me?”
The answer claws through me.
At my side. In my cabin. Under me. Wrapped around me. Mine in every way she chooses to give herself.
“You stay inside the gates until Rivers is handled.”
“That’s an order?”
“Yes.”
“And after?”
“I step back.”
Her eyes harden. “What if I choose you?”
“Choose me when the contract is dead, Rivers is handled, and every gate stands open.”
“And if I still do?”
I hold her gaze and give her the only truth I trust.
“Then I spend the rest of my life making damn sure you never regret it.”
I walk out before she can give me an answer I am too weak to refuse.
Every brutal instinct in me demands that I turn back, haul her against my chest, and make it clear she belongs at my side. That is the St. Valecourt way. Decide. Purchase. Possess.
I am Grim.
I want her choice clean.
When Rivers is gone and every gate stands open, if my Angel still walks toward me, I will put my cut on her shoulders, my ring on her hand, and spend the rest of my life proving she chose right.
God help anyone who tries to stand between us.