Chapter 8 Rowan
ROWAN
Something inside me shattered.
Not cracked. Not bent. But shattered.
My ears rang as if the room had suddenly filled with static. I couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t see properly. The walls of the office felt too close, the air thick and suffocating.
My mom baked peach cobbler in the summer and scolded my dad when he tracked mud into the kitchen.
She smelled like lavender and sunshine. She listened to her music loud and she laughed carefree.
My dad taught me all about horses and looking after the land and he would always wish me a goodnight no matter what.
A sound escaped my throat before I realized it was me crying.
Not loud. Just small, broken breaths that I couldn’t stop.
The room spun. Then suddenly strong hands caught my arms and hauled me upright. One of the men behind me had grabbed me. His grip tightened painfully around my biceps as he held me upright.
My world tilted on its axis and my knees buckled. For a second the only thing keeping me standing was this man’s grip.
Everything I knew about my parents twisted apart in my head.
The quiet ranch.
The isolation.
The way we never had visitors.
Had any of it been real?
Tears blurred my vision.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. “I swear to God I didn’t know.”
No one answered, and the silence was worse than the shouting.
Then suddenly the man’s hands were gone.
I stumbled forward, my legs barely working. Before I hit the floor, Tex caught me. His arms came up around me fast and steady, pulling me up against his chest like he’d been waiting to do it. For a moment I didn’t even fight it. I just held on to him.
His leather vest was rough under my fingers, warm from his body. I could hear his heartbeat through it, slow and steady. It was so different from the chaos currently inside my head.
“I didn’t know,” I said again, my voice cracking. “Tex, I swear—”
“I know.”
The quiet certainty in his voice made something inside my chest loosen just a little. He believed me. At least someone did.
But when I lifted my head, the rest of the room still looked at me like I was a loaded gun sitting on the table.
JD leaned back in his chair, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers. “Maybe,” he said.
The word felt like a slap.
“Maybe?” I repeated. My voice sounded hoarse, raw. “How could I have known? Why would I have come to you if I did know? Do you think I have a death wish?”
A death wish, because I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that the Kings wouldn’t put a bullet in my head if they thought I’d betrayed them.
JD shrugged one shoulder. “Whether you knew or not doesn’t really matter right now. Certainly not to the cartel.”
My stomach dropped, because he was right. The cartel didn’t care about the truth. They cared about their money. And right now, I was standing in their way of making it.
“So what now?” I asked, my voice scratching out of my too tight throat.
“They want their route back, and you’re standing in their way.”
Tex’s arm tightened around my shoulders. “They’ll have to come through me if they think they’re hurting her,” he said, his drawl thicker.
JD studied the desk in front of him like the answer might be carved into the solid wood. Then he said something that made the back of my neck prickle.
“There’s another problem.”
I wiped my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. “What problem?”
JD looked at Tex. “What I can’t work out is why?
Why now. Why would Matteo decide to do all this now?
Just to make a name for himself? Seems like a lot of trouble changing an existing plan that had been working for them for years.
Matteo can’t be more than thirty, and the Cartel have a lot of hands in a lot of business. Why’d they pick this one to go after?”
The room went very, very still and a cold wave rolled through my chest.
My property was on land that was used as a route…for drugs.
The ranch my parents had raised me on. The ranch I had fought to keep after they died. I felt sick.
“So someone pushed them towards this one,” one of the bikers behind me muttered.
“Not just pushed,” Tex said, “they took it to them and they encouraged it. But who? The only other people that could have known about it were other members of the cartel or…”
“One of ours,” JD finished for him, “one of ours wants in on the deal. Possibly had in on the original deal all along.”
Something flickered in my memory. Something from a while back. I’d come back briefly and had woken up to my parents arguing.
“Wait,” I said, and everyone turned to look at me. I remembered something. Something I hadn’t understood at the time. “My dad was scared the last year of his life,” I said quietly.
JD leaned forward. “Scared of what?”
“Or who?” one of the other bikers said.
I hesitated, uncertain. Then the memory came back in full.
“Late night.
The kitchen lights on.
My parents arguing in low voices.
My dad pacing the floor.
My mom crying.
I could hear his voice as clearly as if he was standing beside me now.
“He’s given them everything on us, it’s too late now.”
My father’s words left my mouth before I could stop them, the story of what I’d overheard echoing off the walls.
The reaction in the room was instant.
Tex’s entire body tensed beside me and JD’s eyes went cold.
“I’m guessing he didn’t say who?” Tex asked.
I shook my head slowly. “No.” But I remembered something else. “He said he didn’t know who to tell because no one listened to him the last time when he tried to warn them.”
No one spoke for several seconds.
Then Tex said quietly, “When was this?”
I swallowed. “Two Christmases ago.”
I might not know much about the Kings, but I knew enough to know that their word was their bond, and you didn’t betray each other for anything.
JD crushed his cigarette into the ashtray. “All right,” he said, and his voice had turned ice cold. “New fucking rule.”
Everyone looked at him.
“Until we figure out who’s talking,” he continued, “no one says a damn word about Rowan’s father to anyone else unless I give the go ahead.”
“Agreed,” Tex said. He was still gripping me tightly, but not in an aggressive way—in a way that was meant to shield me. Normally I would have hated that, but right then, I needed it.
JD’s eyes moved to me. “And you’re not going back to that ranch.”
My spine stiffened instantly. “Yes I am.”
“No,” he said flatly, “you’re staying here.”
My anger flared through the fear. “Like hell I am.”
JD smiled faintly. “You don’t get a vote, kitten.”
Before I could argue again, Tex spoke. “If the cartel wants her land, they’ll have to come through us to get it. Through me. And it doesn’t matter where she is, they’ll be coming for her regardless, because she’s the only thing standing in the way of millions.”
“I’m not staying here. I have a life. I have responsibilities.
I have animals to care for at the ranch,” I said, my voice stronger now.
Now that the shock had settled, I was growing angrier.
“What if the cartel—” Was I really talking about the cartel?
“—go back to the ranch and hurt my animals? No, I’m not leaving them to destroy everything my family worked for. ”
“I don’t think you understand how this works—” JD began, but I twisted out of Tex’s grip and stared down JD.
“I might not understand the cartel, or the Kings, or drug routes, but I understand betrayal just fine. Right now I feel betrayed—by my own parents, no less. But that being said, I still have animals to care for and I’m not leaving them to fend for themselves.
I’m going home to look after them. Because I am loyal to those I care about. ”
“Even if it means putting you in danger?” JD said, leaning forwards.
“Even then,” I replied.
My heart hammered in my chest, the blood pumping so hard and fast that I felt dizzy with it.
“I’ll stay with her,” Tex said.
“No, you don’t have to—”
“Fine,” JD agreed, though he didn’t look happy about it.
“But take two of the prospects with you. And before you argue about it, Rowan, this is the only way you get to go back home. At least for now, because other than that I have no qualms about tying you up and keeping you in the basement until we sort this shit out. Right now, it looks like you’re the only thing standing in the way of the cartel fucking with my club. ”
“Fine,” I mimicked him, even though it was not fine.
“Tonight, though, you’re staying here. I want your property searched before you go back there. I don’t trust the cartel not to have planted something else.”
I jerked back. “Something else?”
Then I remembered what they had said earlier about a fire at the ranch, and I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
It all felt surreal. My parents weren’t who I thought they were, who they had led me to believe my entire life. The land I’d grown up on had been used for trafficking drugs.
As the men in the room started talking again, one thought kept pounding in my head louder than the rest: someone in their club was talking to the cartel behind their backs. Not everyone here could be trusted.
And if my father had been right all those years ago, then the man who destroyed my family might be standing somewhere in this building, watching and waiting.
And maybe even smiling while my entire life fell apart.