Chapter 26
The timer buzzed sharp, cutting through the kitchen. Diamond and Ivy pulled the lasagnas out, golden and bubbling, filling the whole room with the smell of cheese and garlic. But that warm easy feeling didn’t stick around.
I leaned against the bench, wiping my hands on a towel. My skin still tingled where Rage touched me, but I couldn’t shake that look in his eyes – the raw, desperate fear he tried so hard to hide.
“They all seem… so intense,” I said quiet. “Rage, Pres, all of them. I know my father’s a dangerous man, but the way they act… it’s like they’re gearing up for a war. Is it always like this? Are they always this over the top with protecting people?”
Diamond set her oven mitts down slow. That soft smile was gone, replaced by something old and sad. She sank onto a stool, resting a hand on the counter looking at the kitchen door as if she could see through it, seeing things only she could see.
“They’re not over the top, Danika,” Ivy said, her voice steady but tight. “They’re terrified. To everyone else, they look like hard, scary outlaws. But inside these walls. They’re haunted. Especially when it comes to us.”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“They’re scared of getting it wrong. Scared of letting someone hurt one of us the way they let Rose get hurt. They’ve always been protective, but after what happened to her… they swear they’ll never let anything like that happen again.”
I twisted the towel tight in my hands. “What did happen to her? I’ve heard whispers, people saying this club took her in and they couldn’t understand… but that’s all.”
Diamond breathed out long and slow.
“Two years back,” she said, “Rose was just a shadow. Everyone round here knew her stepdad Alan was a drunk, had ten years of beating on her and using her like cash cow to pay off his gambling debts. One day Pres, Rage and Bones saw the marks on her. Tried to step in, sort it out. By the time they got back to get her… Alan was gone. Sold her off.”
My stomach dropped cold.
“He didn’t just sell her to some small-time crook,” Diamond went on, her voice shaking only a little.
“He sold her to a monster. A serial killer. Bought her just to hurt her, torture her, keep her locked up so he could do it over and over again. By the time the boys tracked them down… that room was torn apart. There was blood everywhere.”
I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.
“Rose fought back though,” Ivy cut in, fierce and proud through tears. “Even half dead, she drove a scalpel straight into that bastard’s neck to save herself. But her body was too broken. By the time we got her back here to the hospital… her heart gave out. She flatlined.”
Diamond looked down at her own hands like she could still see it all.
“I was right there,” she said quiet. “Doctor Cole was fighting to bring her back. Ivy and I took turns pounding on her chest, screaming at her to stay. We got her back… but she was never the same for so long.”
The kitchen felt suddenly so small, so quiet.
“For fourteen months,” Ivy said, “Rose barely spoke. Flinched if a door slammed or a voice got too loud. The boys walked on eggshells around her. They didn’t yell, didn’t fight, didn’t do anything that might scare her.
Even when she started to heal… they never forgot.
She tried to be normal, but the trauma would flare up. Ten years of survival to change.”
She wiped her cheek and looked straight at me.
“I know what it feels like,” she said. “I grew up in care, got bullied, made to feel like nothing. Bones saved me from a boy... When Rose came to the club - her scars inside and out - controlled her. Knowing what she felt, I managed to help her through. She had therapy and Pres never left her side - not for a second. He proved his love and protection to her.”
Diamond wrapped an arm round my shoulders, heavy and steady.
“That’s why they act this way with you,” she said. “Rage isn’t trying to run your life. He sees the danger coming for you, and all he can think is not her too. He’d burn the whole world down before he let anyone hurt you. He doesn’t want to be the one who failed you.”
Everything shifted. That anger I’d felt an hour ago about the letter, about being locked in… it just melted away.
Rage wasn’t some brute trying to control me. He was a man who’d stared right into the dark, seen what happens to women the world doesn’t protect… and he was standing between me and all of it.
I looked down at the flour dusted on my apron. My whole life I’d thought safety was something you paid for, something you earned with money and status. Standing here with them… I realised safety was people willing to fight for you, even when you couldn’t see the danger yourself.
They weren’t locking me in. They were keeping the world out.