Chapter 10 #3
For one second, I see the old Cherry. The one bleeding on a bathroom floor. The one I failed through silence. The one I should have been honest with before grief had time to rot.
Then she is gone.
“I want you to listen.”
“Not your strong suit lately.”
“Don’t joke.”
“If I stop joking, I start killing.”
She swallows.
Good. Be scared. Be very fucking scared.
“You’re going to do what I say,” she says.
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“No. I’m finally seeing clear.” Her voice shakes, but she keeps going. “You chose her. You humiliated me. You made me nothing in front of everybody.”
“You made yourself something when you gave them Lady’s code.”
“They threatened my family.”
“And now you have mine?”
Her face twists. “Lady ain’t your sister.”
“No,” I say. “She’s my woman, whether she claims me back or not.”
Cherry’s mouth tightens like the words hit exactly where I meant them to.
“You want the pictures gone?” she asks.
“I want you gone.”
“You betray Diablo.”
For a second, I think I heard her wrong.
Then the words settle.
I laugh.
It ain’t a human sound.
“You’re dumber than I thought.”
Her eyes flash. “Carmen will have instructions soon.”
“Carmen can choke on a dick.”
“She knows things, Shady. Rafael’s grave. Reyes Floral. The routes Diablo thinks he owns. She knows where Darling sleeps. She knows where Lady performs. She knows how many brothers are loyal to Diablo and how many still remember Rafael.”
I go still.
Cherry sees it.
Her smile crawls back.
“Smart road captain. You get it now.”
“I get that you walked into a room with a sleeping man and staged pictures because Carmen told you to.”
Her face reddens.
“What would you call that, Cherry?”
“Survival.”
“No,” I say, voice low. “Don’t dress this up. You touched me while I was out and took pictures to blackmail me. That ain’t survival. That is a line you cannot uncross.”
For the first time, shame flickers.
“She’ll ruin your Lady,” Cherry whispers. “The photos. The rumor. The criminal thing will stick. Miami will eat her alive. Fame is all Lady has.”
My phone buzzes on the floor beside the bed.
Both of us look at it.
Cherry laughs softly. “Speak of the devil.”
I don’t move for it.
She backs toward the door.
“Don’t follow me,” she says. “Don’t tell Diablo. If you do, Carmen sends everything public. You wait for instructions.”
“I don’t take orders from Carmen.”
“You will if you love Lady.”
Then she opens the door and slips into the hall.
I stand there, jeans open, stomach sick, tattoo burning under plastic, the room smelling like wrong perfume and betrayal.
My phone buzzes again.
I pick it up with a hand that doesn’t feel like mine.
Lady.
Two messages.
I stare until the letters clear.
I’m sorry about last night.
Then another.
I love you too, gringo.
For a second, the whole world disappears.
No club. No photos. No Cherry. No Carmen. No Rafael’s grave waiting under moonlight. Just those words on my screen, late and perfect and devastating.
I love you too.
My knees almost go.
Then Cherry’s staged photo flashes in my head.
Her thumb.
Send.
Carmen will have instructions soon.
I look at Lady’s message until my vision blurs.
Fuck.
The End for Now
Coming Next From USA Bestselling Author Morgan Jane Mitchell in her Saints Outlaws MC: Miami, Alpha’s Amour
Alpha
I know how to find things men bury.
Money. Bodies. Lies. The kind of secrets that rot under fresh flowers and polished stone.
As secretary of the Saints Outlaws MC, I keep the records clean enough to save us and dirty enough to destroy anyone who comes for the patch.
I watched Diablo choose Darling and put a crown-shaped target on her back.
I watched Shady bleed for Lady, then nearly lose her because some truths came too late.
Carmen Solano thinks she knows where we are weak.
She might be right.
The roses were only the beginning.
Every trail I follow leads back to Reyes Floral, Rafael Solano’s grave, and the woman who inherited both.
Amour Reyes.
Quiet. Careful. Too soft-looking for Vice Ink and too tangled in the blood trail to be innocent.
She says she wants nothing to do with the Saints, but her family business moved more than flowers.
Her father kept records he should’ve burned.
Rafael buried secrets he should’ve taken to hell.
And Amour knows enough to make Carmen dangerous.
I should stay away from her.
She is evidence.
A witness.
A woman with haunted eyes and hands that shake right before she tells a lie.
But I see patterns for a living, and Amour Reyes is the one thing I can’t make fit. She knows where the roses went. She knows why Carmen is smiling. She knows what Rafael hid before Diablo ever took the chair.
And when she looks at me like she is scared I might save her, I start wanting things a man like me has no business wanting.
Love.
Carmen’s not finished.
Darling’s engagement has made her a bigger target.
Lady and Shady are hanging by a thread.
Diablo is ready to burn Miami down to protect his queen.
And I am the only man close enough to the truth to see the next body before it drops.
Amour told me not to dig up the dead unless I was ready for what climbed out.
Too late, beautiful.
I already have the shovel.