Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
HARPER
Anna’s halfway down the hall to meet me before I’ve made it three steps out of the suite.
“Who is it?”
“There’s a man at the gate. He says he’s here to talk to you.” She’s holding out her phone, sprint-walking the last of the distance to my side.
I figured whoever she’s talking about is on a phone line, but as soon as I grab it from her, I see it’s just the security camera feed. A small three-inch screen.
Z is standing outside the gate.
I go very still.
He looks like he’s been dragged through hell and back again.
And not just from where I shot him in the ass, either.
There’s also a head wound matted with dried blood covering half his face, brown and cracked at the edges the way wounds look when they’ve been ignored long enough to just barely stop being urgent.
His left eye is swollen completely shut, and his right arm hangs wrong at the shoulder. His other hand is pressed against the gate pillar, not for emphasis—but like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.
He’s clearly been beaten.
Badly.
Methodically.
God, I hate that even now—even after the closet, the gun, the hotel room—the sight of Z beaten does something animal and awful to my chest.
It’s not love. I know it’s not love.
It’s older than that—it’s the compulsion of the twelve-year-old girl who learned to run toward the bleeding thing because Z taught her that. And he’s spent ten years counting on it.
His mouth’s been moving on the screen the whole time, but the audio’s muted.
Look at you, I think as my hand moves instinctively toward the volume button. Even now.
But no, this is because of the conversation Caleb and I just had earlier in bed.
We need information.
Z’s frantic voice suddenly starts echoing loudly through the hall as I continue toward the front door.
“—know I’m the last person you want to hear from right now.
Just believe me when I tell you how fucking sorry I am, Harp.
It was the meth, and I was just so mad—fuck, none of that matters now.
I’m tryin’ to make it right. Senior wants to meet with you.
Just to meet, I swear. If you sign over Silas’s club, he’ll let you and Bruiser go. It’s only Silas he—”
I kill the volume again.
He’s sorry? He’s sorry?
I think of the flowers he’d bring in trembling hands after some fuck-up or other. And how he’d get small and boyish every time he’d say those exact words to me. I’m sorry. I’m trying to make it right.
He always knew how to be sorry in a way that cost me everything and him nothing.
I hand the phone back to Anna.
“Don’t let Bruiser out of his room, ‘kay?” I say. “I won’t let this asshole traumatize him anymore.”
“On it,” says Anna.
Anna’s husband Domhnall is waiting at the front door, their cute baby in his arms. He takes one look at my face.
“I allowed him into the secure yard, if you want to open the door and talk to him through the security glass. Our systems swept him for weapons as he entered the gate. He’s not carrying. ”
I adore that Caleb’s friend doesn’t try to handle me. I also adore that he gets out of the way when I say, “Open the door.”
He nods and pulls the knob that opens the inner door.
There’s Z.
Separated from me now by nothing but security glass—an inch of it, maybe less.
His ruined face is close enough that I can see the specific pattern of the bruising, clearly inflicted by men who knew what they were doing.
He sees me and lunges, palm smacking against the glass.
“Harper—” His voice cracks on my name the way it always does. The way he’s always known affects me. “I’m so sorry, I swear to God, I was out of my mind, I didn’t mean—”
I hold up one hand. “Stop talking.”
“But Harper, if you would just list—”
“I said, stop talking.”
He stops talking. That’s new.
Usually, he’ll keep talking right over me until I’m cowed by the sheer quantity of his words and love bombing.
But now that I’ve seen the truth of him and he knows it, that bullshit won’t work anymore. So now when I put up a boundary, suddenly he’s respecting it.
Because he knows he’s lost his power over me.
I’m on this side of the glass and he’s on that side.
I let the silence sit.
I let him wait in it.
And then I say, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Harp, just let me explain—I wasn’t in my right mind, I—”
“Who is Senior?” I cut him off.
That lands differently than the conversation he came prepared for. I watch him recalibrate cautiously.
“The President of the MC I work for.”
“There it is.” The words come out quiet, and quiet is worse than loud sometimes. “First true thing you’ve said to me in I don’t know how long.”
His eyes come up to mine. I let him find them this time because I want him to see that I’m not shaking.
“Look, I found a way to make it all right. All you’ve gotta do is come sign this thing, Harp—”
“If he wants the Dungeon, have Senior’s lawyers send over the paperwork. We’re happy to sign whatever he wants.” I step back and prepare to close the door in his face.
“It’s not about the stupid fucking club!” Frustration cracks through Z before he can stop it, and he winces—from his own volume or from his injuries, I’m not sure. I’ve almost got the door shut when he says, “It’s about Bruiser.”
I yank the door back open, my veins turning to fucking ice.
Any lingering conditioned compassion for this man is officially dead and gone. My voice goes cold as I ask, “What does my son have to do with any of this?”
Z’s shoulders drop. And it’s not the usual calculated smallness he does when he wants me to soften.
“I swear I didn’t know,” he starts.
“Tell me what you do know. Now.”
He breathes out. “Senior’s not just my boss. He’s your uncle. Him and Silas are brothers.”
His head lifts, watching me for a reaction.
I give him nothing, even though my head is spinning with the information.
He keeps going. “Their dad left them this property, I guess—land somewhere up in Idaho where Senior’s son built a mountain compound. I’m not supposed to know about it, but people talk.
“It’s like a cult up there on the mountain or something. The MC funnels them money, then launders money that comes from them to clean it up. I guess your grandpa was some paranoid backwoods mountain hick who wrote in his will that everything is passed down through male heirs only.”
He pauses. “And Senior’s got this son, Brutus. But Brutus doesn’t have any sons. Which means if something happens to Brutus, the line reverts back to Silas’s branch.”
I hear it coming before he finishes the sentence.
“And Silas’s male heir,” I conclude for him, “is Bruiser.”
“Yeah,” Z expels a loud breath. “Your nine-year-old kid is the legal failsafe to everything Senior and his kid have spent their whole lives building.”
His voice drops lower as he leans into the glass between us.
“Harp. I don’t know what the fuck goes on up that mountain, but it’s a big deal.
Blood has been spilt before over this land, do you understand me?
And your boy’s been sitting in the line of succession this whole time.
They could give a fuck about Silas’s sex dungeon. ”
His brow knits a little, and he winces in pain at the action.
“I mean Senior might have some vendetta against Silas that goes deeper, like, old brother against brother shit. But I heard he’s using this particular asset to really turn the screws on Silas and use it as leverage to get you to sign Bruiser’s rights away without ever being any the wiser. ”
I visited Silas in prison almost every month. He watched me bring Bruiser’s drawings, listened to updates on first days of school and lost teeth—and never once mentioned my son was heir to a blood feud.
But then I guess it fits Silas’s usual way. He always protected me my whole life the only way he knew how: by running and not telling anyone—even his daughter—what he was running from.
But I’m still so angry about being kept in the dark that I could put my fist through this security glass.
“Fine,” I say, trying to keep my emotions under control. “Get me the papers, and I’ll sign.”
“Well…” Z draws out the word, eying me carefully. “That’s the other thing. You have to do it in person.”
He watches me process. “The grandfather’s will—there’s a clause.
Warring family has to appear face to face with a lawyer present.
He was real untrustworthy about ways his kin might try to get around it.
So any renunciation has to be executed before the acting trustee. That’s the only way it’s binding.”
“She’s not going anywhere with you.” Caleb’s voice comes from behind me.
I close my eyes. Not now, Caleb.
I’m sure he left Bruiser with Anna, who’s great with him, but still.
I open my eyes and turn around. Caleb’s standing six feet back, arms crossed over his chest, jaw set in that particular configuration that means he has decided something and is bracing for impact.
His eyes go to Z through the glass and then back to me, and what’s in them isn’t control—he looks terrified and trying to cover it, finger tapping double time at his thigh.
“Did you hear what he said about Bruiser?” My voice stays level. I need him to hear that it’s level.
“I heard.” His eyes come fully to mine. “He’s my son too, Harper. That’s why I’m saying—”
Oh he’s not pulling that shit on me. He has known of Bruiser’s existence for barely more than a week.
“He’s my son,” I say through gritted teeth. “And I’m not asking your permission.”
Emotion moves across Caleb’s face. It’s not hurt—the thing I’d have braced for from Z, who would have turned that into a wound he could use against me to manipulate me into getting what he wanted.
This is different. This is a man who actually hears me.
Caleb takes a breath.
Then a step back.
Not away.
Back.
There’s a difference, and we both know it, and that difference is the entire distance between every man I’ve ever known and this one.