But he hadn’t.
Unlike most of us, Ryan hadn’t been raised in the MC.
He’d come from the regular world. His parents were churchgoers, his mom stayed at home and raised the kids, and his dad worked at a boring insurance job. They were older though. Ryan had been a late baby, and when his dad had died the day before he was due to claim his work pension and they’d refused his mom’s petition?
That was it.
He’d lost his shit, and that was when he’d become a prospect for the Hell’s Rebels.
Of course, by that point, he’d known us since kindergarten, and if we hadn’t influenced him already, it hadn’t been for lack of trying. But what regular old society had done for his family had taught him that this way of life was better.
You made your own luck in this world, and you did it with a family of three hundred at your back.
“Why are you here now, Lucie? Why not two months ago?” Dagger’s question was softly posed, and Lucie pursed her lips as she pressed them into Amaryllis’s hair.
“After he… went away, things were tough.” From the pain in her face, that was an understatement. “Then it took some time to close up our lives in Lubbock. Ryan had bought us a house and I had to sell it. Then there was just…” She blew out a breath. “I had a life to settle, but I was always coming home. I wanted to bring him back before, Bomber be damned, but Ryan wasn’t—”
“Ryan wasn’t what?”
“He’d been told there was nothing more that could be done, and moving him wasn’t going to be good for him.”
“He’d have been with his family.”
She shook her head. “He was with his family, and truthfully, he needed peace and quiet. Not raves every Saturday night, and weed in the air all the time. But I’d still have come if he wanted. He didn’t, though. He was happy where he was.”
Her critique wasn’t wrong, but it did make me frown at her.
“Why come at all if it’s so crappy here?” Wolfe snapped at her, still on his knees, the joints still burrowed in the gravel from where he’d dropped down to come face to face with Amaryllis.
There was fire in her eyes, fire that was more than enough to match the heat of Flame’s, as she stated, “I’ve come back to my rightful place. You’re the Prez, but I always should have been the heiress.” She smirked. “It’s time we started working together. As a team.”
2
Lucie
They gaped at me because they knew I was serious.
Deadly.
And they knew that if they laughed, then just as I’d done with the prospect, I’d make them pay for it.
Wolfe, because he was the biggest asshole, ground out first, “You have to be joking.”
“No. Do I look like I just dropped a punch line?”
“The men won’t answer to a woman.”
“Behind every strong man is a strong woman.” I smiled at him. “I’m here to be your old lady, Wolfe. You should never have married that slut—yeah, Ryan and I heard about Kim.” God, I’d always hated that tramp. “You knew you were mine. Always was, always will be.” I cut them all a look, one that said they were all mine.
Each of them.
Once upon a time, there’d been five. Now there were four, and though the hole Ryan left behind was a gaping wound in my heart, it was time I took back my life.
Took back what was rightfully mine.
After months of grieving, of not being the mother I should be to Ama—something that would shame me until my dying day—it was time for me to hold onto the reins once more.
Wolfe snarled, but before he could say a word or, ya know, probably insult me, Dagger punched him in the shoulder. “Shut the fuck up, Wolfe, before you wreck this before it even has a chance to begin,” he snapped, and I didn’t bother telling him not to curse. Amaryllis was used to curse words, but she knew not to say them herself.
Unfair?
Maybe. But I’d get shit from her teachers if she started dropping F-bombs around the classroom, and that was the only reason I stopped her.
Ryan and I had taught her that words were only as powerful as you made them.
In this instance though, Wolfe’s words would have held power. The trouble was, I was bluffing. Bluffing that their feelings for me were as powerful as they’d ever been. Bluffing because this could only work if they wanted me as badly as I wanted them.
It was a game of Texas Hold ‘Em where my heart was the prize.
Ryan had kept tabs on our family, so I knew what they’d all gone through. Knew about Flame’s appendicitis that had almost killed him, knew that Axe’s folks had died in a bike crash. Knew about Kim, the whore, and knew that Dagger had almost lost an eye in a bad knife fight.
Still, knowing and seeing were two different things.
They’d changed. As had I. But I’d had softness in my life, not just with Amaryllis but Ryan too. He’d loved me. But there’d been no one to love these guys. No one who could love them like me.
I stared at Wolfe, stared him down like I would the beast he was named for, and before he could say anything to piss me off, I grabbed my shirt and lifted it to reveal my ribcage.
When he saw the tattoo of his namesake, he blanched. Then, I turned around. I moved my hair off my neck where Ryan’s mark lay, then lifted my shirt again to reveal the tramp stamp that I’d never be ashamed of, one that was shaped like Dagger’s favorite blade. When I turned around once more, I shot Axe and Flame a look. “Yours I can’t reveal in public.”
Flame’s eyes ignited at my words, but he calmed things down by snickering. “Now I’m intrigued.”
“Thought you might be,” I teased, my grin widening as I saw that for him, Axe, and Dagger, things were as right as I’d left them.
Why they’d let me go was something I’d be angry about later on. Why they hadn’t fought for me was something I’d nail them in the balls for at some point in the future. Now? I had other fish to fry.
“You marked yourself,” Wolfe rasped.
“Five times,” I agreed.
“Why?”
There was pain in his eyes, pain in his voice. Wolfe might be a cunt, but that was because he wore his heart on his sleeve. He had to be a bastard to cover that shit up.
In this world, any and all weaknesses were exploited, and that meant usually the biggest bastards were the softest pussies on the inside.
“Because I’m yours,” I told him simply, and before any of them could say another word, I left them with my bags, and Amaryllis and I moved toward the clubhouse.
Toward home.
It hadn’t changed.
Not really.
Sure, the paint on the siding was different. It was an off-white instead of the dark beige it had been the last time I was here. The doors and the window covers were all a bright green, making the place look close to respectable. A notion that made me want to snort, because now that I’d crossed through the gates, I was in Hell.
Respectability and the Devil’s abode didn’t exactly go hand in hand, but my dad had always been weirdly house-proud. I thought it had something to do with snubbing the supposedly good people of Rutherford. He liked to rupture their expectations, and this was one passive aggressive way of doing so.