“Hey Zane. Nice to see you up and about. Jagger worked you over pretty good the other night. I thought you’d be laid up for at least a week. But four days! You’re one tough bastard.”
Evie froze on the step beside him. “Jagger did this to you?”
“Biker business.” Zane put his arm on her lower back and steered her inside. “I’ll explain what I can upstairs.”
“Upstairs where you’ve been suffering for four days and no one called me?” Her voice rose in pitch. “I was only a ten-minute drive away. I could have looked after you.” Eyes flashing, she spun out of his grasp.
“Jagger!” She shouted his name and stormed into the living room.
“Shit. Did I say something wrong?” Shaggy came up beside him, stroking his thick gray beard. “I thought everyone knew. Isn’t that the point?”
“Yeah. But it wasn’t a lesson Evie needed to learn.”
He knew the exact moment Evie spotted Jagger talking to Gunner and Arianne in the vast room the MC used for church, the monthly mandatory meetings for all full-patch brothers. Save for a few couches and chairs, a long table where the board sat, and a computer table where Dax recorded minutes, the room was bare. No pictures on the walls, no curtains on the windows. Nothing to distract the brothers during the meetings.
Her feet thudded on the wooden floor, her hair fanning out behind her. She was glorious in her anger and he was glad for the small mercy Jagger hadn’t been in the living room because what was about to go down wasn’t something a small boy like Ty should see.
“Jagger!”
Jagger looked up, but before he could move to greet her, Arianne stepped into Evie’s path.
“That’s as far as you go.”
“Get out of my way.” Evie’s voice shook with anger.
Zane crossed the floor toward her. “Let it go, sweetheart.”
“Let it go? Look what he did to you.” She tried to step around Arianne. “Get out here, Jagger, or are you afraid to look me in the eye and tell me what you did?”
“Zane made him do it.” Arianne folded her arms, and scowled. “Jagger’s hurting as much as Zane. He spent the last four days at the clubhouse looking after him. Zane broke the rules. He had to be punished. That’s our way.”
“Your way?” Evie’s hands clenched into fists. “Your way is to beat a man half to death? What could he possibly have done to deserve that?”
“She’s magnificent,” Sparky murmured, coming up behind Zane. “Between her and Arianne, my shop has never run as efficiently. The brothers are afraid to step out of line.”
“Definitely old lady material.” Gunner sidestepped the fray to join them. “You keeping her?”
“Yeah,” Zane said, his chest swelling with pride. “She’s mine.”
* * *
Evie’s chest heaved and she glared at Arianne. Why wouldn’t she get out of the way? This had nothing to do with her, and everything to do with Evie needing to know exactly what being part of this world meant.
“He went against my orders.” Jagger stepped out from behind Arianne. “He broke the rules. He had a choice. Punishment or a kick out. He agreed to the punishment.”
“That’s barbaric.” Her voice rose in pitch and she tried to bring it down, but seeing Zane so badly injured, and knowing Jagger had done it … Her gaze dropped to the bottom of Jagger’s cut, lined with small red diamond patches.
Blood patches.
“Don’t judge us,” Arianne warned. “This is a different world. We play by different rules. Enforcing order in the club is a matter of survival—for both the MC and civilians.”
“What’s going on?” Connie ran into the room. “Evangeline? Everything okay?”
“Get Ty packed up. We’re leaving.” She couldn’t stay here, couldn’t expose Ty to this, couldn’t accept that Zane was part of this world.
“But…” Connie’s eyes widened and she jerked her head toward the door to the basement where they figured a dungeon might be. “I thought we were going to … play pool.”
Evie’s stomach twisted. Did she really want to know if there was a woman in the dungeon? Her gaze flicked down to the bottom of Zane’s cut. Blood patches. Just like Viper said. How ironic that everyone thought of Viper as the bad guy, and yet he had told her the truth.
“Come upstairs with me,” Zane murmured in her ear, his arm sliding around her waist. “I’ll explain it to you. Answer any questions you have.”
Her shoulders slumped as the fight drained out of her. It was all Viper said and more. The Sinners were no different from the Jacks. Zane no different from Viper. This wasn’t a TV show, it was worse. It was real and as bad as she could have imagined.
TWENTY
A bad repair decision may end up costing you time and money, but that’s OK. Everything can be fixed.
—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL
“Take off your clothes.” Evie leaned against Zane’s bedroom door, more for support than a means of escape.
“Evie…”
A growl curled in her throat, her anger growing as she realized this was the beginning of the end. Once she saw what was under his shirt, there would be no going back. “Take them off. I want to see what he did to you.”
He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed, then he stripped down to his boxers. Her legs trembled as her gaze swept over his body, starting at his feet, her strength leaving her as she took in the discolored skin on his shins and thighs, the cuts on his wrists, and then gave out when she saw the full extent of his bruised and lacerated torso.
Her beautiful Zane.
She sank down to the floor, wrapped her arms around her legs, buried her head and sobbed, the grief ripping her apart inside. Tears spilled down her cheeks dripping on the floor with each ragged inhale. She cried not just for him, but for them, and the knowledge they could never be together.
“Fuck.” Zane’s voice was harsh, raw as he crossed the room to kneel beside her. “Sweetheart, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
She shook her head, held herself tighter, unable to speak for the images spinning around in her mind. Jagger had no bruises on his body. That guilty look on his face when he’d come into the shop … the marks on Zane’s wrists.
Zane hadn’t fought back. His hands were tied and he hadn’t fought back.
“Let me explain.” He cradled her in his arms, as if she was the one hurting. She supposed, in a way, she was.
“There’s nothing to say that could make this acceptable to me.” Evie sniffed back her tears. “I can’t do this, Zane. Seeing you like this is tearing me apart. I’ll never be able to forgive Jagger, never forget what he did to you. I won’t even pretend to understand how you agreed to it. The fact that you live in a world where this kind of thing goes on is bad enough, but on top of it … your patches … blood…”
“I’ll leave the MC.” Simple words and yet they weighed heavy on her heart.
“I don’t want you to leave.” She held herself stiff, afraid to touch his battered body. “This club means everything to you. That you would take a beating from your best friend tells me how much you love this life. You would hate me every day for taking you away from it.”
“I love you more,” he said. “I have always loved you. I’ve lived my life in the shadows because I couldn’t let you go.” He drew in a ragged breath, brushed his lips over her hair. “I can’t lose you now. I went looking for Viper because I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
She struggled to sit, pushed herself to standing. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you either, but I don’t even know who I am anymore. All I know is that I’ve been stupidly naive, and this life you lead isn’t for me. I want to be with you, but I don’t see how this can work.”