Page 117

Bates ignored me, his voice ragged with rage and betrayal. “You fucking whore. You bled for me, killed for me, lied for me—and you threw it all away for Devil cock.”
His spit hit her cheek. She barely flinched.
“You think they’ll ever love you like I did?” he rasped, pressing the barrel harder to her head. “I made you. Trained you. You’re not one of them. You’re mine.”
Bates’s free hand ran down her hip and he whispered in her ear, “Devils’ll fuck you, but I own you. Always. Whether I live or die, you’re mine, baby girl.”
Caroline’s eyes went wide with horror.
Bates’s finger curled around the trigger.
“NO!”
BANG.
CHAPTER 38
CAROLINE
I had a gun to my head again. Held by my own damn father.
“You’ll always be Bates’s little bitch. Bates created you. And no matter what cut you ride with now, you’ll die wearing his brand.”
“Whether I live or die, you’re mine, baby girl.”
Tears welled in my eyes, blurring the scene before me: Devils and Wolverines standing scattered across the floor, watching Walter hold me hostage. We were both covered in warm, wet blood, both stretched to our wits’ end, and somehow, this was the most humiliating thing I had ever experienced. I had never felt humiliated before, much less with a gun to my head, and I felt something in me break.
What had my life come to? Maybe I really am doomed to live in Walter Bates’s shadow for the rest of my life. Maybe I?—
“No!”
BANG.
Pain seared the side of my head. My body jerked violently, and I collapsed to the concrete. Knox’s scream became my entire world. I closed my eyes against the white-hot pain.
Thud.
My eyes flew open. My father’s body hit the floor. His head was twisted toward me. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
“C-Care…”
Bang!
Walter jolted from a second gunshot—and then another. And then another.
Until I watched the light fade from his single good eye.
Dead.
Actually dead.
Gone.
Never to sneer, command, shout, touch, slap, or kill ever again.
Free.
I was free.