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The burlier men of the Wolverines bolted up and lumbered over to remove the body. They would return it to Kyle’s father, but in what state? Would they honor the boy by cleaning up the gore, or would they simply drop him off like a battered package?
The Wolverines were honorable. They were a family built from the dirt up by Walter Bates with a vision of freedom—a world that he could rule, and nobody could tell him or his boys what he could or couldn’t do. The club was a misfit family of troubled souls brought together for a larger purpose.
I was proud of that. I believed in my father’s mission. Freedom was all we had, and it felt good. Power felt good. Freedom had no lines to cross.
I dared break my father’s stare to drop to Kyle’s body, being lifted into the arms of one of his enforcers, Church.
Just a kid. There wasn’t much a kid could do to actually piss off Walter Bates. The only reason he was dead was because Father needed an outlet that wouldn’t—couldn’t—fight back.
A kid.
I knew my father was a murderer. It was simply a fact I had known since I was a child, in the same way a normal child knew their father was a salesman—and never batted an eye at. He’d killed dozens of men over his lifetime. It was just an occupational hazard.
There was no honor, family, or freedom in murdering a seventeen-year-old boy.
Father flicked ashes off the tip of the cigar, the accursed thing glowing like dying embers, and watched his men. Apparently, they were acting far too slow.
“Move your asses!” he roared. “Put down those damn cards and act like a fucking Wolverine! Have you all gone soft? He was just some punk. He didn’t have the balls to join our family. You have other shit to do for the club, so go before I bust all your faces in. Move!”
His men scrambled like ants—brutish, stinking, thoughtless ants—to obey their boss’s orders.
And then Father turned back to me. I rose to my feet, and my spine seemed to creak with the pressure to remain ramrod straight.
He walked over, limping slightly, and it was like getting lost in the shadow of a behemoth. Mumbling around the cigar, he grumbled, “Losing your edge, Caroline?”
“Never, sir,” I answered stiffly, irritated at the insinuation.
“Good,” he growled, narrowing his eyes. “Thought I saw something.”
“Saw what, Father?”
He leaned in, blowing smoke in my face. I didn’t flinch, but I held my breath, not to avoid breathing in fumes and blood, but to steel myself. The world seemed to hold its breath as Walter Bates leered at his daughter.
“Thought I saw fear, Caroline.”
I narrowed my eyes in return. “Fear is for cowards, Father, as you have taught me. I am no coward.”
“Good,” he said again, tossing the cigar over his shoulder despite it being barely smoked, for someone to pick up for him. “Don’t need you to weaken into some spineless fucking idiot.”
“Never,” I repeated, but he forged on as if I hadn’t spoken.
“I raised these boys”—he said it with dripping scorn when he glanced at his “family” behind him—“from gutter trash to something worth keeping alive. But if they don’t respect me and the blood I spill?” He raised his hands toward me to show off the blood on them as if I hadn’t witnessed the casual murder. “Then let today be a lesson. Respect me or die. That kid won’t be the first.”
And with those words, I felt the weight of the truth settle around me like dust after a shootout.
Walter Bates had finally snapped.
He was killing his own family.
And I was a witness.
I took my father’s hands in my own, the difference stark. His were large and meaty, his left pinky long gone from his time in prison. Mine were slender, tipped with nails that could maim. But both were made for war.
“I stand behind you, Father,” I said. “Always.”
He gave my hands a squeeze, but it was anything but the reassuring gesture a father should have given his daughter. Then he released me to drop one hand on my shoulder. It was too heavy to be comforting. But I still didn’t flinch, even as the boy’s blood stained my expensive white suit jacket.
“Good girl,” Father rumbled. “You’re the only one in this shithole town I can trust anymore.”