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I had never experienced heartbreak before. I wasn’t lucky enough to be dumped by a boy. I didn’t have grandparents or aunts or uncles to mourn over. I didn’t have friends to cut ties with after a big fight.
I didn’t have a heart to break. My father and the Wolverines made sure of it.
But Knox? Knox found a heart in the depths of myself, hardened in a shell. And then he cracked it open and didn’t scoff or recoil at the pathetic mush inside.
That wasn’t the heartbreak part, though.
When the rest of the Devil’s Luck arrived and Knox went to greet them, I slipped into the open door of Grant’s shop. It was all too easy. Seldom did men in this world pay attention to a woman when their tempers and egos were going full throttle.
As soon as I entered, I was struck by bad memories. It wasn’t that long ago that I had been held hostage here. The Devils had kidnapped me and used me as leverage to trade me for Samantha.
I snorted despite myself. I doubted anyone could have ever imagined how things could change.
I snuck through the shop to the bathroom. It was dingy as hell, clearly uncared for by a bunch of grease monkeys.
The mirror was grimy, but enough of my reflection was visible to smooth my hair and splash water on my face. I was still covered in cuts and bruises. My wrists were still rope-burned.
The warehouse situation felt like weeks ago. One man’s kindness—and an impressively-sized cock—flipped my whole world on its head. He had shown me a sliver of a life in the arms of someone who made shitty ramen over a fire in the middle of the woods that was good. He held up a mirror to all the shitty things I lived in that I thought were normal.
And now his brother, Gabriel, was dead because of me.
I stared at the stranger in the reflection. Who the fuck was she? Some knockoff version of a woman I used to respect. Knox’s spare shirt swallowed my frame. My bra was god-knows-where. I was wearing two-day-old panties. My designer sneakers were now ruined beyond repair, covered in mud and blood.
The Caroline Bates I knew wore immaculate white pantsuits and heels so expensive the price would make normal people have a heart attack.
That was not who stared back at me.
What the hell kind of power player did that make me now?
Going back outside was a stupid, stupid idea. If the Devils didn’t draw their guns on me back at the trailer, they sure were going to now. The smartest, most self-preserving thing to do was to steal a bike or car and burn rubber like hell was snapping at my heels.
I was a selfish, cold-blooded fucking coward. A gutless, manipulative, lowlife bitch who didn’t deserve a lick of mercy. I did destroy everything I touched—I’d been doing it my whole life. That was the one thing I was good at. Ruining shit. Ruining people.
I was supposed to be untouchable. Through my father’s protection and my own wit and street smarts, I was invincible.
And now here I was wearing my enemy’s clothes, running from my own blood, feeling like some pathetic little girl who never knew what living was like outside of a lie I thought was a life.
God, I fucking hated that I felt the urge to say I was sorry to the men on the other side of the wall.
Caroline Bates didn’t apologize. She didn’t feel regret. She didn’t feel. She just took what she wanted, what she needed, and survived.
Surviving just wasn’t good enough now. It was fucking exhausting.
Maybe there was more to life than just clawing through the wreckage over and over again.
And the only way to find out?
Walter Bates had to fucking die.
I angrily splashed the mirror like it would make the unrecognizable bitch leave, then went back outside. I just had to get it all over with. The arguing would only escalate until a solution was reached. If that ended with a bullet through my chest in retaliation, fucking fine.
But I had my two cents to get out first. Caroline Bates did not go down without a fight.
When I walked into the darkening evening, my never-wrong instincts were correct: worst idea ever.
Jackson cut himself off to look at me like he was imagining all the ways he could bleed me out and call it justice.
I braced myself, clenching my hands into fists when he snarled, “You,” like a curse.