Page 87 of Inez

Eventually, after ten days of consideration, I chose a man named Rev, and with him, attached at the hip, it seemed, came a giant named Chance.

Then Kane, the Cabot brothers, Lash…

For a while, I felt little more for them than a kind of guarded consideration—reticent responsibility. The idea, Jakob explained, as we designed and built Club Sin and winnowed the list of candidates, was to take men who had been broken by war, by violence, by sorrow, by guilt—the very things that had broken me, and, I assume, Jakob himself, although to this day I still do not know anything about him except his name—and teach them to embrace peace, to embrace life, to shed their guilt and find redemption through brotherhood and belonging and purpose. Isolate them from the world at large, give them—men built to protect—a simple, single purpose: protect the club and the people inside it, and protect each other. Guard their peace. Free them from the bonds of their past.

I was merely the caretaker, I thought. Sort of a zookeeper. I am rather embarrassed to admit that "zookeeper" was the word that ran through my head as I thought about the seven men we had chosen. It escaped my notice for quite some time that I was more like them than I wanted to believe. I stayed in the club. Ihad a single purpose—run the club, manage the men. Ignore the world beyond the club.

Rather like the men, but I didn’t realize that at the time.

It escaped my notice that I was the first broken arrow he'd plucked from the battlefield and chose to fix rather than discard. It was just that I was so much more broken than the men that it took far, far longer for me to find my own redemption.

I assumed I was beyond redemption. Beyond salvation. Beyond fixing.

It's only now, as those seven men—and Scarlett, without whom I would never have even thought to reach for my own chance at love—that I truly grasp Jakob's long-term plan.

He used me to reach the hearts of the men. I brought them in. Showed them the rules. Guarded their peace until they were ready to face their pasts, one by one.

Until Solomon's past caught up to him and dragged me, kicking and screaming, out of the myopic and peaceful world of Club Sin and into the dark, violent, and dangerous larger world, where husbands lurked and lovers waited.

These men aremyredemption. They fought for me. They risked their lives and shed their blood for me. They broke their vows for me.

Forme.

They surround me. They don't see my past or my weakness. My guilt.

They accept me.

And then there's Lorenzo.

My eyes meet his, and mine water, burn. My throat tightens. A million thoughts flutter through my mind as we lock gazes, but I can't find anything to say. Words are wholly insufficient for the depth and breadth of how Lorenzo's love, patience, understanding, empathy, and resolve have changed me. Healed me. Opened the pathways in my mind and heart. Bled out thetoxins of trauma and horror and fear, making room for love and joy and peace.

He held me when I needed to be held. He gave me space to be angry and difficult, and loved me anyway. He let me be angry. He gave me control when I needed it, and asked for nothing in return except honesty.

He loved me without any reassurance that I could love him back.

That, perhaps more than anything else, has healed me.

Rafael is dead.

It's over.

The book is closed. It's not a blank page in the same old story. What comes next is a whole new book, a whole new story, one yet to be written—a story we will tell together.

Me, and Lorenzo, and this found family, whose bonds have been forged in blood.

16

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ADDICTION

LORENZO

It turns out that the yacht Rafael had chosen as his flagship of his ridiculous shell-game flotilla was the one large enough for a helicopter to land on it. We all crammed together aboard the aircraft—putting us dangerously close to the upper weight limit—and flew back to LA.

Inez was quiet, contemplative. You'd think there would be a bigger reaction to Rafael finally being dead and out of her life for good, but for now she seems content to simply be alive.

I don't push. I just sit as close to her as I can, hold her hand, and try to exude calm and peace.

I don't know what comes next.