Page 5 of Knox (The Devil’s Luck MC #6)

KNOX

I leaned back on the barstool and knocked back the last few sips of beer.

I thumped it twice on the bar and grinned at Sam, who was at the other end getting one of the regulars’ orders.

She saw me and rolled her eyes playfully.

After giving the kitchen the order slip, she came over—waddled, more like.

Her belly was pretty visible, and her tank top kept trying to slip free of the stretchy waistband of her shorts.

Jackson sat two chairs down from me, but I still heard him growl. I caught him tracking her every step with a hungry look on his face. “Goddamn, woman,” he muttered as she passed him.

Sam flicked his forehead, a move no one in the world could pull on Black Jack except for her. “Stop acting like I look like a goddess when I’m five months pregnant and I look homeless. Same thing, Knox?” I nodded, and she looked at Mason sitting beside me. “You, too, Mason?”

Mason winked and slid his empty glass toward her. “Please and thank you, Miss Barkeep.”

Sam went and got our refills with efficiency. I knew jack shit about pregnant ladies and how much babies prevented them from doing certain things, but apparently, not tending to the Well’s bar.

She slid two glasses back toward Mason and me. We took hearty sips. She sighed and dropped her chin in her hand. “Stupid no-drinking-during-pregnancy rule,” she grumbled, eyeing my drink like it was liquid gold. “That beer looks good .”

I slid my glass toward her. “Here. One sip won’t hurt.”

Mason elbowed me in the ribs in warning. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen Jackson reach to swat it right out of my hand.

“Get that shit away from my girl,” he warned. “She’s carrying my kid.”

“Exactly,” I retorted, fighting a smirk. “It’ll take the edge off that fact.”

Sam laughed and pushed my glass back toward me. “I’ll get some apple juice and trick my brain into thinking it’s beer.”

“Add some soda water,” Mason added, playing along. “Make it fizzy.”

Black Jack glowered at us. “Shut the fuck up. Sam, baby, get me an apple juice with soda water.”

“Aw, babe, you’re too sweet,” Sam crooned teasingly. “What a supportive boyfriend. I’ll take that .”

Too fast for him to register, she swiped his second, still-full beer bottle and chucked it in the trash.

Leaving all three of us with our jaws dropped open, Sam went into the kitchen, retrieved an apple juice box reserved for the kids that would occasionally come in with their parents, and poured it into a beer glass.

Jackson stared at it like it was poison as Sam added soda water from the dispenser.

With far too much satisfaction, she set the glass in front of her baby daddy and purred, “Here you go, babe. Your diet starts now.”

Mason and I couldn’t hold it in. We howled with laughter at our president’s suffering and toasted our glasses to Black Jack’s demise, not by the hands of Walter Bates but at the expense of a kid still in his mama’s belly.

As Jackson sulked, Sam patted her hand on the bar in front of Mason and me. “Your burgers will be out soon. Enjoy your cold ones.”

Jackson was already relapsing, half-begging, half-growling. “Sam, baby, I’m all for supporting you, but you can’t take away a man’s booze.”

“Sure she can,” I teased. “It’s called balance, Black Jack. She can’t drink, so now neither can you. Next up: matching prenatal vitamins.”

Sam perked up, hands on her hips, looking far too pleased to have a backup. “Drink up, babe. Gotta get that vitamin C.”

“Since you already gave her vitamin D,” Mason muttered into his cup.

Black Jack’s glare at us could have melted steel. He knocked back the juice in two gulps and slammed the glass down, sliding it toward Sam. “Fucking delicious. Give me another.”

Sam’s smile softened, and she leaned in to kiss him lingeringly. “Nah, I won’t torture you anymore, hon. Top shelf whiskey coming your way.”

Jackson’s shoulders eased at his girlfriend’s mercy. He turned to me. Then to my split knuckles.

Damn it, I thought I could get away with him not noticing.

Prez didn’t need to say anything; the question hung heavy in the air. Mason, however, had to voice it.

“Wanna explain that?”

I flexed my fingers to show they weren’t totally fucked up. I’d punched a lot of bastards over the years. I wasn’t going to let an idiot like Asher break them now. “Got into a quick brawl last night after a poker game went sideways. The guy was a sore loser.”

Jackson and Mason didn’t look entirely convinced, ready to grill me, but they were distracted by the rest of the club at a nearby table—Abel with Elouise (her baby bump was just two months behind Sam’s), Tex with Carrie, Brody with Andy on his lap—howling with laughter at something Suzie said to Gabriel and Grant.

I assumed, based on expressions, that it was at the single men’s glaring single status.

I found myself staring at my club that had grown almost twice its size in just the past year.

So much shit had gone down, so much blood spilled, so much destruction caused, and yet, look how happy they all looked.

There was nothing but smiles, stolen kisses, and tossed fries at unsuspecting heads.

At first glance, no one would be able to guess just how fucked up we all were or the hells we drove through to get where we were.

Hell, half of us thought we’d be dead by now. But nope. We had two babies on the way. Two mini Devils.

No one knew where I had gone last night or what I had done. No one knew that I possibly could have fucked us over big time just by being in the same vicinity as Caroline Bates. Getting into that fight with the Wolverine, Asher…

I had barely slept a wink last night in my rundown apartment. A lot of it was guilt and the subsequent attempts to formulate backup plans. Even now, watching my brothers and their girls, I felt a fist seize my heart and squeeze like a vise.

Did I ruin their chances of happy futures ? What if I bring Bates right to the Well’s doorstep ?

“Dude. Royal. Knox .”

I didn’t hear Mason barking my name until he slapped me upside the head. He and Sam were watching me with brows slightly knitted. Black Jack had joined Suzie with the others to tell his tale of apple juice woe.

“What?” I drank to hide my embarrassment.

“Thought you’d gone deaf,” Mason grunted. “Eat your damn burger before I?—”

I snatched the burger and fries basket Sam had set down in front of me and shoved the greasy sandwich in my mouth. Condiments and tomato oozed out the sides.

Sam snorted. “Oh, man, you’re hiding something big time, Royal.”

That was when shit hit the fan big time .

The back door of the kitchen banged open, and one of the servers came running out like a hive of bees was after her.

She was a lanky teen who only served a couple days a week, had a bit of attitude sometimes, but was otherwise sweet—and had no reason to look terrified after getting off her scheduled break.

“Hanna!” Sam gasped, stopping and steadying the girl to study her with a motherly onceover, checking for anything physical that would make her so upset. “Hon, what’s wrong?”

“Knox,” Hanna croaked. “Knox, I need to see?—”

I dropped my burger and swiped a hand over my mouth. “Here. What’s wrong?”

Her green eyes went huge as she slipped past Sam. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf when she handed me a piece of paper. No, it was a photograph—a Polaroid.

I saw my name in red ink on the back first. I took it more forcefully than I meant, and my thumb smeared the ink.

No. It was blood .

I flipped it over. My gut flipped, too.

It was Caroline. Even in the grainy quality, it was easy to make out her battered, bloody body tied to a chair. For the first time, her hair wasn’t in its usual tight ponytail but in a disheveled mess half covering her face.

I was on my feet before I realized it. Behind me, the club had gone silent. I felt their attention on my back like a searing brand.

But I didn’t see or hear Jackson come up and pluck the photo from my hand. I whirled defensively, but he had already looked at both sides. Fuck . Fuck fuck fuck ? —

Jackson’s gaze darkened and pinned me to the spot with such murder in them that I wanted to reach for the knife in the burger basket. “Why the hell,” he growled, “did Bates send you this?”

Sam sucked in a sharp breath, her hand resting protectively over her belly. Her eyes flicked between me, Jackson, and Hanna. But when neither Jackson nor I spoke, she addressed Hanna in a voice trembling between fear and harshness. “Who gave that to you, Hanna?”

“I—some guy,” the server said nervously. “I was on my break eating the wings Chef made, and he came up out of nowhere and shoved it at me, saying if Royal didn’t get it, he’d…” Hanna swallowed hard, then whispered, “I don’t want to repeat it.”

Sam clucked her tongue in sympathy, but Jackson wasn’t focused on a teenager’s feelings when his club was now in danger. “What did he look like?” he barked at Hanna. “Did he look like a Wolverine?”

“N-no. I mean, maybe. He was just wearing a black jacket and pants. Brown hair, scruffy?—”

Jackson grunted. That was all he needed to confirm he knew who she was talking about. “Wolverine, all right. Knox, you got five seconds to spit it out before I make you spit out a tooth.”

“Jackson,” Sam warned sharply. “I won’t have loose teeth on my bar floor.”

“What’s going on?” Mason reached for the photo. Jackson handed it over to his VP, still glaring daggers at me. “Fuck. Is that Bates’s spawn? How could he do that to his own daughter?”

As he passed it around to the rest of the club, my gut twisted tighter and tighter, like they were seeing something private that was meant for my eyes only. That was fucked up, too.

There was no avoiding the truth. There was no lying to my president. I couldn’t lie. I didn’t want to, as much as I did want to, if just to selfishly spare myself from having a tooth punched out of my skull.

I steeled myself and relayed the full story—with a few spared details—about the poker incident.

Jackson, to say the least, was fucking livid. “Incident?!” he roared. “You call knocking out a Wolverine in front of Caroline Bates an incident ?”

My jaw clenched. “Yeah?—”

“‘ Yeah ,’” Jackson interrupted, snatching the Polaroid from Mason before he could show it to Sam. “You fucked up, and now look, you got the princess locked up by the villain. Nice going.”

Then he took the photo and ripped it down the center.

My jaw clenched tighter.

Jackson wasn’t fazed. “Caroline Bates is finally getting what’s coming to her. One less Wolverine out there is a good thing.”

I wanted to ram my knuckles in his throat.

And just like that, Black Jack turned his back on me and returned to the club’s table as if a woman half-beat to death didn’t bother him at all.

Mason’s hand felt heavy on my shoulder. It was meant to be a grounding gesture, but it only made me angrier.

“Settle down, Knox,” he muttered. “She may be a woman, but Caroline Bates isn’t our problem.

I mean, she is , but not in this case. Her life isn’t ours to care about.

We take care of our own, not a soul more. ”

After a moment of staring me down, hoping his warning would get through my thick skull, Mason joined the others, too.

I immediately locked eyes with Sam. Her brows had knitted deeply. She’d had more than her fair share of run-ins with Caroline. But to my immense surprise, I didn’t see the same hatred in her eyes as Jackson’s. There was only something that made me think she might feel the same way I did.

She knew just as well as I that this was all sorts of wrong—and someone needed to do something about it.