Page 58

Rachel

Fuck this!

Ever since Dante had left, I was sitting around doing nothing, unable to concentrate on anything. Nothing held my attention, because all I could think about was the ridiculous men riding into a potential firing squad. And for what?

Yes. Zach had been murdered. But when would this end? Unless they killed every single Rough Rider, in every single charter, there was more of this to come. And honestly, I couldn’t find the fucking point in any of it, no matter which angle I approached it from.

The only answer anyone ever seemed to give me was that it was the way things were done.

What a ridiculous answer.

Locking women up for reading was once the way things were done, and now we had hordes of women taking control of their own sexualities, their own fucking pleasure, and reading all the smutty, dirty, depraved books they could find – including me!

Times moved on. You couldn’t live your life based on history and the way things were once done . It made no sense to me, and the more I thought about it, the more infuriated I became.

Without even realising I was doing it, my hand sank down to my stomach, and the tiny life growing within me.

Could I subject them to this life? What if it was a boy?

They would be expected to become a part of this club, to live this way, to take on alliances and enemies that had been forged long before his conception. And for what?

Dante wasn’t even sure why the Devil’s Disciples hated the Rough Riders, and why they were hated so much in return. He had taken on his father’s enemies, just like Crash had taken on his father’s enemies .

Because that’s the way things were done.

It was maddening, and there was no one I could take my mood out on.

Mama had gone for a nap, barely able to meet my eyes. She wasn’t sleeping, though. I could hear the soft sobs coming from her room, and in all honesty, it made me lose whatever tiny amount of respect I had for her.

She had the power to get through to Crash.

She had been his old lady long enough to have had this argument for decades.

But no, she had been happy and content to reap the benefits and rewards of being his old lady, of being the leader, but when things got difficult, she ran to her bedroom and cried.

Gemma had taken Bee to the park, which was conveniently near church, just in case they got the call that we were going into yet another lockdown.

Balls to that. I couldn’t care if they hogtied me and tried to cart me to church. I wasn’t going through another lockdown this week.

I was restless, unable to settle. All I could do was argue with myself, heightening my anger.

And the person I was most mad at was myself.

I had stupidly let my walls crumble. And though the walls weren’t totally removed, there was a big enough gap that Dante had managed to crawl his way in there, and somehow make me care about him.

I didn’t want to fucking care about him.

I didn’t want to be the woman sat at home, wondering if her partner was going to return night after night.

I didn’t want the knock at the door asking me to identify his body.

The thought alone was enough to have me sucking a breath in between my teeth, the pain squeezing my heart.

This was no way to live, and I’d be damned if Dante was going to brush me off once more.

He had best hope he survived whatever happened with the Riders, because I had every intention of killing him myself for doing this to me.