Page 12

Preacher

T he final breach of confidence Duke had done for me was handing me the letter Kyle had given him the day she showed up on his doorstep after finding her mother.

I stared down at the folded paper, taking a slow, measured breath before flipping it over, my gut tightening as I recognized thefamiliar scrawl of Jill’s handwriting.

People always said you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Fuck that. She had been avicious, poisonous, psychopathic bitch, and I wasglad she was gone.

Now, all that was left was to see what filth she had left behind—whattwisted, venomous words had ruined everything with Kyle.

I unfolded the letter and read it, almost instantly regretting my decision, but I forced myself to read every word.

I’ve never hated anyone more than I hate you and him. You were meant to be the ticket to everything, but he didn’t care.

He hates you. Hates me. Hates that I didn’t give him a son, and that he got you instead. I tried telling you, but you wouldn’t listen, and now look?

He was fucking that whore Store today, and when I confronted him, he hit me. He told me he was going to kill both of us. He’s never been faithful. Hated having you at the MC because he thought it made him look weak to the men when he got caught fucking a slut while you were around.

And he couldn’t sell the little girls with you there, so he sent you home.

I hate you. You ruined my life. But as your mother, I will do you one favor.

RUN.

That was it?

This insanity, written by someone who was drunk and under the influence of whatever drug she could get, was what had destroyed everything?

Isnorted, my lips twisting in disgust. The whole damn thing read like adrunken, drug-fueled rant, hastily scribbled between gulps of vodka and whatever high she was riding before she put a bullet in her head.

It was sloppy and pathetic. And yet, sadly, it had worked.

Jill had known exactlywhat she was doing. She had timed it perfectly—Kyle would have been at her most vulnerableafter finding her body, her mind already cracked open from years of abuse. She wouldn’t have questioned it, wouldn’t have doubted it. She would have done exactly what Jillwanted.

Run.

What Jill hadn’t expected—what she hadn’t counted on in her fucked-up, narcissistic haze—was that Kyle would run to Duke. I knew where Kyle had been the whole time. I had watched from the shadows, knowing she wassafe, to an extent.

If I had known she wascontracting for the military, though, I would have put astop to it immediately because look where she had ended up.

I crumpled the letter in my fist and shoved it into my pocket before shifting my focus back to the hospital bed beside me. Kyle layunmoving, her face pale against the sterile white sheets. The slow, steady rise and fall of her chest was the onlyreassuranceI had.

She had been in amedically induced coma for two daysnow. The drugs had been stoppedhours ago, but still, she hadn’t woken up. Her leg was broken in two places, three broken ribs, and internal bleeding that had been stabilized but was still afucking risk.

The doctors had debated keeping her under longer, but thepsychiatrist had warned against it. Kyle wasn’t the type to do well in a coma.She needed too much control, too much discipline.The longer she was out, the worse the psychological toll would be when she woke up.

If she woke up.

I clenched my fists.

Duke, Jagger, and I had been sitting in silence, waiting, watching her the whole time.

She hadtwitched a few times since they’d stopped the drugs, murmured somethingindistinct, buther eyes never opened. The scans showedno brain trauma, but my gut twisted withwhat-ifs. What if she didn’t wake up? What if she came backdifferent? What if she didn’t come backat all?

I was about to get up—about tofind the doctor and shake some goddamn answers out of him—when I heard it. Arattle of breath, followed by agroan.

I turnedfast and held my breath when I saw that her eyes were open. Not only that, but they were focused onme.

I want to say I held it together. That I stayed the man I prided myself on being—the man who didn’t take shit, who didn’t hesitate toput a bullet between the eyes of the ones who deserved it. But I didn’t.

My legs gave out, and before I knew it, I was on the floor—a fucking mess. Curled up, shaking, sobbing like a damn fool, but none of it mattered. Not the way I looked, not the way my body betrayed me, not for one goddamn second. Because my baby was awake. She was alive. And she was looking right at me.

JAGGER

Seeing her pass out after turning toward us was something I would never forget. It hadn’t been dramatic—no gasp, no frantic moments of realization. She had simply looked in our direction, her eyes rolling back before she gave in to what she’d been fighting since she’d been injured. She stayed that way through every test, through the hospital transfer, through every update from the doctors.

I had braced myself for the worst. Hearing the extent of her injuries wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it wasn’t great either. The internal bleeding had been stabilized, but I had seen a man bleed out a week after an injury like that. The doctors had been wrong before, so I wasn’t taking any fucking chances.

Preacher had stayed behind while Duke and I grabbed something to eat, but when we returned, something had changed. The man who had looked broken for so long, who had carried the weight of the past like a chain around his neck, now had a fire burning in his eyes.

Preacher was a complicated man—fiercely loyal, level-headed, calculated—but he was also a slow burner. I had watched him shake hands with men he later slit the throats of, had seen him joke with a trafficker, light his cigarette for him, and then snap his neck the second the guy looked away. And now, that same fire, that same cold, calculated rage, burned behind his eyes. If Jill hadn’t already been dead, I would have been counting the minutes until she was.

Duke had told me what was in the letter, and at first, I hadn’t understood—how could something so sloppily written, so obviously manipulative, have hit its mark? But then I thought about it. About Kyle at seventeen. A girl who had been abused for years, who had just found her mother’s body blown apart in front of her. That conniving bitch had known exactly what she was doing. And she had won.

For a while.

Because now Kyle was awake, and we weren’t done yet.

It was a couple hours since Kyle had opened her eyes, and although she was awake, she hadn’t spoken yet.

I finally asked the one question I had been avoiding—the one I had been too damn scared to say out loud because the answer could be worse than anything I had ever faced before. Duke and I had been sitting outside, cradling cups of that vile sludge they called coffee, both of us lost in our own heads, when the words finally slipped out of my mouth.

"What if she doesn’t forgive me?"

Duke didn’t respond right away. He just stirred his coffee in slow, deliberate circles, staring at it like the answer might be at the bottom of the cup. For so long, he didn’t say a thing, and I started to think that was my answer right there—silence.

Then, he sighed heavily and leaned back, the cheap plastic chair beneath him groaning under his weight. "Kyle came to me years ago," he said, his voice low and raw. "She had no one, and fuck me…" He dragged a hand down his face, exhaustion carved into every deep line. "She was broken, Jagger."

I swallowed, waiting.

"I knew, deep down, she knew the letter was bullshit. But how do you make sense of everything—every fucked-up thing you’ve ever been through—when the last image you have of your mother is her brains splattered on the wall?"

His voice was rough, carrying the weight of years spent trying to help her heal. The last few days had aged him more than I had ever seen before, and if that wasn’t proof of how much Kyle meant to him, I didn’t know what was. She would never understand how special she was, how much she meant to the people who had fought beside her, protected her, bled for her.

"She needed time," Duke continued. "And once she makes sense of it, she’ll move forward." He shook his head, exhaling. "She’s complex as hell, Jagger. You know she’s never let anyone in, feelings give her the willies.”

We both chuckled at that. That was an understatement.

“But she let you in. She let me in. And she was starting to let Preacher in.”

I nodded slowly, holding on to his words like a lifeline, because that was all I could do—hope he was right. I had never been a religious man. A guy like me, who had done the things I had done, would be a fucking hypocrite if he was.

But if I had ever been the kind of man who prayed, I would have been praying right then.

When we got back to Kyle’s hospital room, Data was already there. He stood by the bed, fists clenched, his entire body vibrating with restless energy. I had never seen him pissed before, at least not like this.

Data had always been the definition of controlled chaos. With his short mohawk, big gauges, tattoos snaking down his arms, and thick-framed glasses, he looked more like a cool nerd than the tech genius he was. He was always typing, always building something technical, and always moving. His ADHD made him restless, but he had found an anchor in his work. This, though, this was different. This wasn’t just his usual wired energy, this was pure fucking fury.

Preacher beat me to it. “Jared?”

Duke stiffened beside me. My jaw clenched. I fucking hated that guy.

“What about him?” Duke snapped, patience gone in an instant.

Data bounced on the balls of his feet, his jaw tight, and then he dropped the bomb. “It was him.”

Silence. The kind of silence that suffocates a room, thick and choking, heavy with unspoken rage.

“It can’t have been, Data.” Duke’s voice was low, edged with something dangerous. “He wasn’t there.”

Duke knew the details of Kyle’s mission, knew who had been deployed and who hadn’t. When he told us weeks ago that Jared wasn’t involved, we had been relieved. Now, that relief was gone.

Data reached into his bag, pulled out a thick folder, and handed it to Duke. “He arrived six days before the op.”

Duke’s fingers tightened around the file as he flipped through the pages, his eyes scanning the reports with the intensity of a man bracing for the worst. Then he froze. Yanking out the last page, he stared at it for half a second before his face twisted into something murderous.

“You didn’t think to tell me she asked for this shit?!” His roar exploded through the hospital room.

Data didn’t even flinch.

“Did you read what it says?” Duke snarled, shoving the paper toward him. “He gave away their exact fucking location!”

“She asked me not to,” Data replied, holding his gaze, his voice steady. “She was worried that the rat in the MC would pass it back.”

Preacher got up and paced toward the window, his shoulders tense, his fists clenched. Jared had handed them over. Three men had died, and two more had lost their fights after making it back. Kyle had almost bled out on foreign soil because of him.

I flexed my fingers, trying to keep my rage in check. “What the fuck is he up to?”

Duke’s face was stone. “I don’t fucking know.” Then his expression darkened, his voice dropping into something lethal. “But I’m gonna find out.” He turned, already moving. “Data, with me.”

We didn’t say a word as they left. Preacher and I sat in silence, knowing there were ears everywhere. But when our eyes met, we didn’t need to say a fucking thing.

Jared was a dead man.

And I was going to make damn sure he felt every second of it.