Page 45 of Sinful Lies
Epilogue
Fuel
“Iheard she faked herdeath.”
“I heard she pushed the car over the cliff and lit it on fire.”
“I heard she withdrew a large sum of money from her trust fund and framed her ex for all of it.”
I push my way up to the bar between a group of regular hang arounds gossiping about Dia’s return. Laughing to myself over the life this story has taken on. That’s the thing about rumors, they grow larger over time. Except in this case. It’s all true. Dia, or Angel as we’re calling her, since Tank made it her official Ol’ Lady name, is perfect. She’s a badass when she needs to be. Strong, intelligent, and hot as hell to boot. Don’t get me started on her ink.Fuck me.I need to find a woman of my own.
“Can I have a beer?” I ask Elle, who’s tending bar as usual. The party to welcome Angel into the family as Tanks Ol’ Lady is in full swing. She slides me a cold one, and hurries back to what she’s doing.
“You alright?” I ask Elle, who’s doing anything she can to avoid looking up. After all the time she’s spent in Tank’s bed, it can’t be easy for her to watch him with his arm draped around Angel’s shoulders all night. I know the feeling. It took a while before I could stand being in the same room with Chainz and Raven. Not because Raven was the one for me, but because of how Chainz swooped in and claimed her before I could decide for myself. It drudged up a memory long since buried. Now seeing them doesn’t affect me at all. Chainz is nothing like the President I prospected under for the Viper’s Den with his harem of property pussy that he took from other members.
“What choice do I have? I just want him to be happy.” Elle wipes a cloth over a smudge on the bar top. “Do you think he is?”
“What? Happy?” I look over my shoulder, Angel is showing off her newest ink on her inner forearm. She got her property ink a few days after returning, a monogram T with angel wings and a tipped halo. Tank draws her into him, and she giggles.
I turn back around to Elle rolling her eyes. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she needs to come to terms with this. Angel is an Ol’ Lady now and Elle will have to deal with that if she wants to stay. “Yeah. I think he is.”
“Good.” she says, finally looking up and moves over to another patron waiting on a drink.
“Someday I’ll be an Ol’ Lady.” Jules slides onto a stool next to me. She’s wearing a pair of ripped blue jeans and a tank top she must have borrowed from one of the club whores. It’s too big for her tiny body. The straps hang off her shoulders and the words Suck It embossed into the fabric hug her body in a way that’s to revealing for a child.
I cock my brow at her, “Give it a few years, you 're only fifteen.”
Turns out Jules is a street rat which made her an easy target for Ben. She’s been through so much in the last few months, she seems to forget she should concentrate on being a kid. She has no family she’s willing to tell us about, so the club unanimously agreed to take her in. The kid is as dysfunctional as the rest of us. She fits right in, and it makes the girls happy to have her around.
“But well ahead of my years,” she mocks my concern, bumping her shoulder into mine. She draws a cigarette out of the pack I have sitting in front of me and places it between her slender lips. Lips I just noticed are colored a deep red. She’s eyeing Corbin as he places a case of brew under the bar for Elle. Jules flicks open a lighter and sparks up the cigarette, coughing through her nose as she inhales to light it. Corbin glances up at her and quickly diverts his eyes when he notices I’m watching the exchange.
“Where did you get that?” I snatch the lighter out of her hand, turning it over in my fingers as I study the insignia.
“I didn’t steal it.” Her defenses shoot up.
“I don’t care about that. I just need to know where you got it.” I reassure her I’m not mad.
Jules shrugs her shoulders, “I think I found it in the warehouse I was being held in.”
What the fuck is a lighter with an insignia for the Vipers Den MC out of California doing in a sex trafficking holding cell in Pennsylvania?
I shove myself off the bar stool and push my way through the crowd, gripping the lighter in my fist. I need to find Chainz.