Page 150 of Tempting Fate

“Zeke.” Slash catches up with me and clamps a hand down on my shoulder. “Just listen.”

I explode.

Knocking my best friend to the ground, I straddle his waist and pummel his face with both my fists. His skin splits beneath my knuckles like an overripe tomato. Blood sprays over my chin when I break his nose. The bar through his eyebrow gets caught on one of my rings and rips free.

Despite his size advantage, he doesn’t swing back at me.

That would be too easy.

Instead of defending himself, Slash curls his arms over his face and lets me have at him.

“She doesn’t need me!” I shout. “She can’t. Not when I’m the reason she lost the baby. Not when it’s my fault she got hurt. Not when it will happen again if Brutus gets his way. I’m fuckin’ useless. No good for her. Never have been. So, don’t come after me, bullshittin’ through your teeth about how she needs me. Lily’s better off now?—”

My arms are seized from behind, and I’m pulled off Slash and slung to the ground. When Cub drops to his knees to check out Slash’s injuries, Hunter boots me in the kidney. Sander adds his own input, stomping me between the shoulder blades. With a feral growl, I roll onto my back to avoid Sander’s second kick, grabbing his ankle and pulling him to the dirt next to me.

As soon as he hits the deck, I push back to my feet and storm off.

I rip my helmet from my handlebars and pitch it as far as I can. It bounces along the road until a car hits it. Wheels screech. Brake lights illuminate. The second car runs up the arse of the first. The sound of crunching metal sets my teeth on edge.

“Fuck.” Hands ripping at my hair, I bend in half and howl. “I fuckin’ hate this.”

When I look up, I see the old-timers bearing down on me. Jumping straight into action, I flee on my Harley. As I pass by without slowing, I stare ahead. It’s wrong. Disrespectful as fuck. Even so, the last thing I want is to explain myself to them when my head hasn’t yet come to grips with everything that’s happening.

Deceptively placid, Angelis is bad enough to deal with, considering his calm way of extracting the truth from an unwilling man.

But it’s my dad’s disappointment I really want to avoid.

He’s dying.

We should be celebrating his life and making the most of the time we have left together, yet all I’m doing is making his exit messier than it needs to be.

31

LILY

The last place I expected to find myself after the funerals was in the chapel at the compound, playing unwilling witness to a prolonged stare off between the two men who recently let me down. Zeke sits with his back to the double doors. At the head of the table, directly opposite, is my dad. He’s gripping the handle of his gavel so hard his knuckles are white. The tension radiating from him seems misplaced, since Zeke and I are the ones who’ve been forced to meet with him.

We definitely didn’t come under our own volition.

My dad refused to open the compound to the mourners waiting to get inside to celebrate the men who gave their lives for me unless we gave him an audience. I didn’t want to see him, or deal with Zeke any more than I already had today, yet I couldn’t allow my issues to impact the Shamrocks any more than they already have.

I capitulated.

“I thought you only broke your leg in the crash. What happened to your face?” My tone is harsh when I speak, but I don’t care. My father forfeited his right to my concern when he used me to close his deal with Joseph Kingsley. “Must be painful… doesn’t look like you slipped shaving, that’s for sure.”

My father sneers at me, then he drops his lip back into place and presses his hand to the long white bandage that curls upward along his left cheek. On the opposite side sits exactly the same bandage, only mirror imaged. I drum my fingernails against the solid wood table and swing in my seat when he doesn’t answer me.

“A Glasgow grin? How quaint.”

Neither man reacts.

“Tough audience,” I grumble under my breath when the silent standoff between my father and my fiancé—ex-fiancé—stretches on, despite my goading. “Listen… as much as I’m enjoying being trapped in a dark room with the last two men on earth I want to speak to, I’m guessing you both have something to say that I apparently need to hear.” Directing my focus to my father when Zeke refuses to meet my searching gaze, I add. “Talk, or I’m out of here.”

“Is this separation permanent?” Dad asks.

With my elbows propped on the table and my fingers steepled beneath my chin, I glare at Zeke. He drops his attention from my dad to the table. My anger is palpable, a living beast as I seethe, “I don’t know… maybe you should ask the prick who ditched me without an explanation what he has planned for the future? He doesn’t give me much say in things these days.”

Zeke lifts his gaze from his studious inspection of the oak surface to mine. His expression is blank as he says, “It’s permanent.”

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