Page 33 of A Twist of Fate

I scrubbed my hands down my face as if I could wipe away the shitstorm I knew it would cause when rocking up to the shop on my Harley while wearing a kutte. Gretchen was still fragile with us and I didn’t think she’d take it too well knowing that I was now a prospect for the club that got her man killed. Before I could turn to leave, Merc called out to me one more time.

“You can’t tell her that you’re here for any other reason than to prospect.”

“I fuckin’ know it.” The words tumbled from my lips while tasting sour on my tongue. She was going to be disappointed, and maybe even hate me when she saw.

Chapter 10

Betrayed

Gretchen

It had been two weeks since Anna started working for my sister. In those two weeks, my life slowly began to take on a new normal. Sure, working at Permanent Marks wasn’t new to me, but the way I felt about being there was. Nothing made that more clear to me than a regular customer coming in and making a comment that summed up the changes in my life perfectly.

“What happened to you? You used to be sultry sunshine, now you look like tragic love lost.”

I’m sure he didn’t notice the blood draining from my face as he walked away, while checking out my ass in my black skinny jeans. I glanced down at myself and laughed. He was right. I looked exactly like some tragic, emo, anti-romance character. My hair was stick straight and white blond, hanging down my back and over my shoulders. It almost hid the studded leather choker I wore all the time now. It didn’t do anything to disguise the black thermal shirt I was wearing, despite the fact that it was too warm for that type of clothing. At least it was a fitted look and not a bulky – I might have stolen this from my boyfriend – looking shirt. Granted, I didn’t have a boyfriend to steal clothes from anymore, so that wouldn’t be an issue.

My mind was lost in the wardrobe changes I’d made to reflect how I felt on the inside when something outside the shop caught my eye. Actually, that wasn’t correct. I hear the pipes long before I could see anything. My heart ticked up several beats as it recognized the sound and ached for it to be the one I missed most. I knew it couldn’t be Toby, but my heart didn’t seem to agree with what my brain knew. I almost lost it when I saw the black leather kutte as a denim-clad leg swung over the bike that had been backed into the spot out front. It took a minute for the pounding in my chest to settle once I realized it was Kane dismounting the Harley. Kane.

“What the fuck?” I whisper-hissed to no one at all as he moved closer, opened the door, and sauntered his giant ass inside, looking like the bad ass biker he was apparently becoming. My initial shock quickly gave way to anger. “Why would you do this? They took everything from me!” The words were yelled out of my mouth before I could pull them back. I saw Ever move up front. I wasn’t sure if she was there to support me in this, or if she would be in Kane’s corner for this one. It didn’t matter though, because the sting of betrayal was riding my back. How could he? I felt the angry tears trailing down my cheeks and I let them roll unchecked.

“I’m doing this for you,” Kane whispered. “I need you to calm down.”

“I won’t calm down. They took him from me! They took my baby from me!”

“The whore who did those things is sitting in jail right now, sweetheart. The club didn’t do those things. That club was Toby’s heart. They were his family.”

“They left me to deal with it all alone! I was his heart! Our baby was his heart! None of them cared!”

I heard Ever’s intake of breath, and still I didn’t care. What I said was the truth. No one in their family had cared about me. I didn’t blame Anna. She was young, in shock, and had to do as her family demanded. The rest of them were adults, capable of making their own decisions at the time, and they all decided that my well-being and grief didn’t mean a damn thing to them. Kane had been there when they weren’t. I couldn’t understand why he would step in and want to be a part of their family, a part of the world that wrecked Ever once upon a time and took everything I cared about from me.

“Come on, G.” Kane reached out and grabbed hold of my hand. He tugged, gently at first, in order to get me to follow him. “We should talk about this privately,” he offered as he glanced between Ever and myself.

Once again, someone was sparing her feelings. I followed along though because the need to know why he was joining that club outweighed everything else. It just didn’t make sense. What the hell could he possibly be protecting me from? I knew that was just the shock of seeing Kane in the Aces High MC kutte, but I couldn’t help feeling the way I did. We ended up in the apartment upstairs that I had taken over after Ever had vacated it to go move in with the man who was now her husband.

Once we were through the door and it closed behind us, I rounded on Kane. “What the hell are you doing wearing that?”

“You don’t remember, do you?” He asked quietly.

I scrunched my eyebrows together, trying to think of what the hell he could be talking about. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“There was a time when you walked in on a conversation Zeke and I were having about one of us needing to join the club to make sure Ever was safe.”

“But, everything’s changed, and you already know she’s doing fine. Why would you do this now?”

“G, I did this a while back. I only just now started wearing my kutte around you, because it was brought to the Prez’s attention that I’d been taking it off at work.” He sighed and sat down.

“How long?”

“For a while.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“But,” I started to say, still lost, “Ever is fine.”

“You weren’t. You aren’t.”

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