Page 65 of Biker's Prisoner: Property of Bucky

And it takes a lot to worry me. I’m nothing like Wyatt, who worries about whether the sky will be blue today, as if that has ever been up for change.

“Mom?”I ask her, using a voice that I hope will coax the truth out of her. I want to act like I can handle anything, even if I’m not sure I can.

My mother has made it a long practice of hiding her pain from her sons. That’s the part of her East Coast upbringing that she kept up all those years. She finally meets my gaze – after another hearty swig of wine.

“I can’t,” she says. The bottle clinks against the counter. I need to know.

“Mom. I can handle it. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

She sighs and those tears appear again just in the corners of her eyes.Fuck.This is serious.

Her voice warbles,“There’s a lump in my right breast, Ethan. And I don’t trust these hillbilly doctors. I was raised in Boston. That’s where I want to go.”

A lump.

“It’s probably nothing,”I tell her. But I know it isn’t nothing. Our grandmother in Boston was a Murray before she was a Hollingsworth – first cousin to the leader of an old Irish mob family. And she died. Of breast cancer.

“I know,”she says, returning to flip the steak.

The seasoning on the steak suddenly smells heavy. I feel like I drank the entire bottle of wine on my own, even if I’ve had far more whiskey. Internally, there’s nothing but pure panic. Outwardly, I know I have to keep my cool. Be the eldest brother. The one who takes care of mom.

“I’ll take you out there,” I tell her. “You can stay in the condo. I’ll get a place nearby.”

She looks up at me, her eyes still wide with concern.

“What about the club?”

“What about the fucking club? Mom… It could be–”

“I know,” she says. “I know what it could be.”

She finishes the rest of the wine. I’m too stunned to tell her to stop. I don’t even want to poke the bear and ask if she’s sure that drinking all this wine will be a good idea when she might have…

“I’ll tie up my loose ends out here and get Deacon on the phone.”

“I don’t want people to know,” she says quickly, as if that should be her primary concern. I fight the tension building into something more volatile. I don’t care if peopleknow.The only thing I care about is getting this woman into a PET scan machine to make sure she doesn’t have…

“He can be discreet,”I tell her. “You’re gonna be fine. Just fine.”

But the truth is,I don’t know if she will be. We all have to go at some point. Dad probably had it the worst – blown to smithereens on American soil by the same people he fought to protect after surviving IEDs in Afghanistan. And mom.

Isthis how I’m going to lose her? Cancer?

She must becrazy to even think I could want to find a woman right now.She needs me.

Chapter Thirty

Ruger

Ican trust Zayna with the plan this time. Her calm reaction to watching Brooks Astor die got me hornier than a rooster in a henhouse. It’s hard to make sense of how I feel for Zayna, but the more I keep fucking her and scheming with her, the more a deeper plan takes shape in my mind. I kill her ex. We get married.

Each twist of the knife will prove my loyalty. Bring us closer together. I can feel it.

She doesn’t haveany nerves around this part of the plan, which makes me feel a lot better about this shit going down. Laguna Grove is more closed off than McGraw, with large walls and gates surrounding campus. Would make it a lot harder to catch Reid Moreland in his dorm room, but I’m lucky because Reid Moreland has a problem.

It’s not an uncommon problem with student athletes. Or with men in the Shaw family. It’s hockey season and he’s a rich private school kid at Laguna Grove. There’s one sports bar in Somerville that caters to the type and Reid Moreland drinks alone.

I don’t bring it up with Zayna, but I find it interesting that all the men who worked together to hurt her have ended up out on their asses. But Brooks… That bastard showed no remorse. Watching him die was easy. Hunting this one down might be more difficult.

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