Page 96 of The Oath We Take

“What happened?”

“Can’t tell you that either.”

“Hudson’s in trouble, isn’t he?”

Catfish looks at me for a millisecond too long, and I know he is. So, I do the only thing I can think of—I shove him, hard, out of the way.

The action catches him off guard, and the momentary stumble is all I need to force my way inside.

The club are in the bar, not church, and I catch my father shouting, “It can only be you. And that’s why you were there for the fire. What did you know?”

As the door spills open, all eyes spin to me.

“Shit,” Wraith curses.

“Get out!” My father’s face is one of fury.

“Em,” Atom says, and I look to him.

I take a deep breath, knowing I’m the reason he’s holding off answering the question. At university, we learned about this concept called game theory. It’s a way of statistically playing out strategic actions of multiple sides. Who is holding what information? How much is the information worth? What would the other person do with the information? You play those actions out, over and over again, to determine the best possible outcome.

There isn’t time to run through all the scenarios now, but if my father is going to discipline Atom for whatever this is about, he needs to know the truth.

My father has always made it crystal clear what he would do to a biker in the event they touched me, but he’s never said what he would do to me if I touched a biker.

Maybe he’ll disown me, but I’ll be in Atom’s arms, so it won’t matter. Maybe he’ll give Atom the benefit of the doubt and realize that I have a good man who will always protect me. Or maybe he’ll attempt to follow through on his promise of hurting the man who would go that far, but maybe I can somehow change his mind.

I smile softly at Atom, and he stands and tips his head, telling me to walk to him.

“Oh, fuck,” Grudge mutters as I do.

If this were a movie, there’d be a montage with music composed by someone like James Horner or John Williams. It would start with a flashback from our very first meeting. Friends at club picnics. The day he saved me from being thrown from Aurelius. The day I offered him my heart in a field. And him sitting at the bar, sniping about the temperature of my beer.

Maybe even our first kiss.

When I reach him, I’m a little uncertain of what to do next. I don’t know how far he wants the revelation to go. And that, in itself, is a surprise to me, because I want him to take the lead, let him decide how to navigate what we do next.

He slips his arm around me, kisses my forehead. “Morning, sweetheart,” he says, like the senior leaders of the club aren’t looking at the two of us as if we’ve changed into gorgons overnight.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Oh, fucking no,” Dad says, and I look at him. “This better not be what I think it is.”

“It’s exactly what you think it is,” Atom says. “Loved your daughter half my life. You want to know why I was at Whiskey Fever that morning? I knew you’d left a prospect and an old-timer in charge of her, but I’m the one responsible for her safety, for protecting her. I drove over there to make sure she was taken care of. Was gonna have a word with the two of them. Then, I saw the fire from the street and knew something was fucking wrong.”

“Everything he just said is true,” I say.

Dad glares at me. “You were fucking unconscious. You don’t know shit, and you’re talking out of turn. How long has this been going on?”

Something inside Atom snaps. “You can say what you want to me, however you want to say it, but you’ll show Em some respect around me.”

My father stands, and I’m glad Atom took the time to arm himself. Because the look on his face suggests he’s about to put a bullet through one or both of us.

Intuitively, I step in front of Atom like a human shield. Surely my own father won’t shoot me. But firm hands grip my shoulders.

“Don’t ever put yourself in harm’s way for me, sweetheart. Remember the conversation we had about what my job was.”

It was the conversation we had the night of the fire.

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