Page 9 of Bullet

I don’t fucking get it. I’m worried. I hate that I’ve already chosen to involve myself in this and that it meant sticking my neck out on the damn block. I can expect that blade to come slicing through at any time, despite how courteous and polite I was back at the station. I still had to stress certain points that I would rather not have made.

“Are you hearing me?”

He swallows and blinks long, dark lashes, pinning me with a gaze that tunnels all the way through me. “I’m hearing you.”

His hand remains on the table, the veins standing out on the back of the broad, tanned surface. Not leather. Just bronzed. A hint of dark black ink peeks out from under the sleeve of his jacket.

“You should come check out the club. Spend a day in Hart. Understand what it is you’re defending.”

My mouth drops open before I catch myself and press my lips together so hard that they tingle. I’ve learned control. I’ve carefully crafted my public persona, and that rarely means showing the true me beneath. To anyone else, I could be the daughter who had everything growing up, a privileged, trust fund brat, or at the very least, two loving, white-collar parents. I could be following in the footsteps of a father or grandfather. I want to appear like I was a child who never knew fear or the pain of hunger, who wasn’t left with her infant sister for the better part of the day and night because my mother had to work three jobs to keep us alive in a tiny apartment that was dank with mold and haunted by the shouts and cries of other tenants.

“I’m not defending the club. I’m defendingyou.”

“All the same…”

“No, thanks.” There’s no reason to be impolite. That would imply that I care, which I don’t. “I’m already putting my neck on the line taking this case. I don’t need to make it worse for myself. My firm is against organized crime. It’ll be a hard enough slog to convince them that you don’t fall under that category as it is. Doing a favor for my sister isn’t high up on their list of reasonable explanations.”

He traces an old, crusty coffee ring on the tabletop. “If you get fired, you could always start your own firm and come work forthe club.” His eyes flick up to my face, wanting to see how that bomb of an invitation is received.

I give him nothing, though my mouth goes dry, because he also shifts in his chair and rolls his shoulders like they’re sore. When he tilts his hand so the underside of his wrist peeks up, I realize only now that there’s a red ring there from the cuffs biting in.

Something irrational and ugly rises in me, a swell of emotion that I can’t afford.

“Thanks, but I’d rather not be employed by a bunch of law-breaking thugs. Believe it or not, I became a lawyer because I loved the law, not because I wanted to defend scum of the earth day in and day out.”

Yet, that’s exactly what I do. Also, I’m a liar. That’s not the reason I became a lawyer, but that’s the token reason I always give.

His lips flatten out and I brace myself. Am I going to get the real him now? The man he lets loose when no one is watching and he doesn’t think he’ll get caught? I’m almost disappointed that even when he’s frowning, his eyes still sparkle, and his voice certainly isn’t unfriendly. “I told myself I wouldn’t let you do that again.”

“What’s that?” I ask like a sucker, falling into his trap.

“Insult my club. You don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“No? My mother dated a man like you.” It’s unfair. I’ve already established that Ricky is nothing like this man. “He wasn’t a one percenter, but he had a bike. Lived rough. Solddrugs. He beat her so badly that she nearly died. She took out a life insurance policy to ensure that if anything happened to her, her girls would be looked after. You know what happened, in the end?”

He meets my glare with a soft expression of his own. I could almost call it compassion or empathy, but I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to notice how, when he leans forward just slightly, I smell the sharp scent of him. Something distinctly male, leather and wind, but braced around the edges with cloves and oranges. It literally brought to mind images of old-school dried out Christmas decorations.

“I’m sorry someone hurt your family that way.” His voice is rich and deep, and with his proximity, it blankets me like a hug. I want to reel back, but I force myself to remain with my stiff back, legs crossed, hands fisted in my lap. “But that’s not how we are. There are strict rules in the club about harming a woman in any way.”

I ignore his biker propaganda. Anyone can say anything they want. It doesn’t make it true, and even if it is, what does that have to do with anything at all? So they don’t beat women. That’s truly remarkable, and I mean that, but they still harm other people in multiple ways by merits of existing, and that’s not okay. That’s never going to be fucking okay.

“Do you know what happened in the end?” I ask again, unable to keep myself from goading him. I want to prove to myself that he’s the asshole he should be. It would be easier if I hated him thoroughly.

“No,” he responds flatly.

“Ricky fucked off with a seventeen-year-old girl. He was acting as her pimp before he was killed in a motorcycle accident. She survived, thank goodness. Went back home to her family. My mom found someone else. He pretended like he was a good guy. He even had some money. In reality, he was a drug dealer. He promised her a better life if she’d get involved in moving his product. He was giving her a good cut. She quit her other two jobs and stayed working at the diner. She always worked late, and she’d go into the back alley after, when she was taking out trash at the end of her shift, and meet up with junkies to sell them product. I didn’t know any of that. I only found out after the police told me. That’s how she died. There was some kind of altercation and one of them stabbed her and stole what she had on her. She died for just over three hundred dollars. Just like that, for no reason other than she trusted the wrong man and made desperate decisions because she had two kids to provide for. I’d just turned eighteen. Willa was eight years old.”

Hamish’s brows crash over his eyes. Something dangerous glints in them, but it’s fleeting. His eyes remain narrowed, studying me. It feels wrong. Intimate. It makes me shiver like a gust of cold air has swept through the door. It hasn’t opened. We’re the only ones in here.

I didn’t mean to tell him all of that.

I was dangerously close to continuing, to tell him how cold the police were when they informed me that my mother was dead and had me identify the body. She was just another drug dealing, low-life scum of the earth whore who bounced from one bad man to another. I was old enough to understand the things they weren’t saying. I heard their tone. I saw the looks they exchanged with one another. There was zero compassion, zero empathy, and certainly no sympathy.

I couldn’t defend her. I couldn’t say a word to make them understand how much she loved us. I suppose I threw myself into the law because, in a way, I thought I could defend her by doing the same for others.

Unfortunately, now, that’s very little of what I do.

“No one should have to go through that.” Hamish’s rough voice digs under my skin. He curses under his breath and shifts uncomfortably in his chair. I believe he’s genuinely horrified and disgusted. The pain carved into his face is far more real than anything anyone ever gave me at the time of my mother’s death.

---