Page 36 of Bee

"I'm not drunk. I didn't drink anything. I'm still clean." I keep his gaze. We stare at each other for a few seconds before he walks over to Free and bumps her so she has to look up at me.

"Nothing?" She questions softly, her eyebrows hitching up in suspicion.

"Nothing. Water, and barely enough of that." I smile at her, trying to get her to see the sister that she knew from so long ago.

"Then why do you smell like that?" Riot questions.

"I was cleaning up a lot of spilled alcohol. I've been with Rye all night. I'm pretty sure he'd rather drag his feet over hot coals before he'd let me put another glass of hootch to my lips." I try to lighten the mood.

"If you were with him last night, why didn't you just call and let us know?" Addison asks.

She was the last person to see me last night. I'm sure Vexx and the rest of the girls have been giving her hell for letting me leave late last night without coming with me, just to make sure I stay on the right path.

"Well, I actually was working. Like I got a job..." I pull the fifty dollars I still had out of my pocket to show them, "Then I went home with Rye, and things got... fun." I wiggle my eyes and everyone besides Vexx and Free chuckles slightly, "Then the bar was attacked."

"What the fuck!?"

"Raas!"

"What the hell do you mean it was attacked?"

All the questions start coming at once.

"Easy, girls, I can talk fast, but not that fast." I walk by them and go sit on the couch. Everyone comes and surrounds me.

Even Press, Hardy and Jag come closer so they can hear what I'm talking about.

I give them the whole run down and unlike me both Riot and Duchess couldn't hold back their laughter when I said the big bad in this story was someone named Sonny the Shark. They cackled and I allowed myself to join. Of course by the end of the story everyone was as serious as I was when Rye finished telling me the story.

There's a sigh from the corner and when I look up I see Hardy rubbing a hand across his beard.

"You know something."

"I don't know much, but what your friend Rye was saying is true. We've been chasing after Sonny for years. He's slippery. We've never been able to make anything stick. Crazy part of all this is the last time I heard anything about Sonny, he was still a little fish. If he's going around trying to implement a tax on the businesses in the area, that means he's off leash. That's not going to be good for anyone."

"Yeah, I didn't think so. If these guys were so bold that they'd destroy the bar like this and not have to worry about any blowback, I can just imagine what they're going to do if theyreally get a footing in the underground world. We need to stop this before it gets out of hand." I look over to Vexx.

As the president of Eve's Fury she's the one who gives word on whether or not we're going to get involved in this.

"Stop." Hardy puts his hand up before he leans over and kisses Addison. "I'm still a cop, and I'm sure whatever you may or may not do won't be by my rule book. Let me leave before you say anything else."

"Good man." Duchess says over her shoulder.

We all wait for Hardy to walk out of the clubhouse. A second later, we hear his car stop up, and he's gone.

Vexx still hasn't said a word, and I'm starting to feel like she's not on the same page as I am.

I stand and move closer to her, "Vexx, you have to see that we're needed on this."

"What I see is you're really close to a man you just met. How do we know he's not more involved in all this than what he's saying? What if this is more his doing than he's telling you? You did say he'd done business with this Sonny character before, didn't you? What if he's still in the red, and he's just using you to get out of paying what he owes."

Quickly, I shake my head, "No, he's not like that."

"How do you know? The only time you've been around him was when he was getting you blasted out of your mind. So now he helps you get clean and all of a sudden now he's Superman?"

I gasp at her words, they may not know him the way I know him, but I don't know what would give them any reason to think he was just another scumbag. "Yes, he is my superman." I close my eyes, not wanting to relive what I'm about to tell them, but I need them to know what kind of person Rye truly is. Want them to see even a small part of what I know. "I never told any of you guys, but right before I decided to get clean, I was attacked. I was at the bar like usual, Rye told me I had enough, but I wasn'tlistening to him. I was so inebriated, I wasn't paying attention. I couldn't protect myself. I was going to leave with another man, but even before I got outside, I knew I was too drunk. I tried to get away from him, but he didn't seem to understand the word no..."

"Tati!" Free rushes forward. Her face and eyes already showing signs of anger and fear for me.

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