Page 3 of Riot

“I can’t believe you’re condoning this.”Fuckin’ Julie…my sister is like a dog with a bone. “If you let him do this, I’ll never forgive you.”

My temper snaps. I’m not a kid—I’m a fuckin’ man. “No oneletsme do anything. Least of all you.”

Julie shakes her head, wrapping her arms around her body like a shield against my words. “This ishisfault.”

She doesn’t say his name, but she doesn’t have to. Julie hated Mace from the second he walked into our lives, and that ain’t changed.

But Mace ain’t just our foster brother anymore. He’s a patched member of my club, and that changes everything. I won’t let anyone disrespect a club brother, not even Julie.

“Choose your next words fuckin’ carefully.”

“Or what?” She bites back like a dog cornered and foaming at the mouth. “You’ll hurt me? Kill me? Isn’t that what your little biker friends do?”

“Julie…” The warning cracks through my tone, but she doesn’t take it.

Instead, her gaze bounces towards our mother. “You lethiminfect Nathan with his poison.”

Mum stares at her, disbelief flickering across her face. “Where does all this anger come from, Julie?”

“From you picking a stranger over your children.”

Mum flinches before she finds control. “Mace was a little boy who had no one. He needed a family, a safe place. He needed someone tolovehim.”

Julie’s next words almost have me breaking the first rule of the club—never lay hands on a woman. “He’s the son of a whore and an addict, and you let him into our home.”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth!” The words crack out like a whip, my nostrils flaring.

Mace never asked to be born to that cunt, and he sure as fuck didn’t cause her to be a neglectful, abusive bitch.

“There you go, defending him over your own sister.”

Mace’s been more loyal to me than she’s ever been, but I’m done.

“I gotta go.”

I drop a kiss on Mum’s cheek, but I don’t look at my sister. I can’t. If I do, I’ll say something I can’t take back, and I’m not ready to burn all my bridges with her. Not yet. Julie might hate me, but that ain’t mutual.

I sling the backpack on my shoulder, heading for the door as Julie spits out her last crushing blow. “If you do this, Nathan, I will never allow you back into my life and neither will Jack.”

Like I give a fuck about our brother.

“Then I guess we’re done,” I shoot over my shoulder.

There’s a beat of disbelief, as if she thought the threat would change my mind. If she knew anything about me, she’d understand why I won’t give up the club… why I can’t.

“I hope those bikers are a better family than the one you’re leaving behind.”

I don’t look back as I spit out, “They already are.”

Then I walk away from my sister, from the life I had, and into a family forged in the flames of brotherhood.

TWO

IVY

PRESENT…

My eyes snapopen into suffocating darkness as a scream claws up my throat. I crush it behind my teeth, swallowing it down like poison as my muscles lock.

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