Page 121 of Price of Angels

“Considering you chased them out of Bell Bar wielding a knife, I’m gonna take a wild swing and say she wanted you to kill them, didn’t she? A few tears, a couple of doe-eyed looks, and you bought all of it, didn’t you?” He pulled a disgusted face. “I thought you were smarter than this.”

Michael felt the press of heat beneath his skin, knew his face was flushed. “It wasn’t a story,” he said tightly.

“How would you know? A girl from out of town – you don’t know anything about her. All you have to go on is her word. Have you knocked her up yet?”

Michael couldn’t form a question, could only stare.

“Have you been using rubbers? For all you know, she’s trying to get pregnant to trap you.”

“She wouldn’t–”

“Play the damsel when she’s really helping her father manipulate us? Think again. Remember Ava’s little boyfriend? Remember the Carpathians trying to find a weak link? That’s how people bring down clubs: they rip them apart from the inside out.

“Jessup starts selling for us, meanwhile, his daughter’s spinning tales for you, fucking with your head, pulling you away from us, and then there’s an opening. There’s a weak flank, and Shaman’s got a way to get to us.”

Michael’s breathing had picked up, a shallow rushing through his mouth. “You don’t even know that Shaman wants to ‘get to us.’ ”

“So what? We sit on our hands and wait around to find out?”

“We-”

“The girl is going back to her father,” Ghost said, tone final. “Wherever she is, go and get her, and bring her back here.”

“They raped her,” Michael said, feeling as helpless as he had at age nine, when he’d stood beside Caesar and clutched his collar and listened to his mother’s final screams. “Her father, and her uncle. They beat her, they…” He trailed off, hands wrapping tight around the arms of his chair, his body shaking. Nothing he said mattered. Nothing he wanted was important.

For one quick twitch, Ghost’s face softened. He heaved a deep sigh. “You like her. Hell, maybe you love her. And I don’t want to make this decision. But this is about all of us. Everyone who leans on this club. I can’t put all of us at risk for one girl. That’s what a president does – makes the hard call.”

Michael stared at the old, deep scratches in the table. His head was throbbing, the blood pounding in his temples and ears.

“The son-in-law,” Ghost said. “You killed him?”

Numbly, he nodded.

“Well, he was a fucked up little weirdo.” Another sigh. “Michael, go get her. We’ll wait here.”

Holly had done nothing but pace since Michael left. To the center window, to the sofa, to the fridge, and then back again, an irregular triangle. She was shocked to realize she hadn’t worn a layer of varnish off the floorboards.

When someone knocked on the door, she leapt, banging her shin on the leg of the chair, hissing between her teeth as the bright spot of pain swelled and grew hot and damp; she’d broken the skin.

“Michael?” she called as she limped to the door.

“It’s me.”

She threw the locks in a hurry and ushered him in, re-engaging all of them the moment he was clear of the threshold. Her supercharged anxiety was lessened just by the quick brush of his sleeve as he came through the door, and she took her first deep breath since his departure. Turning, letting the door hold her weight behind her, she started to ask him what had happened…and frowned instead, when she saw him standing in the middle of her loft with a bowed head and a tense hand clamped to the back of his neck.

“What?” she asked, starting toward him.

His eyes snapped up to hers, and the sharpness in them froze her cold.

She halted mid-stride, arms going around her middle on instinct. “Michael, what?”

“Everything you told me – about where you come from and what they did to you. All that. It’s true?”

Holly felt the air leave her lungs like she’d been punched. An invisible weight landed against her chest, dragged at her shoulders. Her voice trembled. “Yes.”

“Is it?” he pressed.

“Yes! I…why would I…don’t you know…” She couldn’t fathom why this was happening, now of all times.

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