Page 19 of Secret Betrayals
Now it all makes sense. Every call she made. Every damn message she sent after that day. I didn’t want to deal with it then—couldn’t. But now? My chest feels like it’s caving in under the weight of everything I missed, everything I didn’t want to face. Regret claws at me, hot and relentless, but it rides shotgun with something else: rage.
I regret not going after her.
I regret choosing my dick over her.
I regret every goddamn action and reaction.
But none of that erases the fury burning through me, because even with all that regret… shestillkept my kids from me. Her words from that day come back, clear as fucking day.
“I came to talk to you about something.”
“This could have cost you and your club more than you know…”
Holy shit.
Fuck.
Shit.
Back then, I didn’t understand. I wasn’t in the right headspace. Didn’t want to be. My head and heart were in a war I had no strategy for. I buried it. Buried her. Told myself she wasn’t my old lady—just a girl I used to fuck with. Just a girlfriend. No club ties. No reason to care. I was a dumb fuck, a prick, a careless, clueless asshole who didn’t recognize what he had in her.
But now?
Now I know better.
She was warning me. And I didn’t fucking listen.
When she started reaching out months later, I ignored everything—calls, voicemails, texts. Brushed it all off. I told myself she was chasing closure, trying to tie up loose ends. Butthe truth? I didn’t want to deal with the pain sitting heavy in my chest. I convinced myself we had nothing left to say that mattered. And I changed my number when even hearing her voice or seeing her name became too much. Cold. Final. Like that would make it all disappear.
Dick move? Yeah. But I was drowning.
Heather was pregnant. That had to be my focus. She needed me. We lost the first one, and when she got pregnant again, everything else got buried. Gabriella, the pain, the confusion—it all got shoved deep.
And no, it wasn’t love with Heather. Never was. We don’t lie to each other about that. We’ve got respect, and we raised our kid like a team. But every fucking decision I made back then, I made for that child. For the one we lost. For the one we got.
So maybe I’m being irrational right now. Maybe I’m reacting like a goddamn maniac.
I don’t give a fuck.
Because those are myfucking kids. Looking at them, no way you wouldn’t see it. They’re mine. Same jawline. Same eyes. Same damn fire. A little tanner, sure, but otherwise, it’s like staring at a reflection of me and my brothers.
And she kept them from me. For seventeen fucking years.
Rationality can go fuck itself.
My pulse spikes again, heart slamming against my ribs. I focus on keeping my breathing steady. Every muscle in my body is locked up, tight as hell. It’s taking everything in me not to launch across this table and shake the truth out of her. Yell. Scream. Demand answers for the years I lost.
I want this meeting over so I can... fuck, I don’t even know. Rage? Drink? Break something? I just know I need answers. And she’s gonna give them to me.
Gabriella sits across from me, looking like ice in human form. I search her face—nothing. No emotion. No guilt. Not even hate. Just cold, unreadable detachment. Those eyes used to hold so much love when they looked at me. Now? Nothing but steel.
What. The. Fuck?
“So... that gentleman was your president finding out he has seventeen-year-old sons,” she mutters. That’s when Axel finally gets it, but Nitro's response is different, like he had figured it out already. Either way, hearing her say it has them both losing their shit, just like I did.
Good. Let them fucking feel it. I’m not the only one carrying this bombshell anymore.
The room erupts—shouting, cursing, fury echoing off the walls. The only reason they haven’t dragged Gabriella’s ass out by her hair is because of those boys. And... the little detail she never shared. The name she kept buried.
