Page 30 of Cross the Line

Chapter Fifteen

Cross

My shoulder aches where she stabbed me. I can’t say I blame her. She was expecting an attack, and she defended herself. Now I watch her like a caged animal ready to attack at a moment’s notice. Her eyes are as wild as I’ve ever seen them. She doesn’t even look like herself right now.

“Think about what?” Raven asks as she stares at me, her eyes dark, darker than I’ve ever seen them. She knows what she wants, and there’s no way I’m changing her mind. It’s not that I want to, really. If she wants to kill him for what he did to her, then who am I to stand in her way? I’ve thought about it over the few minutes we’ve been standing here. He’s family, partially. Not that I liked the motherfucker. I haven’t for as long as I’ve known he was my brother. There’s always been something off about him, and we were never close. The only reason I acknowledge him is because of my mom. And we barely talk as it is. It’s a mess that I need to clean up.

“What else can we do with him?” I ask her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you can’t kill him here. The cops will look for you.”

“Not if I’m gone. Hell, I was gone, Cross. No one even knows I’m back.”

“They’ll still look, Raven.”

“And I’ll be gone. I’ll be careful.”

“You don’t want me?” I ask, tired of her talking around the elephant in the room.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’d rather leave than deal with this differently?”

“What other way is there?” she asks cocking her head to the side.

“You let him walk outta here,” I tell her. She immediately shakes her head.

“Not happening.”

“Let me finish. Luke walks outta here and never comes back,” I say.

“No. Not good enough. Do you know what the scars are from? The ones on my arms? They’d shoot us up with drugs. We didn’t want them. I was never a user, Cross. The ones on my stomach? One of the guys liked knife play a little too much. One got infected so badly that they thought I was going to die. I prayed for it. I wished for it, and they’d just pump me full of more medicine and drugs and start all over again. You think I can let him walk away from that?” Fuck, she’s right. He can’t walk away from this. Not alive. He deserves what he gets.

“I’ll bring him back to the clubhouse. We’ll deal with it from there.”

“How?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know how. We just will,” I tell her. I’m not fucking losing her again. The time she’s been gone has been hell for me. It’s even been hard to breathe without her, and I refuse to let that go on any longer.

“Not good enough. If the end result isn’t Luke dead, it’s not enough for me.” I run my hand through my hair as I slowly nod my head.

“You want him dead? He’ll be dead, but let the club handle this. Let us deal with it.”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“This is my kill, Cross. My life was traded, not yours, not the clubs.”

“Okay. You’re in.”

“What?” Raven asks as if she doesn’t hear me correctly.

“You’re in. You want the kill? It’s yours, but not here, Raven.”

“You’re not lying to me?” she asks. I shake my head. There’s no way in hell I could lie to that girl. She means too much to me to do that.

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