Page 35 of That Girl is Trouble

A warning prickles at the back of my neck as I step inside the clubhouse.

Eyes on her phone, Kat walks ahead of me. She doesn’t notice the change in the room. That smell—cold, bloody, metallic—the scent that sits in the air when someone’s dying.

She doesn’t notice the body on the floor.

I grab her arm and push her behind me. A click of a gun sounds by the door as Graves draws his weapon, and I reach inside my leather jacket to pull out my own.

“What is it?” Kat asks in a low hiss.

I scan the room, searching the mirrors on the wall for signs of movement, scanning the chairs and tables and the shattered glass still decorating the clubhouse from the mess the fucking cops left. I drag my attention back to the body. Fuck.

Still as stone.

My stomach drops when I feel Kat peek out from her spot behind me.

I think I actually feel her heart stop.

“Jesse?” The choking sound that falls from her mouth tears a damn hole in my chest, but I hold her back as she cries out for him. “Jesse? Jess! Oh God, Axe! Axe let go. Please. Ohgodno. Ohgodnopleaseno. What’s wrong with him? Is he—what’s happening? Jess!”

I tighten my grip as she sobs and fights against me. Gun ready, I wait as Graves cases the room, searching for danger, searching for the person who was brazen enough to take out a Sinner in our own damn house.

When he nods, I release her. She scrambles to the body on the ground—to Jesse. Pale from blood loss, white T-shirt stained red, eyes glazed.

The kid is barely alive.

Kat is on her knees, body shaking, tears streaming down her face. She moves her hands to his chest to stop the bleeding. “Help him! Axe, you have to help him. What do I do? How do I—I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”

Blood drips from his mouth as he takes a laboured, rattly breath and reaches for Kat, his fingers trailing blood down her cheek. “Just a scratch, Kitty,” he coughs.

She holds his hand tight to her face, pressing her lips to his skin and staining them red.

I grip his other hand as Graves kneels beside us, examining the leather jacket that’s half-covering Jesse’s chest.

Jesse coughs again, shaking his head as a tear falls from his eye. He’s dying, and he knows it. “Reno… Triss…” Another cough. This one deeper, wetter, signaling the end. “Tried to—to stop him, but—he… took her.”

“Jess,” Kat whispers. Fuck. She knows it too. That all she can do is comfort him while he dies. “Help’s coming, okay? We’ll call someone to patch you up. Right, Axe?”

“Yeah, Kitty. That’s right,” I murmur. I hold Jesse’s hand tighter as his grip loosens, and a long whoosh of air releases from his lungs as his body goes limp.

Dead. Jesse’s dead.

Kat screams.

The sound she makes fucking guts me. I drag her away from his body as the first sob racks her frame. She cries for him to wake up. She tells him she’s sorry. She begs for me to fix him. She screams for me to let her go.

I don’t let her go.

Graves sits on the floor, that bloody jacket in his hand. “They took her,” Graves says, voice cracking. “It’s hers…”

He gets that look—the wild, I’m about to rain hell down on the whole goddamn world look. His breathing is ragged, his whole body taut. One hand is clenched around the jacket, and the other wraps tight around the grip of his gun.

“Graves,” I say, keeping my voice calm, hoping to imbue him with at least a shred of peace. But he can’t hear me. Kind of like the night in Kat’s room. He was all rage, no control, his focus on one thing—killing. This though? This is something else. Fear. Because, for the second time in the man’s life, someone’s taken his family.

“Graves,” I say again. “Jack!”

His eyes snap to me and then fall to Kat, who’s still sobbing in my arms. The fight in her is gone, her body as limp as Jesse’s.

Graves takes a breath and focuses on me again. “Triss. They took her. They—”

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