Chapter 29
King/Dante
I didn’t roll out of bed until after eleven and was still tired as hell. It had taken a long time for my mind to shut off, as I’d replayed the events of the day on a continuous loop. Even once I’d fallen asleep, I’d been plagued by dreams that Ella was gone, and I couldn’t find her.
I reached for my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed a call or text from her, then tossed my phone on the bed with a sigh. I’d decided yesterday not to reach out to her through her friend or her cousin, mainly because once I’d known she was safe, I hadn’t wanted to raise any red flags, especially since I’d have to explain how and why I’d come to have their phone numbers in the first place. Now, I was tempted to do it anyway, red flags be damned.
I resisted the urge though. The fact that Ella couldn’t access her messages yet had given me a reprieve, which I would lose the second I talked to her. Now, I just needed to figure out how the fuck to explain what had happened in a way that didn’t make her leave my ass in the dust.
After getting dressed, I went downstairs to find that life had returned to normal in the clubhouse, with several of the brothers milling around over a late breakfast, along with a couple of the club bunnies. Thankfully, DD wasn’t one of them.
Bull pulled me aside and told me there hadn’t been any activity on Star’s phone, so we assumed that she was using aburner at this point. There was still no sign of her or her car, so we also assumed she was on the run.
I reluctantly made a call to K-Dog, filling him in on our suspicions regarding Star, and possibly Pic, working with T-Bone, as well as the fact that T-Bone had apparently killed Pic last night.
Surprisingly, K-Dog didn’t blame us that our people had been working with his former associate.
“I don’t understand these assholes going rogue. There’s no fuckin’ loyalty. These motherfuckers think they can turn on us, bite the hand that fuckin’ feeds them. Your boy got what he deserved when he caught a bullet, man. I’m just sorry you didn’t get to put the traitor down yourself,” he commiserated.
We ended the call with him reminding me that he’d give the club a marker if we found T-Bone. “Don’t smoke his ass though. I want to see the fear in his eyes. I want him on his goddamned knees begging for mercy that will never fuckin’ come before I blow his fuckin’ head off.”
I was filled with restless energy by mid-afternoon and considered going to my house for the rest of the weekend. I knew it would be too quiet there, and I would only brood over Ella the whole time. I ended up sparring with Irish for a while before heading back upstairs to shower and change. DD had shown up by then and cornered me as I went back downstairs, pushing her tits out and trying to reach for my hand. I pulled it away with a scowl and took a step back.
“Knock it off, DD,” I told her, not even bothering to find a private spot for the conversation. “I was spinning a line of bullshit yesterday when I told you to meet me upstairs. We were concerned about a possible threat to my woman, and I was trying to mitigate that threat by making it seem like I wasn’tserious about her. I’m sorry for misleading you, but I am not interested, and not available. So in the future, don’t even try it with me.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, and then she shrugged. “It’s your loss,” she tossed over her shoulder as she turned to walk away, “because I’m a great lay.”
I rolled my eyes – cutting her a break on her attitude given the circumstances – then took a seat at the bar. I was drinking a beer and shooting the shit with Viking and Bull when Skid and Lincoln returned a little after five o’clock.
I vaguely registered Misty saying something to Linc about a birthday cake, then went back to my conversation. We were in the middle of debating the recent NBA draft picks when Linc walked up with a plate in his hand, eating a piece of cake.
“Hey, Prez, when you talk to Ella, be sure to thank her for making me a cake. It’s fucking delicious, and I really appreciate it.”
That got my attention, and I looked at him in confusion. “When did she make you a cake?”
He shrugged as he chewed and swallowed the bite he’d just shoved in his mouth.
“I don’t know. Must have been yesterday morning, I guess. Misty said she saw it in the kitchen when she was making lunch yesterday. I’m just glad nobody ate it before I got back.”
“Ella wasn’t here yesterday. Why do you think it’s from her?” I asked warily. My gut was suddenly churning, and I wasn’t quite sure why.
“She left a card with it,” he said, reaching into his cut to pull out a white envelope and handing it to me. He continuedto eat his cake while I glanced at the card inside, seeing Ella’s signature on the bottom.
I got up and went to find Misty, who confirmed that she had noticed the cake around noon when she went into the kitchen to make her lunch. She also swore that it hadn’t been there when she fixed breakfast yesterday. I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d seen a cake when I had staged my big scene, but I’d been too focused on throwing Pic off Ella’s trail that I hadn’t paid attention to my surroundings.
I swallowed hard as the churning in my gut intensified. Something was wrong here. Something was very fucking wrong.
Five minutes later, Cowboy, Bull, and I were crowded into Bull’s office as he pulled up the security camera footage from yesterday morning. He fast-forwarded through images of various brothers wandering in and out for breakfast, until he spotted Ella entering the kitchen through the back door shortly before eleven. She set the cake down on the counter, and moments later she walked into the pantry for some reason. I gripped the edge of Bull’s desk, my heart pounding out of my chest as I stared at the images on the screen in growing horror, because I knew what was coming. I knew exactly what was fucking coming.
I watched as I walked into the frame, followed by Cowboy. I listened, as the surveillance cameras picked up the conversation word for fucking word. I listened as I spewed lies about Ella and said things that were so fucking vile I wanted to throw up just hearing them come out of my mouth. I didn’t even remember saying half of that shit, but there it was. A wave of hot bile rose in my throat as I heard myself call out to DD to get her ass upstairs and to be waiting for me naked and bent over.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe as I heard myself uttering the words that had likely eviscerated Ella, as she’d stood in the pantry listening to everything.
“She’s pretty enough, but she’s a little too old for my tastes. Gravity is a bitch when it comes to the female body, man. Besides, she’s too much of a lady. You know I like ‘em wild in the sheets.”
“Oh, fuckin’ hell,” Cowboy muttered, and Bull flashed me a look of complete disgust.
Less than a minute after Cowboy and I had left the kitchen, Ella had darted out of the pantry and ran out the back door. The camera only captured a fleeting glimpse of her face, but the devastation that I saw there nearly drove me to my knees.
