“I understand perfectly!” I was yelling now, tears streaming down my face. “I understand that you think I’m stupid and naïve and—”
“You sound just likeher.” His words came out harsh, uncontrolled, like he couldn’t hold them back anymore. “Just like Shirley. Same naïve bullshit. Same desperate need to believe that some man actually gives a shit about you beyond what’s between your legs.”
The comparison hit me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. I heard Charity gasp. Saw Joy’s hand fly to her mouth. Faith took a step forward, her face stricken.
My mom.Shirley Owens. The woman who dragged me and my sister from California to Arizona, chasing one MC man after another. The woman who had left us alone for days at a time while she partied at clubhouses. The woman who had been passed around like a party favor, used and discarded and always—always—came back for more. The woman I spent my entire life swearing I would never become. “I’m nothing like her,” I said, but my voice had lost its strength, coming out thin and reedy.
“Aren’t you?” Zeke’s voice was flat and emotionless.
“Zeke,” Faith started, her voice sharp with warning. But he wasn’t done. His face was red, his breathing ragged, and the words kept coming like he couldn’t stop them.
“You’re just another club whore warming his bed!”
His words landed like a jab, knocking the air from my lungs. I stared at him, unable to speak, unable to breathe, unable to process what he’d just said.
The silence that followed was absolute. I felt the world tilt beneath my feet. Felt my heart shatter into a thousand pieces inside my chest. Felt every ounce of strength drain out of me all at once.
Club whore.
That was what they’d called her. That was what the brothers had whispered when they thought we couldn’t hear. That was what Shirley Owens had been. A woman who gave herself to menwho would never respect her, never love her, never see her as anything more than a convenient fuck.
And now my own brother was calling me the same thing.
In front of my sisters. Charity’s face had gone white, her eyes wide with shock and horror. Joy was crying, tears streaming down her seventeen-year-old face. And Faith—Faith looked like she had been struck, her hand clutching against her chest, her mouth open in a silent gasp. They all heard it. Every word.
“Zeke.” Faith’s voice was shaking, barely above a whisper. “How could you?”
“Hope, I didn’t...” Zeke started, something in his expression shifting as he seemed to realize what he had just said. What he had just done. “I didn’t mean.”
I yanked my arm free from his grip, stumbling backward. My whole body was shaking, my vision blurring with tears. “Don’t,” I said, my voice breaking. “Don’t you dare.”
“Hope.”
“You meant every word.” I looked at him, really looked at him, and saw the truth in his eyes. The anger. The disgust. The pity. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe I am just like her.”
“No, Hope, that’s not...”
Faith moved toward me, her hand outstretched. But I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the sympathy in her eyes, the horror on Charity’s face, the tears streaming down Joy’s cheeks. Couldn’t bear the knowledge that they all heard what Zeke had called me.
Club whore.
I turned and ran. Up the porch steps, past my sisters, through the front door. I heard them calling my name: Faith’s voice sharp with concern, Charity’s choked with tears, Joy’s small and frightened. But I didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. Just kept running until I reached the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and locking it with shaking hands.
Only then did I let myself break.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Slaughter
They threw me into the cell hard enough that I hit the concrete wall before I could catch myself. Pain exploded through my ribs. The ones Monk had already cracked with his boots, and I went down on one knee, my vision swimming.
The door slammed shut behind me with a metallic clang that echoed through the small space.
I stayed there for a moment, breathing through the pain, cataloging the damage with the detached awareness of someone who had been beaten before. Many times before.
Broken ribs. At least two, maybe three on my left side. Every breath felt like knives sliding between bone. My face was a mess. Split lip, swollen eye, nose that was probably broken. Blood dripped from somewhere above my eyebrow, running down my temple in a warm, sticky trail. My knuckles were raw and bleeding from the fight at Joey’s, and now they were swelling from where Whisper had stomped on my hands while Widow held me down.
They’d cuffed me first. Made sure I couldn’t fight back. Then they had shown me exactly what they thought of a Golden Skulls’ executioner who had dared to touch Shadow’s sister.
