I drove to my apartment. I'd been telling myself it was a simple errand. Twenty minutes, in and out. I wasn't thinking about what it meant that I was packing bags like a woman who'd already made a decision she hadn't officially spoken.
My fathers men, Colt and Brennan were in the parking lot.
They were leaning against the jackals truck by the building entrance. Road-hard life long Jackals with flat eyes who'd bounced me on their knees when I was five and were nowblocking the door to my apartment. They didn't speak at first then Colt jerked his chin toward the road.
"Your dad wants you at the clubhouse."
The look on Colt's face told me everything, they knew. Someone had probably seen my car at the compound. Jackal eyes on the highway, clocking me behind enemy gates. It had probably gotten back to my father the way everything did. His world ran on information and loyalty. I'd just blown a hole through both.
I got into the back of truck.
At the first red light, I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket. Kept it low, so they couldn’t see what I was doing, and typed with one thumb. Three words.
Jackals have me. Clubhouse.
I hit send. Watched the message go through. Then I deleted the thread and put the phone back in my pocket before the light changed.
It was the only move I had. I couldn't fight. Couldn't run. Couldn't call for backup without escalating this into something that ended with bodies on the road. But I could make sure Ghost knew where I was. I could make sure he had the information, and then it was his choice what to do with it.
So I just kept my breathing steady while my mind ran through every version of what was about to happen. My father's face when he saw me. His voice when he asked the question I knew was coming. The cold that would settle over him like a door closing, and the knowledge that this time, when it closed, I might be on the wrong side of it permanently.
I put my hand on my stomach. Just for a second. Just to remind myself what I was carrying and why it mattered more than fear.
The Jackals' clubhouse was full. Word had spread. Men filled the main room. Cuts on. Arms crossed. Thirty men who'd beentold their president's daughter was sleeping with the enemy. They watched me walk in. Men I'd known my whole life. They looked at me like a stranger.
My father was at the head of the table.
He filled the chair the way he filled every room. Hands flat on the wood. Coffee untouched. He looked at me and his face wore the expression I'd been dreading since those two pink lines.
Cold. Controlled. The quiet my father did when things were bad.
"Is it true?" His voice carried through the room. Not loud. He never needed loud. "You've been seeing the Angels VP. Behind my back. Behind this club's back?”
“Yes." It was pointless denying anything now.
The word dropped into the silence.
“And if you must know, I’m also pregnant," I said. "It's his."
The room shifted. Bodies tensed. Hands moved. Someone in the back swore under his breath. My father's jaw tightened, the muscles working beneath the skin, and for one terrible second I thought the cold would break and the fury underneath would come through unchecked. I'd seen it happen once, years ago, with a brother who'd stolen from the club fund. My father had been calm right up until the moment he wasn't. The violence that followed had been so controlled. So precise. So utterly without waste. It had been terrifying to watch.
I braced for whatever was about to happen.
It didn't come. He sat there. Hands flat, eyes locked on mine. The control it cost him was visible in every line of his body. His shoulders, rigid. His neck, corded with the effort of holding himself in that chair. The white of his knuckles where his fingers pressed against the wood. He was choosing. Every second, choosing not to be the man his fury wanted him to be. I was his daughter, and even now, even with this, the father was fighting the president for control.
"The Angels VP," he said. Flat. Measured. "You let the Angels VP touch you."
I could have made it smaller. Could have called it an accident, a mistake, something that happened to me rather than something I chose. I didn't.
"I'm not going to apologize for it," I said. My voice was shaking but the words held steady. "And I'm not going to stand here and pretend I was some helpless girl who got taken advantage of. I walked into that bar with my eyes open. I went back with my eyes open. I chose this."
Nita was by the bar, arms folded. Two younger Jackals were whispering in the back, angled toward the door. My father's sergeant-at-arms stood behind his chair with his hands at his sides and a look that said he was waiting for the word.
I stood in the middle of the room. Twenty-seven years of loyalty, of being the good daughter, of following every rule, and this was what it came to. A woman standing alone in front of men who'd respected her an hour ago, carrying a child that represented everything they hated, without a single face in the room on her side.
I could have broken. Standing there, surrounded by hostility, with my father's cold eyes and thirty years of authority pressing down on me like weather. I could have cried. Could have begged. Could have made myself small and sorry, hoped the princess card still had currency in a room where I'd just shattered every rule the princess was supposed to follow.
I didn't. I was Stone's daughter. I stood the way he'd taught me to stand. Feet planted, chin level, shoulders back. If I was going to lose everything, I was going to lose it standing up. I was going down in flames and be unapologetic about it.
