“Hell no!” She gazes up at me as though I’ve lost my head. Maybe I have. “To start with, I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him. More importantly, I’m not that stupid.”
“Then who was it, Freckles?” I move around her so we’re face-to-face. Make it harder for her to look away again.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she rushes to explain. “Honestly. The Kings of Anarchy have nothing to do with how we knew each other.”
“Except we do.” I coax her to look at me with a gentle hand to the side of her jaw. Dried mud speckles her ear. “We got involved the minute the Devil’s Breed placed you on our turf. So tell me who you phoned, Jenna. Don’t spare the details.”
Tears glisten unshed in her eyes. She steels her jaw beneath my touch and flares her nostrils, looking away.
I let my hand fall to my side to give her space. Room to breathe. A false sense of security.
The war wages behind her eyes and she lets out a frustrated huff through her nose. “I called my father, okay? I told him where I am.”
“The deputy called Nandi’s sister. Mila’s mom. Tell me why this matters. How it’s different.” My pulse whooshes in my ears. Adrenalin? Cortisol? Who fucking knows. I want her to tell me why this needed to be kept a secret. Ineedher to.
Jenna stomps her foot with a growl. Goddamn slams her shoe down on the greasy dirt to expel her frustration. It’s almost enough to break the tension, make me laugh.
Almost. But not quite.
Jenna shakes out the anger before confessing, “My father is the ex-Vice President for the Devil’s Breed MC, okay?”
Blow me down with a feather—I wasnotexpecting that. “Say again?”
“No.” Her fire returned, she stares me down.
“He’s apatchedBreed member?”And I kissed her.The fuck.
“Wasa patched Breed member.”
“How long ago?”
“Pardon?”
“I said how long ago did he hand in his patch, Jenna. Or was he made to do it?” I needallthe answers. Every single word out of her soft lips makes all the goddamn difference now. Each and every one.
“A little while after Smoke was voted the new President,” she utters before drawing a deep breath and huffing it back out. “He quit. Chose to give his patch back. Said he didn’t care if they buried him.” Jenna folds her arms again, toeing the ground underfoot. “They somehow kept enough respect for him and what he’d done for the club to let him go quietly on the understanding he never show his face again. Which is where I come in.”
Maybe forcing this out of her in the middle of a cold field wasn’t such a shit hot idea, because I get the feeling this could go for a while. “Tell me more.”
She peeks at me before fixing her vacant stare back on my chest, reciting as though mentally detaching herself from the emotion of it all. “My mother left the club when she got pregnant with me. My father found out about me when she got sick, roughly two years before he quit the club. The Devil’s Breed never knew I existed; Mom wasn’t showing when she walked. Nobody knew about me.”
“For your safety?”
“And hers.” She peeks up at me again. “She was someone else’s property when my father knocked her up.”
I suck air between my teeth, reeling back a little. A fucking powder keg of a situation, if ever I heard one, and Jenna was the match.
“Dad hates what the club’s become. And when he saw how Mom and I lived, he said he hated what they’d done to her too.”
I want to point out that her mom would have known the rules and that she did it to herself too, but even I’m not that fucking stupid to say it now. “He wants payback?”
“Kind of. But he’s got no interest in inter-club politics, which is why he never approached any other clubs, like yours.” She hugs herself tighter. “His only interest is ruining Smoke. And he figured I was the way he could do that.”
“You?” She’s one woman against a neurotic madman leading the damned. What the fuck did her father think she could do that he couldn’t?
“Yeah. Me.” Jenna sighs. “Can we go inside now?”
“Not until you tell me one more thing.” I edge closer, forcing her head back to maintain eye contact. “Why have you chosen to stay here when you know that kind of information could get you in trouble? Why not leave like the others?”
