Page 28 of Cross’s Reckoning

"You knew I was here."

"This isn't about you."

I feel the hit of that from where I'm standing. Lola does too.

Her chin lifts. "I know. That's kind of the point."

Cyrus's eyes narrow.

"You knew I left Perdition. You knew I drove into Kingdom Come by myself and you never asked whether I was even safe. You called Kane and threatened a war because Cross walked away from you, but you didn't ask him one thing about me."

"You're standing there, aren't you?"

The casual cruelty of it makes my hands curl.

Lola is quieter when she answers. "Yeah. I am."

She looks past him at Perdition, then back at her father. "And I'm telling you to take your men home."

Cyrus actually laughs. "You think you're giving me orders now?"

"No. I'm giving you one last chance not to destroy your own club."

The amusement disappears as Lola keeps going. "Kane knows enough about Perdition to make sure you don't win this."

His face goes still. "What did you tell him?"

"Everything I know."

This time the reaction behind Cyrus is impossible to miss. Men look at each other. Raze doesn't move, but his attention sharpens.

Cyrus stares at his daughter as if he's never seen her before. "You don't know anything."

Lola almost smiles, but there's no humor in it. "That's what you always thought, right?"

"I know exactly what you know. You listened to men talk shit at a bar and now you think that makes you clever?"

"No. I think listening while everybody assumed I wasn't important made me useful."

His face twists. "You've been behind those gates one fucking night. One night spreading your legs for him, and now you're dumb enough to believe whatever shit he's put in your head."

The rage hits so hard my vision narrows, and I reach the gate before I know I've moved. "Lola didn't get any of this from me."

Cyrus looks at me with contempt. "Of course you'd say that."

"No. That's your fucking problem." My fingers tighten around the steel. "You never knew how smart she was."

Cyrus laughs once. "Smart? She betrayed her own father because you fucked her."

"She saw you clearly for the first time and you can't fucking stand it."

"Cross."

Lola's hand closes around my forearm. Not stopping me, but grounding me. I look at her and she gives me the smallest shake of her head.

She wants this part, and so I let her have it.

Lola steps up beside me rather than behind me. "Cross didn't tell me what to think. He didn't ask me to warn him, didn't ask me to leave and didn't ask me to tell Kane anything. Those were my decisions no matter how much you hate that."