Page 47 of Diary of a Biker Queen

One by one, the guys all called in their families, until the clubhouse was bursting at the seams with people. I moved around, made coffee, and helped prepare food in the kitchen because there was suddenly a lot of mouths to feed.

But the entire time I felt like I was being stared at. I was sure they all knew I’d spent the night in Lynx’s bed, and that at some point while I’d slept, he’d gotten up and murdered a woman.

None of it made any sense. I poured drinks and nodded woodenly when spoken to, but I couldn’t make any of it fit together in my head. Lynx had liked Virginia. The two of them had been my only friends when I’d been at the Guerra house. I couldn’t believe Lynx would do this. I just couldn’t.

The longer the day wore on, the more sure I became.

I found Dax outside the clubhouse, sitting on one of the weather-worn chairs mostly used by the members who smoked. I stood beside him and ran my fingers through his hair absentmindedly. “Did you get something to eat?” I eventually asked because the silence was killing me.

“Not hungry.”

I wasn’t surprised. Neither was I, but preparing food had given me something to do other than just sit and cry.

Dax stared out into the trees while the sun started to sink. “I’m going to hurt you.”

I stilled my fingers in his hair because those words on his tongue didn’t make any sense. “No, you’re not.”

He finally looked up at me. “You care about him. So when I kill him, it’s going to hurt you. And for that, I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t even know how I’ll live with myself, but I don’t know what else to do.”

I breathed out a long, shaky breath, but fear came with it. Not for me and the hurt Dax was promising to deliver to my doorstep.

But because I could hear in his voice he’d already become judge, jury, and executioner. And he’d decided Lynx was guilty.

I’d never thought of Dax as a man who could kill. Luca could. Lynx, obviously. But Dax was soft and gentle. He could fight, but he was the sort of man who walked away from one when it wasn’t for sport.

His kindness was one of the things I loved most about him. I had always been surrounded by men with no respect for human life. My father, my uncles, my brothers, the Guerras, the people they associated with…none of them cared about putting a bullet in the head of another man. Or about selling a woman.

But Dax cared. He cared so fucking deeply it was who he was, right down to his core.

But right now, he wasn’t that man.

He was just a man who’d lost his mother in the most brutal of ways, and he was searching for someone to blame.

“It wasn’t Lynx, Dax. I swear, he wouldn’t do this.”

Dax snorted, pulling away from my touch. “You aren’t seriously defending him? You saw the marks on her back, Nyah! They were identical to the ones Lynx leaves on his victims.”

I bristled at his tone, my gut and a little piece of my heart unwilling to hear anyone talk bad about a man I cared about. Even if it was the man I loved. “Anyone could have copied him. Why would he go after your mother? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Dax’s frustration and grief all spewed from his lips. “Serial killers don’t need to make sense, Nyah! All they need is opportunity. She thought I was here! If she was on her way to see me, and she crossed his path while he was triggered, which we all fucking knew he was, then—”

I refused to believe it. “He was with me. And Luca. We…”

He stared at me. “You what?”

I said nothing.

He blinked, realization settling on him. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his shoulders drooping. “Wow. Okay. You and Lynx and Luca.”

I hated the hurt on his face. He might have said I could have whatever, and whoever I wanted, but when presented with the facts I’d spent the night between two other men, he was clearly jealous.

I hated I’d made him feel like that. And yet I also knew I’d done what I could. I’d been honest in how I felt and he was allowed to feel however he needed to feel too.

I couldn’t give up Luca and Lynx any more than I could give up Dax.

He shook his head, not with anger or even sadness, but more like he was trying to shake everything around in his brain so it made sense. “So you’re telling me Lynx was with you all night?”

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to lie for him, and say I’d woken up wrapped in his arms, hot and bothered from sleeping in them all night.