Page 58 of Diary of a Biker Queen

And yet both had seemed to have gone the other way. Protecting what was left of their innocence and deciding to take their relaunch into adulthood slow.

I ruffled Issy’s hair. “You’re pretty smart, you know?”

“Smarter than you, that’s for sure,” she retorted. “I’m not the one messing around with a biker.”

I side-eyed her. “You know about that, huh?”

Jax giggled. “It’s kind of obvious.”

It was? “How?”

Isabella made a dopey lovestruck face. “Because you stare at him like this whenever he walks past you.”

Chaos snorted on his laughter. “Perfect impression.”

I flipped him the bird.

But it was Jax who raised a cocky eyebrow in his direction. “Like you can talk. That’s the exact same face you get whenever my sister walks past.”

Chaos winked at her and then pulled Kara onto his lap and kissed her neck. “Yes, it is.”

Jax crinkled up her face in disgust and tugged Issy to her feet. “Let’s go upstairs, because now they’ve started, they won’t stop, and nobody needs to see them slobbering all over each other.”

Kara threw a cushion at her sister. “Hey! We can control ourselves!”

But now that the girls were walking out of the room, Chaos was looking like he might want to devour Kara whole.

Which was definitely my cue to leave. I stood. “I’m gonna go.”

Chaos waved a hand at me without removing his head from the spot behind Kara’s ear, which was making her blush.

But she held my gaze. “For all your past faults, Luca Guerra, I do think you’re a good brother. You’ve changed, and for the better. Issy is lucky to have you.”

The compliment, from her especially, twisted up my insides in a way that was completely unfamiliar. It felt like it meant something. I’d had a lifetime of people blowing smoke up my ass because I was Carlos Guerra’s son and telling me the truth could end up badly if I didn’t like what you said.

But Kara had no reason to respect me. No reason to throw me a compliment she didn’t mean. So those few simple words meant a lot.

“Thank you.”

Chaos eventually lifted his gaze. “You ever going to extend that decent side of you to anyone other than your sister?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You hoping for me to be nicer to you? Pretty sure Hawk wouldn’t like that.”

He shook his head slightly. “Was more thinking about Lynx and Nyah.”

I breathed out in a huff of breath. “Hard to say. Still kinda pissed they brought a Mafia war down on my head.”

Chaos eyed me carefully. “They did? Or you did?”

He was right. Nobody had forced me to say Nyah’s baby was mine. When the cards had fallen, I’d chosen to lie.

Because watching my father end her life was completely unacceptable.

Either way, there had been a price to pay.

But this was the only one I could stand.

19