Page 3 of Rebellious

“This isn’t a social visit,” Rory spat around a huff of smoke that burned his eyes and nose.

“It can’t be anything else.” Derby guzzled from the bottle, his gaze never leaving Rory’s face. “It especially can’t be about my woman.”

“You have no fucking right to call her that,” Rory said, low, offended on Gypsy’s behalf that the motherfucker claimed her now when he’d ignored her when she’d been alive.

“I have every right. She was with me long before you shot out of Johnnie’s cock. She didn’t want you. She wanted me.”

Tears pricked Rory’s eyes and he stormed to where Derby sat, looming over him. The president didn’t flinch.

“You okay, Prez?” one of the motherfuckers at the bar called.

Derby drank again. “Just fine. Just a young buck getting a little steam off his chest.” He pointed the neck of the bottle to the chair he pushed from under the table with his booted foot. “Sit, Rory. I’m not telling you again before I make you sit in that motherfucker.”

“You can’t do anything I don’t want to do.”

“So true.” Derby sat the bottle on the table. “Not if I don’t want my ass shot off for fucking you up. But I can call Outlaw, so it’s your choice.”

Uncle Christopher wouldn’t take too kindly to Rory’s excursion. The idea of his anger was the only reason Rory sat.

“Now, tell me what the fuck you want, before my girls come in.”

Derby showed no indication he felt the grief Rory had experienced since Gypsy’s death just days ago. He still wore the same hard disregard Rory had seen for as long as he remembered. The same callousness that had him cremate Gypsy and cancel her celebration of life.

“I want Gypsy’s ashes,” Rory announced. He’d come to confront Derby, call him a dozen motherfuckers on Gypsy’s behalf, but it wouldn’t do any good. “You don’t deserve them.”

“And you do, boy?”

Rory hoped his look conveyed his deep hatred. His lower lip trembled. Nothing eased his grief. He had no one to talk to and help him. He was angry with Mom and everyone else was angry with him. Dad thought Gypsy was a pathetic joke, so he wouldn’t care about Rory’s devastation. “I loved her. You didn’t give a fuck about her. We were planning to honor her and you canceled it, you fucking asshole.”

Regret flickered across Derby’s face before his expression closed and he shrugged. “My prerogative.”

“Are you sure?” An idea hit Rory and he decided to throw it at Derby just so he’d get a reaction. “Maybe you wanted to do something for her, but you knew how important it was to Aunt Meggie.”

His dislike of Uncle Christopher’s wife wasn’t a secret.

Nostrils flaring, Derby clenched his jaw and glanced away.

“I’m right, aren’t I? You cremated her and—”

“I cremated her because I couldn’t bear to see her in a fucking casket,” he snarled, glaring at Rory, pain sliding across his face as quickly as the regret had. “Just a corpse. Taken from me by a little motherfucker who died too fucking easy. It had nothing to do with Meggie.”

Rory poked out his lower lip, his upset stomach threatening to reject the burger he’d shoved down his throat before he headed to Derby’s clubhouse. He’d rode his bicycle to the mall, locked it to a rack, eaten lunch, and then called an Uber. He doubted Mom knew he was gone. She’d holed herself in her office and didn’t care about anything except her self-pity.

Shoving back from his chair, Derby got to his feet. “Come with me.”

Rory’s shoulders slumped and he bowed his head, refusing to move.

“Now, Rory.”

Suddenly too exhausted to argue, Rory followed the tall, rangy man through a door next to the stage with the pole in the middle. It was Derby’s office, though their destination was on the other side of the door behind the desk—the conference room.

Or what had been the conference room. At the moment, it was a shrine to Gypsy. Pictures of her covered the table and the walls. Her ‘Property of Derby’ cut hung on a mannequin next to the chair at the head of the table. Her favorite boots stood near a cabinet with an elaborate urn surrounded by more photos and some of her jewelry and hair clips.

“If you open your fucking mouth about this, I will break you in two,” Derby warned in a thick voice.

Swallowing, Rory walked around the room, stopping to gaze at a photo or pick one up, pausing at her cut but not touching it because it would be disrespectful. He didn’t hesitate to kneel and hug one of her boots to his chest, bursting into tears.

“I’m so sorry, Gypsy,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” If he would’ve opened his fucking mouth, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten killed. She’d still be alive and miserable, searching for someone to make Derby jealous and keep his attention.