Page 189 of Romeo

We’d watched our clubhouse turn into a killing ground with armed brothers inside it. Men had bled on floors where we ate dinner and drank beer. Having people nearby who loved you didn’t make a place untouchable.

Rosewood only looked safer because it was smaller.

I knew better.

Dennis Coleman had gone about his life in this town without anybody paying enough attention until I’d seen him ignore Fiona’s no. He hadn’t been some criminal mastermind. He’d simply been an asshole who understood how easy it was to blend into familiar surroundings.

My fingers brushed the phone inside my pocket.

Fiona lived here.

She walked these streets, went to work, drove to Granny’s house, and moved through town believing she knew most of the people around her. Morgan might have been the name Steele had put in a file, but danger rarely respected the neat boundaries people wanted it to.

“Jude doesn’t want me. My connection to him is gone.”

Morgan’s words pulled me back.

“But not your connection to me,” King said. “Or Sal.”

I watched her look away.

Chasm had crossed several states because he saw her name on a file in an enemy’s desk, and Morgan still believed he didn’t want her.

There was the danger of leaving too much unsaid.

Fiona had spent enough of her life learning not to expect people to stay. I wasn’t going to spend months becoming important to her only to make her guess whether she was important to me.

Morgan looked back at Sal. “What do you think?”

“I want you safe. Unfortunately, Boston isn’t safe.”

King immediately turned. “Why not?”

“Just before the attack on your club, we learned that Sylvia St. James is still alive.”

The change in the room was immediate. Men shifted in their chairs, and Indie straightened beside Mimic. Even the Sons of Hell brothers who hadn’t said much until then gave Sal their full attention.

“How is that possible?” Pyro asked.

Sal shrugged. “She slipped through the cracks. Regardless, she’s out for blood. She almost killed one of my men.”

“Who?” King asked.

“Cian,” Mac answered. “Turns out Cian was adopted. St. James is his birth mother.”

Priest stared at him. “She tried to kill her own son?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. She was responsible for her daughter’s death in Arizona.”

Silence settled over the table again.

I’d known enough shitty mothers to understand that giving birth to someone didn’t magically make a woman capable of loving them. Trying to kill your own children was still another level of fucked up.

More importantly, Sylvia St. James was one more threat connected to people in this room.

Sending Morgan to Boston was out.

“Then Nebraska isn’t safe either,” Indie said.