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I threw back the rest of my beer. It had gone warm and the feeling of it slipping down my throat was less than pleasant.
My face twisted and I signaled to Ham—one of the club prospects—to bring me another. He eyed me carefully, but I shot him a glare that shut his mouth pretty quickly and snatched the new bottle from his hand.
I was numbing my body.
It seemed to be a common theme for me at the moment. I wasn’t completely oblivious to my brothers’ worried glances. I was usually the life of the party—cracking jokes and stirring shit up.
This is what fucking happens when you make shitty choices and don’t follow your instincts. You get shit on.
I watched as my president curled around his Old Lady, Chelsea, kissing her passionately and not giving a damn about who saw. It was good for all of us to be able to relax and not worry about whether someone was going to shoot us down or blow us up.
We’d had the Italian mafia riding our asses for the last few months. Not knowing where or when they were going to strike had us all on edge.
Chelsea had been in their sights and as hard as we tried to protect her, in the end, the devil was closer than any of us had anticipated. One of Chelsea’s closest friends and roommate, Rose, had been playing us the entire time.
I felt a small ache in my chest at the thought of her.
Rose hadn’t only wormed her way into Chelsea’s life but mine also.
I knew the attraction was there from the start, but she consistently fought against it. The playing hard to get act was always a turn on for guys like me who could usually get any girl, anywhere, to spread her legs with ease. Turns out, I was just an unwanted distraction in a mission to hurt my president’s Old Lady.
A mission that she fully succeeded in.
Chelsea was on life support for days before she finally took a breath of her own. And even then it was all touch and go.
Rose’s father, Marco DePalma had punctured Chelsea’s lung and we had made it just in time to rush her to the hospital. But by that stage, her brain had been starved of oxygen, and it severely affected her ability to talk and use her body.
Rose disappeared and Chelsea was left with weeks of physical therapy, fighting to get back to the exercise addicted girl she was before.
Her whole life had been turned upside down all because we chose to trust someone who, in the end, stabbed us all in the back.
It wasn’t my first battle with betrayal and I was beginning to question my ability to tell friend from foe. With Rose, my mind was so clouded with want that I couldn’t see all the signs that were now like massive beacons.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and Kev’s name flashed across the screen. I frowned and headed for the side door of the clubhouse as I flicked the answer button.
“Yeah?”
“Come out to the gate. You’re gonna want to see this,” he said cryptically, hanging up before I even had the chance to process what he’d said.
I dropped my once again empty beer bottle into the large bin as I headed past it. The front gate was less than one hundred feet from the clubhouse, so I just strolled out there.
The gravel crunched under my heavy boots and my body felt almost like it was floating due to the amount of alcohol I’d already consumed since I sat down at the bar just over an hour ago.
It felt good and I started contemplating dragging one of the club girls away after this in an attempt to get some of the sexual tension out of my body. The shitty part was that every time I’d tried I imagined her face, Rose, staring straight back at me. Even in my fury, I wanted her more than I cared to admit.
I stepped through the gates and as soon as I spotted her I shook my head, thinking it was just another trick the booze was playing on me. But when she turned to look at me, I knew she was real and standing right in front of me.
My heart raced and I had to stop my body from running to her and wrapping her up tightly. She looked broken, her eyes sunken in like she hadn’t slept in weeks and her already slim body much smaller than I remembered.
I squared my shoulders. We watched each other for a moment, she pulled on her long dark hair, her nerves showing. It was one of the things that had attracted me to her. Rose had always been strong, I could feel it and see it when we’d first met, but when she was around me, she melted. The hard exterior was gone. It was like when she was in my presence it calmed her. I liked that I had such an effect on her body and mind.
I gritted my teeth, fighting through all my other emotions and drawing on the one that would disguise all the others—anger.
“Didn’t do enough damage already? Back for more?” I spat.
I watched as she took the hit from my words, her body curling in on itself protectively.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered so quietly I almost couldn’t make it out. “I-I just came to apologize.”
