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I shook my head. “I didn’t mean it that way, baby. I meant if you shoot and don’t hit him, you’ve got a raging bull on your hands. We haven’t gone through this together for me to lose you to your goddamn father.
“So, you let him get close, and you make the shot then, do you understand? You can’t miss. Youhaveto take him down. Doesn’t matter if he dies or if you just incapacitate him, you hit him. You give yourself some breathing room and you run the hell away from him, get yourself in public, and then you call me. Understood?”
She swallowed. “I understand.”
“I’ll come for you. I won’t be far away, so it won’t take long—”
“You’re really not going back to West Orange?” she interrupted, those big green eyes of hers extra wide.
“Hell, no!”
“What about Rex?”
“Fuck Rex. We sort you out first. MC, you call me no matter the time or the day, you got me?”
“I got you.”
I sucked down a breath. “There’s a diner a few blocks away. I’ll stay there for the rest of the day if need be. When you’re in, if you can text me so I know you’re safe, I’d appreciate it.” Her eyes softened. “And if, when you have an update on what’s going to happen next, you text me so I can prepare, even better.”
She threw herself at me, arms clinging tightly, face burrowing into the soft Henley I wore beneath my cut.
That was when I admitted to myself that it was going to suck ass letting go of her and hugged her back.
Then, tucking her head beneath my chin, I murmured, “Men become monsters when they’re pinned down. Your father may come for you and he might be kindness itself in front of his bosses, but the second he gets you in a car is the second he could change.” She tensed. “That’d be a good moment to shoot. Just saying. Maybe the O’Donnellys will drive you home—I don’t know. Either way, I won’t leave the diner until you tell me to, okay?”
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” I repeated. “You don’t have to. We can meet with O’Donnelly Sr. on Sinners’ turf.”
She was silent for so long that I knew she was second-guessing herself, and it probably hadn’t helped that I’d frightened her. But that was what I’d intended. Realitywasfrightening. I knew, point blank, that when Sin realized I’d let her return to the lion’s den, he’d probably smack the fuck out of me.
But…
Choices.
They were important.
We had autonomy over our actions for a reason, and a man who’d been jailed knew exactly how vital autonomy was.
My mom had her choice robbed from her by a Five Pointer, and she’d raised me with love despite where I’d come from.
I’d had the choice to say no when MC had come to the Sinners’ compound. I could have made her wait for Sin, could have tossed her out on her ass.
The only real choice MC had had was to marry a man she’d never met to evade the octopus-like reach of another piece of donkey scrotum.
“I want to go through with this.”
Disappointment unfurled inside me.
“Okay.”
It wasn’t okay.
“I know I can make Auntie Lena help me.” She peeped up at me. “I know she will, Digger.”
I sighed. “You know when my mom was raped?”
Her eyes rounded even more than before, and I took that for an answer.
