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I knew none of them would help, so I waited too. Silently.
“You can have your story,” Hansen said finally.
My raised eyebrow was my only reply. I was shocked, beyond so. Not only were they not going to kill me, nor were they kicking me to the curb with a warning about coming back to the clubhouse and plenty of death threats. No, they were giving me the story that could’ve got me killed and maybe ruined their club if I’d got the right story. Or the wrong one. And here was the stoic, handsome and deadly president of the Sons of Templar MC giving me my story. But I knew that it wouldn’t be that simple. That there would be a catch.
There always was.
“You can live amongst the Sons of Templar, find what you came here for, with notable exceptions of course,” Hansen continued after a long beat, not taking his eyes from me. “You don’t get to go to church. Ever. Even Old Ladies don’t get that. And we tell you to back off, you back the fuck off. You don’t interfere with club business. Don’t bother our kids. I would say don’t bother our women, but my wife will likely divorce me if she doesn’t get to meet you, so I’ll request you not put anything about her in there if you want to see the outside of this compound.”
I nodded once, still knowing there was more.
“We have to keep in mind that you’ve already seen something that could damage the club,” Hansen said, glancing to Jagger pointedly and then back to me. “Though you’ve given your word that you won’t try to damage the club. Which is a smart choice. Problem is, your word is kind of shot to shit right now, sweetheart. You continue to live at the compound, continue to work at the bar and you will always have a prospect on you, until I’m satisfied that you will stay true to your word. Then you can finish your story wherever you wish.” He paused. “It goes without saying, of course, that anything that’s published that damages the club will be treated as an act of hostility against the club. And in that case, I’ll make sure you know, with us, there’s no such thing as retribution, only decimation.”
I leaned back in my chair, digesting the words, the iron jaws of the men around the table and the threat at the end of his little speech. “Subtle.”
Hansen raised his brow. “We look subtle to you?”
The corner of my mouth twitched as I regarded him and the men in the room. It didn’t waver even though most of them were treating me with murderous glares. I could smile in the face of murderous glares. I was used to them. But that mouth twitch disappeared the second I laid eyes on Liam. He’d been watching me the entire time, and I’d been doing my best to ignore him. That was an impossible feat, even when the president of an outlaw MC just threatened to kill me if I betrayed him.
Hansen’s offer was a generous one, considering what I knew about the club in general and about how they treated rats and traitors. Had this been any other story, I wouldn’t have hesitated, even with the obvious threat to my life, even though half of the men in the room looked like they’d rather resort to more traditional ways of dealing with a rat.
But this wasn’t any other story. The scarred man staring at me was evidence that couldn’t be ignored.
I wasn’t sure if I could survive staying here, living the story and constantly being faced with Liam. Jagger. He was Jagger. Not Liam.
No, I knew I wouldn’t survive it.
But I couldn’t betray this feeling at the table full of men trained to sniff out weakness and then just as promptly snuff it out. And they wanted me to be weak. That’s what this was, bringing a helpless woman to a table full of criminals, murderers, dead men, it was a statement, it was intimidation.
It wasn’t working. Not in the way they intended, at least.
I swallowed my fear and it scraped against my throat like a half-chewed potato chip.
“What you’re saying, is I can write the story you want me to write while I’m a prisoner,” I said, addressing Hansen. “That’s not writing any kind of story at all. And that’s not the journalist I am.”
His gaze was even. “You can write the story you want to write. No one’s stopping you from doing that. I’m just informing you of all the facts. And you’re not a prisoner, you’re a guest.”
I didn’t lower my eyes. “A guest that doesn’t get a say in when she leaves and is followed by an armed guard is, by definition, a prisoner.”
He shrugged. “You know your options.”
