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She shook her head, still eyeing me wearily. “Louise Williams. I haven’t heard of Pacific Press.”
“That’s okay. Everything we do is mostly online these days, so even if you’ve read the article, sometimes it’s easy to miss who published it.”
“That’s true,” she nodded. “Is there something I can help you with? I’m just on my lunch break—I won’t be here long.”
I smiled at her, seeing her relaxing a little. “Yeah, that’s totally okay. I’m just working on a piece, and it’s about the outlaw motorcycle club life.”
Her brows furrowed. “I’m not involved.”
“I didn’t actually think you were. I was hoping that you weren’t.” I leaned back against the booth, noting that it was about as worn as the sign out front. “I just want to know what you think about them?”
“Oh.” Her voice shifted to less friendly. “I probably amnotthe person that you want to talk to about this. I have nothing good to say about them.”
I studied her light complexion, her blue eyes and blonde hair accentuating the softness of her skin. She was averypretty woman, and I couldn’t imagine those biker guysnotbeing drawn to a woman like her.
“I’m a nonbiased party,” I reassured her, though I wasn’t sure that it was the truth anymore. “I just want to get the story.”
And that’s true.
“Right.” Louise let out a heavy sigh. “Well, um, are you going to drop my name?”
“No, I don’t have to.” I pulled out my notepad. “I won’t even write it down. There’s no reason for me to namedrop.”
Especially when the club has to read over my stuff.
“Okay, well, I’ll talk, but just donotmention my name. It took me a solid year to break myself from them.”
Oh, juicy.
“I promise, no name drops. Could you elaborate on what you mean?”
“Sure.” She took a sip of her water, pushing her nearly empty plate away from her. “I was young and maybe a little reckless when I graduated high school. Back then, which was nearly ten years ago, the Steel Heretics were like...cool.We thought they were just a bunch of badass guys—and I went to school with one of their sons, Ronny Lombardi. His grandfather was one of the founders or something.”
My brow furrowed, instantly thinking of Viper—what was his real name? “Did your friend join the club like the rest of the men in his family?”
“Yeah, he did. He’s still in it, even after losing his dad and brother in a bad motorcycle accident, believe it or not.”
I wrote down the information, it all being news to me. None of the photo albums Viper had shown me had anything like that in them. They were all just happy pictures with nicknames under the photos.
“Anyway,” Louise continued while my mind spun. “I was dating Ronny’s older brother, Garrett. He was really charming and sweet—andsosmart. He wanted to go to school to be some kind of doctor, and we fell in love.”
This is escalating.
“I did the whole club thing—they take itveryseriously. I was there in the middle of it all, Garrett’s old lady, you know?” she laughed, her voice taking an emotional shift. “I thought that I was going to marry him, but it turns out the only thing that he wanted to marry was that damn club.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” I said with a sigh. “So, did you break up?”
“Yeah, of course. I was trying to go to college, and he was always gone, doing things that he wouldn’t tell me about. There were always girls around, wanting to jump in his bed at the first chance they had, and it was so frustrating.”
“Did he cheat on you?”
She shook her head. “No, he was always faithful—that’s how he was raised. It was just the fact that he never put me first, ever. It was the club, thenme. I couldn’t see a future with him. I broke up with him, but...”
“But?”
“But it was just so hard to get out.”
“Oh?” My heart jumped, thinking about what Vinny had warned me of.
