Suddenly, I had an anchor to ground me in that raging sea of grief again.
I didn’t say anything, though. Not when we pulled through the gates and parked in the lot. Not when we all shuffled inside, heavy and slow with sadness. Not even when we pushed through the door of the clubhouse and found every single brother littered across the surfaces of the space like crumpled garbage, useless in their sorrow.
It was only when I spotted Priest, standing in the far corner by the window alone with his arms crossed, eyes to the front lot as if prepared for an assault, that I let that excited fury brew.
I stalked through the room, ignoring everyone else because I didn’t see anyone else, not with my tunnel vision locked on the one man who could help feed that dark hunger instead, hunger that was taking shape and name.
Vengeance.
Priest’s eyes immediately cut to mine, and the intent in them, the calculating, arctic rage in them made my breath catch because it nearly matched my own.
I knew before I asked what his answer would be.
“That piece of shit SS Danner is still free.” I planted my fists on my hips and jutted my chin in the air, daring one of the brothers to stop me. “I want to help find him, and when we do, I want to kill him.”
“Cress.” Buck stood from his stool at the bar and frowned at me. “Woman, I know you’re grievin’ but that is straight up not how this shit works, you get me? This is club business, and we got no use for a woman in it.”
“Fuckin’ right,” Heckler muttered.
“Oh, fuck off,” Boner exploded, shoving up from the couch. “You really gonna stand there and tell King’s fuckin’ widow she can’t get the retribution she deserves? That motherfucker murdered her man.”
“No shit,” Buck bellowed, stalking forward so he and Boner were toe to toe. He was thicker through his barrel chest with a big square head and meaty hands, but Boner was one long line of lean muscle, and I didn’t know what would happen if they came to blows. “You think I don’t know my brother, a man like a grandson to me, was fuckin’ killed? I want vengeance as much as any’a you! But a woman’s got no place here, specially not one like Cress.”
The room rumbled with low chatter and murmurs of protests and agreement, but I stepped forward and instantly the air went dead quiet.
“A woman like me?” I mused in a voice I didn’t even recognize, one that was cold as the barrel of a gun and just as cocked to deliver something deadly. “A woman like me. What kinda woman is that, huh, Buck? Are you talking about the woman I used to be, before I loved King? The prim and proper, judgmental, scared off her ass Cressida Irons? Because I haven’t been her for four fucking years, and whatever’s still left of her inside me? It’s dead. I have no softness left, no class for the sake of classiness or morality just to colour inside society’s line. That went comatose years ago and now, after this, this fucking horror, there’s none of that left.
“You wanna know what kind of woman I am, Buck? I’m the kind of woman who would carve open her own chest right now just to show you the empty cavity where my heart used to be. And then, bleeding and hollow, I’d be the kinda woman who’d take that same knife and stab it through Harold Danner’s fucking eye sockets for taking away the only man I’ll ever love. And you know what I’d do, the kinda woman I am now? I’d fucking laugh while I did it because I’d know it was the only joy I’d ever feel again.”
My face was twisted up into something grotesque, a snarl and sneer together in perfect disharmony.
“Don’t cast me out,” I beseeched as I looked from Buck to the other brothers in the room. “I’ve fallen from grace, but I thought I had a home here with my Fallen angels. When I need you now, are you really going to prove me wrong?”
The silence was thick and reeking, filled with discomfort, banked anger, and conflicting ideas. It was the silence King had told me about after every Chapel he’d been to since he’d been taken on as a prospect. It was the silence that came between action and inaction, between stagnating and evolving.
Even after everything, the club wasn’t so good with change.
And a woman asking to get in on their action was too radical even for the rebels. I knew it instantly, as if defeat had a taste and it was in the air.
My shoulders rounded, and all that hot air rising from the flames in my belly cooled, then settled into dust and ash.