Page 20 of Ruined

My scream would have been one for the Oscars as I collapsed to the floor, my arms wrapping tightly around myself. Sobs wracked my body, my screams bouncing off of the walls. “No!” I screamed, my fists pounding the floor. “Joey!” I screeched.

Tristan dropped to the ground next to me, dragging me into his arms, holding me tight to him as he rocked me, doing his best to calm me back down. I tightly wrapped my arms around his torso, loud cries ripping from my lips as I begged Joey to come back to me. He’dpromisedme.He fucking promised he wouldn’t leave me!

Tristan gripped my face in his hands, shaking me gently as he forced me to look up at him. His expression shattered as he ran his eyes over my face. “No, baby, not now. I need you to breathe, Addy,” he told me firmly. “Focus on me.” I couldn’t breathe.Everything hurt.He was gone. “Come back to me, baby. Joey wouldn’t want you to be like this.”

I whimpered, my chest aching.

Tristan gave me a gentle smile. “Come on, baby girl. In. Out. Breathe.” I followed his instructions as he ran his thumbs over my cheekbones. “That’s it. Slowly, Addy. Just breathe, baby.”

“I-Is he really gone?” I croaked, my voice coming out weak and strangled.

Tristan slowly nodded and drew me into his arms as silent tears trickled down my cheeks.

Who else was I going to lose before all of this shit was over?

The clubhouse was silent as I walked through the doors with Tristan right behind me. Some people were silently crying while others were staring blankly into space.

This club had just lost the greatest president to ever grace this earth. They’d lost their founder.

And I had just lost one of the greatest men I’d ever known.

“You know this is your fault, right?” Charles asked from his position at the bar. I looked over at him silently, a blank expression on my face and in my eyes. “Joey would still be alive if Vin hadn’t fucking gone after him for protecting you.”

Tears welled in my eyes at his words, shattering that numbness that I so desperately needed to hold on to. “I’m sorry,” I chokedout to both the club and Joey. Joey who would never hear my apology now. He’d never hearanyof them.

It was all my fucking fault.

Tristan’s hands settled over my shoulders, and he pressed himself against my back, guarding me and protecting me the best that he could. “Watch your fucking tone with her,” Tristan snarled at Joey’s VP, who now the president of the Sons of Hell.

“He’s right,” Jessie snapped at Charles. “This isn’t her fucking fault.”

“How the fuck is it not?” Charles snarled at her. I flinched at his words. “She’s been nothing but fucking trouble since Joey took her from her birthday party when she was eighteen.” Charles looked at me, rage clouding his features. I swallowed thickly. “As the new president, I’m ordering you to leave,” he snapped, pointing his finger at me. I sucked in a sharp breath at his words. This was myhome. What the fuck did he meanleave? “Get your shit and get the fuck out of my clubhouse. You’re no longer a part of this fucking club.”

“Now hold the fuck up!” Ink roared from his position beside Jessie. “You know Joey never wanted her to leave this fucking club, Charles! She’s one of us! She washis, for fuck’s sake.”

“Not anymore she’s not!” Charles roared at him. I rolled my lips into my mouth, resisting the urge to whimper. “Now shut your fucking mouth when speaking to me!” He looked back at me. “Get out, Adelaide.”

I tilted my chin up defiantly, refusing to show weakness to the asshole in front of me. Wiping my expression clean off my face, I nodded once at him. “Alright, Charles, I’m leaving, but note this,” I snarled, shrugging Tristan’s hands off of my shouldersas I strode forward until I could feel Charles’s hot breath on my skin. “This club will turn against you, Charles. No fucking new president ever goes against what the old president wanted. It’s called respect for the fucking dead.”

Charles tightly gripped my arm, yanking me closer to him as a disgusted snarl twisted his features. I brought my knee up, crushing his pathetic dick. He quickly released me and dropped to the floor, holding his balls in his hands, his expression white with pain. I spat on him, clenching my fists at my sides. “Mark my fucking words, Charles. You ever fucking come near me again, and it won’t be my knee on your balls. I’ll shoot your fucking dick off, you got me?”

I stepped over him and stormed to my room, not waiting for his bullshit reply. After yanking a duffel bag out of the top of my closet, I tossed it onto the bed and began throwing my necessary clothes into it along with any important documentation that I had. I could practically feel Tristan’s eyes on me as I moved around the room, but he was silent, giving me a moment to gather myself.

“What makes you so sure that the club will turn on him?” Tristan finally asked me.

“No one here really likes Charles,” I informed him. Tristan stayed silent, allowing me to continue. “He always wanted to go against Joey. Everyone here respected Joey as a president, and they respected his decisions. Charles running me off, the one fucking person Joey ever gave two damn shits about, the one person this club ever respected like a sister, is going to cause problems. Mark my words—the club is going to turn on Charles.”

“And what happens when the club turns on him?” Tristan asked me.

“It gets bloody,” I told him. “And the club is very possibly over.” Which just made my chest ache. I didn’t want to see Joey’s legacy die.

Tristan stayed silent. I zipped my bag up, and he grabbed it off of the bed. “Guess you’re finally coming home where you belong,” he softly said, but he didn’t sound all that happy about it. “I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances, Addy.”

I swallowed thickly but nodded, knowing the Sons of Death was the only place I could go to now. I didn’t have anywhere else.

I looked across the hall to Joey’s room as we stepped out of mine. Putting my finger up to signal Tristan to hold on a minute, I pushed open Joey’s door, swallowing past the sudden lump in my throat as I took in the picture of us on his nightstand. I was about to turn nineteen in a couple of weeks in that picture, and Joey had surprised me by making me an official member of his club and giving me my own room in the clubhouse.

We were standing right outside of the clubhouse, and he had his arms wrapped around me from behind. I was wearing his cut to show everyone that I was his woman, even though it basically swallowed me. Joey had on a blue and black flannel shirt with a pair of dark jeans, and he was grinning down at me as I laughed at something he had said.

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