Page 39 of The Devil's Redemption

Damn it.

After their brief chat this morning, I thought things would be less tense between the two of them. But this is nothing new to me. I know that club business needs to be handled by the club’s members. Any council I get from my ol’ lady needs to happen behind closed doors. I look down at her again and cup her face in my palm.

“Hey, I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay? Are you all right?”

“I want to see that letter,” she insists.

“I’ll show it to you. But I need to share it with them first, okay?”

She nods her head, and I answer with a wink before lifting her chin and pressing my lips to hers. After too brief a moment, I turn from her and march down the hallway toward the chapel.

When I enter our sacred meeting space, I close the door behind me and take my seat, handing the note that I found to Stone.

“Do we know how long ago this message was left?” Stone asks me after reading it.

“I needed something to pass the time, so I went over to Sasha’s house last Saturday to clean up a little. I didn’t want her to go home and have to deal with seeing her place all fucked up. But I haven’t been back since.”

“So sometime in the past week, Jasper or someone working for Jasper was in Whispering Valley.”

“If he ever left in the first place,” SoCo chimes in.

Stone nods in agreement.

“I think we’ve been unknowingly stupid to assume we scared him off. We need to stay on our toes from here on out. Drama, can you put the word out to the Doxies? Let them know to have their guards up. Everyone else, reach out to your families. Let them know the same.”

“So no lockdown yet?” I question.

The last thing I want to do is have a full-on lockdown. Have the clubhouse packed with people, partying day and night. Sasha certainly doesn’t need that right now either. But it’s the best way to keep everyone safe when there is an active threat to the club.

“Not just yet. I want to see how credible this is first. If it’s been an entire week and this is the only occurrence, then it may be isolated. Let’s see how it plays out. Cap, I need you to give Royce a call and see if he’s gotten any information from the Michigan Bastards yet. And ask him if he’s received any threats from Jasper.”

“Got it,” Cap answers.

“All right, let’s adjourn for now. Keep your eyes and ears open, got it?”

A murmur of mumbling can be heard as my brothers acknowledge Stone’s order. With a pound of the gavel signifying the end of church, we all stand.

I’m the first one out of the room. I know Sasha is going to be waiting for me to take her upstairs and let her read the note I found.

I find her leaning against the back of the sofa when I get to the end of the hallway. I greet her with a smile and take her hand in mine, leading her to the stairwell at the front of the clubhouse. For some reason, I’m reminded of the first time I ever brought her up these steps. I had just claimed her and fucked her on the workbench in the basement.

Right before I threw her back into that cell…

My head was whirring with a shitstorm I had no fucking idea how to handle.

This time, however, is completely different.

Despite the looming threat from Jasper, I feel peaceful. Sasha is here. Alive. With me. She’s not going to fight the pull she feels toward me. She’s not going to be afraid of the emotions that I stir up inside of her. She’s not going to push me away anymore.

I love you, too.

I repeat her beautiful words in my head once more.

For nearly my entire life, I’ve thought I wasn’t worthy of love. My parents never gave it to me. I had no other family that I knew of. No siblings. No friends. Since I was little, I yearned for someone to love me. To be able to know what that feels like and to love them in return.

Iron and Patty taught me what love was. I could feel it in their words and actions, but I oftentimes thought that they would love me more if I shared their blood. I love them. I feel loyal to them. But it wasn’t until Sasha came into my life that I truly understood everything that goes along with loving someone and earning their love in return.

It’s more than simply needing to surround yourself with that person. To never want them to leave and missing them like crazy when they do. It’s exhilarating. It takes the worst parts of you and makes you want to do better, to be better, because the person you are with deserves it.

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