Page 31 of Sparrow

The door closed with a click, and Sparrow tried to swallow her tears. It was no use. They slid down her cheeks anyway.

“Lemme see ya, little bird,” Bowie urged softly. Using her mother’s pet name for her made the endearment sting even more.

Slowly, she lifted her chin, and her hair fell away from her face. She hadn’t looked in a mirror yet, but from the tightness, and the fact that she couldn’t see out of her right eye, she was pretty sure her cheek had swollen it shut. The bleeding had stopped from her lip, but the cut remained.

“Jesus Christ,” the unknown man hissed. “Is that—what happened to your neck?”

“He choked me,” she managed to croak.

“Who?” Bowie asked. It was inevitable, but she couldn’t answer him.

Pipes was crazy and had nothing to lose. If he could put his hands on her, beat Sparrow as bad as he did, he’d think nothing of killing her for talking. The worst part, he was right. Look at how they treated her mother, a former Ol’ Lady to the Sergeant at Arms. Now she was nothing more than a club slut.

“Was it a brother?” the unknown man asked.

Turning her focus to him, her good eye caught that he’d styled his hair like the guy who played Superman, with a lot of gel and a curl on his forehead. The name stitched on his cut read “Clark,” and his vice president patch looked freshly stitched, with the thread brighter than the patch itself.

“You’re safe,” Bowie assured her as he walked around his desk.

When he placed a hand on her elbow, she allowed Bowie to guide her to one of the seats. Situating himself across from her, he leaned on the desk and she felt his gaze on her. Lowering her eyes, she couldn’t look at him.

“Did he threaten you?” Clark asked.

“Baby, you got all of Ohio at your back,” Bowie said. “You are Ohio’s property. Roughneck Rider or Odin’s Fury, you are ours. That doesn’t change. You didn’t lose your status. We protect our women.”

Protect their women? Sure. They protected their women from outsiders, but not from those inside their club. She couldn’t say she’d ever seen that.

The club president ran his hands along the stubble of his chin. The creases around his eyes seemed deeper, but the way he pressed his teeth into his top lip told Sparrow he struggled with her silence.

“If you don’t tell us who did this, we can’t do anything about it,” Clark reasoned.

With that Sparrow closed her good eye, and dipped her chin.

“When the shit went sideways,” Bowie began. “I asked your father to watch over my kids for me if I didn’t make it. He said he would.” Taking a deep sigh, he rubbed his hands over his jeans. “Without even a moment’s hesitation, Ducky promised me he’d take care of my boys, and he would have. Sparrow,” he said, reaching for her hands. “Let me watch over you. Let me do what your dad can’t.”

Her bottom lip quivered and a sob escaped her. “Like you’re watching over my mom? Fuck you,” she said, yanking her hands back, shaking with sobs. “Don’t use him to get information out of me. Look at my mom! You let her become that way. You let her—”

“Your mother is a grown-ass woman,” he growled. “I do what I can, but she ain’t mine. Her choices are hers, and there is nothing I can do about what she wants to do.”

Sparrow turned her head, looking away from Bowie, and keeping the unfamiliar man out of her sightline. She couldn’t say anything, as much as she wanted to. Bowie had patched Pipes in. His loyalty was to the man, not the woman. Their codes were about brotherhood, not about daughters of dead members. What had the letters meant on the side of the vest? RFFR. Roughnecks forever, forever Roughnecks. Sparrow wasn’t a Roughneck, and she sure as shit wasn’t Odin’s Fury.

“Can you tell us if it was a Rider or an Odin’s Fury?” Clark tried.

Turning toward him, she narrowed her one good eye at him. The way he looked at her, the way he asked that question, he knew something. She didn’t answer him though. She couldn’t. So, she just stared at him.

“Sparrow,” Bowie whispered to gain her attention. When she turned toward him, she saw that he’d crouched down, so he was eye level with her. “Pipes wants to claim you,” he said matter-of-factly. “The men from Montana are blocking it.”

The men from Montana. Jacob. Jacob was still there. Jacob would see her like this. Another sob escaped her and she covered her face again.

“If it was one of my brothers, I will fucking gut him,” Clark seethed. “Odin’s Fury doesn’t do this to women. We don’t do this to our women.”

Arms came around her, and Sparrow wasn’t even sure whose they were. She didn’t shake them off, she was tired now. The pain got to her, and she just wanted to sleep. She wanted this over.

“We protect our women,” Bowie’d said.

Patting her back, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Shhh,” he whispered. “Go get some ice from the kitchen.”

She wanted his words to be true. She wanted the protection he promised to include protecting her from brothers. The man from Odin’s Fury seemed to indicate it did. They had just patched into Odin’s Fury, but had the men in Ohio already fallen in line with the new club’s ways?

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