Page 100 of Property of Legend

I shove her toward him.“She’s your problem now.”I lock eyes with her.“Girl, you ain’t free.You’re a prisoner, and Royal’s your guard until I say different.”

Royal grabs her by the waist, lifts her onto the back of his horse like she weighs nothin’.She don’t fight it.Just looks back at me one last time, eyes dead cold.

It sends a shiver down my spine, but I spit on the ground and address the church.“Get off my damn lawn.”

The Reverend nods once.“This isn’t over.”

“It is,” I say.“You just lost.”

The Pearly Gates fold retreats like fog, robes flutterin’, heads down.They scatter like cockroaches back to their precious compound.

Me?I light a cigarette, hands still shakin’ from rage and bloodlust.

The lawn’s wrecked.But the farm still stands.

And Sophie’s still mine.

Chapter 57

Sophie

The clubhouse still buzzes like a kicked hornet’s nest.Legend’s back, and the look in his eyes says don’t test me.He’s a man built for war, but he doesn’t even glance at the brothers gathering around, doesn’t bark orders or light a smoke like usual.

He comes straight to me.

Royal’s got Becki by the elbow, leading her down the hall toward the holding cell with all the excitement of a man taking out the trash.

“She’s still here?”I ask, trying to keep my voice level as Lottie dabs antiseptic on my shoulder.

Legend shrugs out of his cut and tosses it across the back of the couch.“Can’t prove she’s lying.Yet.”

“She’s a liar.”

“I know.”

“She said she had your baby, remember?”I mutter.

“I know what she said, darlin’.I also know I just kept half the town dying by agreeing not to send her back to a prison.”

“And you’re putting her in the holding cell?”

“That’s enough about Becki.How is she?”

Lottie makes a sympathetic noise and smears more ointment on a scrape I didn’t even realize I had.“Girl needs a spa day and about three gallons of bourbon.”

Legend growls.“She needs rest.And to be home.”

It hits me then.He means my home.Paradise Falls.

“Come on,” he says, reaching out a hand that swallows mine whole.“Let’s get you to your daddy.”

We don’t take a truck.We don’t take one of the beat-up loaner bikes still running.We take Ribbons.

The goddamn Derby winner he rode in on to rescue me.

Legend leads him to me like her like she’s royalty.She is.The horse stamps once, recognizing me, and I swear I tear up like a sap.

Legend makes lifting me onto the horse effortless.His hands linger on my waist.Then he swings up behind me, and just like that, it’s years ago and we’re kids again, sneaking off from school to race bareback in the fields.

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