Page 87 of The Heiress

“I know we can’t do that every time we have a bad day...but damn.”

There were probably going to be a lot of bad days in our future, but I didn’t want to think about that. “How about for now we enjoy a good night of sleep.”

He kissed the top of my head. “Now is now.”

I liked the sound of that. “Now is now.”

31

Hazel arrived the next afternoon. I was a squealing happy mess, jumping up and down and hugging her, but she didn’t jump around or hug me particularly hard. In fact, she was quite stiff.

“What’s wrong?” I held her at arm’s length so I could study her face. What I saw wasn’t good. Her brow furrowed with concern and her lips did this weird thin line thing that looked a lot like a frown.

“We need to talk.” That’s all she said.

So between the weird face and the cold words, I got worried pretty fast. “Is Yara okay?”

She nodded. “She’s good. We’re good. Excel is good.”

Well, that left…me. “What did I do?”

She didn’t answer right away, which of course only made me panic and start imagining crazy scenarios to fill in the space.My house burned down. No, she’s mad I’ve been ignoring her. I’m a shit friend. Or maybe she found another secret life I need to know about.

Turned out the last one wasn’t all wrong. She dug around in her bag, finally pulling out a file. “You didn’t do anything either. But we do need to talk about Jace.”

Ah Jace.Was a man really about to come between us? It was so...not like us. “And what do we need to talk about exactly?”

“He’s not who you think he is.”

Neither am I, Hazel. Neither am I.

She thrust the file at me. I didn’t take it. “In what way?”

“Just look.”

“No, tell me. I don’t want to piece it together. You’re scaring me.” That wooshy, nauseous feeling I had at the funeral was back. So was that constant buzzing in my ears.

She winced. “He’s a murderer.”

I flinched at the way she bit it out even though I knew he’d killed at least one person. He was a member of Devil’s Wrath. Did she think they were just a fun club that rode motorcycles together on the weekend? What part ofoutlawconfused her?

“Why aren’t you more surprised?” she hissed.

She was angry. Like,reallyangry. I needed to approach this carefully or else there might be a best friend bomb detonation. “You’ve known from the very beginning he was a member of Devil’s Wrath. What did you think that meant?”

Her eyes bugged and she threw her hands in the air. “That he rode Harleys! That he drank and fucked around! And okay, maybe some drugs or guns or something, but seriously?Murder?And you’re okay with this?”

We all have our lines we can’t cross. Hazel’s life was one for a lot of people. They couldn’t imagine her flexible relationships or her lifestyle. She was on the other side of a line they would never cross.

I always thought murder would be a hard line for me too. That I’d be as horrified as Hazel. But I wasn’t. Mostly because I could see that the line wasn’t hard or clear. It was messy. And it was about a lot more than right and wrong.

“I’ll never be okay with murder for murder’s sake, but I understand survival. His life is complicated. And so is mine now.” It seemed to get more complicated by the day.

She slammed the file down on the table and flipped it open, jabbing her finger at the pages she laid out. File after file showed me the faces of the men Jace had some part in killing. It showed me their names and birthdates. It also showed me their MC affiliations and crimes. These were not good men. There wasn’t a single civilian in the bunch.

As my eyes traveled over the pages one thing stood out on every single sheet: large black lines through most of the information. And not just a few lines here and there, entire chunks of important data. Page after page. “Why are they redacted?”

Hazel glared at me. “I don’t know.And that scares me.”

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