Page 30 of Warrior

Winnie’s mouth slams shut and she scurries away after giving my arm a squeeze. I know if she got caught talking bad about the club, it could be grounds for dismissal or a warning, depending on how bad it was. The rules are unfair to many of the club women here, unless they’re married to a patched member. Still, out of all the clubs I have seen, Rebels of the Undead seems to be more progressive in some ways. Case in point, the prez’s daughter working at the bar.

“Morning, Ari,” I say as she walks up, carrying a Styrofoam container and handing it to me. I don’t miss the way her eyes tighten or the fake as fuck smile she gives me.

“Karma said you’d want that for breakfast. I stopped on my way over.”

Her chin tilts up with a show of superiority, and once again I wonder why she feels that she needs to validate her relationship or whatever she has with Colt. I am absolutely zero threat to her. Still, I won’t back down from a challenge.

“Mmm, he still knows what I like to eat, huh.” I smile at the food choice inside the container. My smile is forced, but my words are true. Inside the container is my favorite blueberry muffin, the jumbo one where it has the sugar granules on the top, and a pile of hash browns with a few hot sauce packets. The perfect breakfast and I’m not sure how I feel knowing he remembers.

The man himself walks in a few seconds later while I’m still gazing at the box of food in my hands. A ghost of a smile tugs at his lips before his eyes move up and clash with mine. It feels like a jolt of electricity in my chest, not entirely pleasant and bordering on painful. It's a mix of our past and the present we’re in. History. Love. Pain. Longing. So much emotion and longing that it forces all the air from my lungs and I’m breathless, waiting for him to say something and not wanting him to say anything at all.

Before I can spiral further or before Colt makes his way over to me, shattering any resolve I have around him, Austin opens the Church doors.

“Church!” he bellows into the space. “You too, Doc.”

My head tips down and I move around Ari, who I just noticed hasn’t moved and is watching the looks passing between Colt and myself. A blush covers my cheeks and I can feel the heat of his stare on my back as I head toward the infamous roomthat the guys call Church: the altar of all their decisions. I stand awkwardly, while the members take their usual seats, and somehow manage to keep my eyes on anything else in the room except for the two men I’m most familiar with.

“Here ya are, Doc,” Jester, the VP of the club, says as he swings an extra chair my way. It’s plush and a deep red, vastly different from any other furniture in the room. My brow rises as I glance at him. Jester shrugs.

“It's only used when we have professional guests who are of the female variety.”

“Ah.” I smile and take a seat before opening the container. I lift the muffin up and take a few bites, trying to enjoy the warmth and melting butter on the inside along with the sweet and sour taste of the blueberries.

The room hushes when their president closes the door and takes a seat. I quietly put away the rest of the muffin and run my fingers over my lips to check for crumbs. Austin raises a wooden gavel and everyone falls silent. Sometimes it's hard for me to merge the two different personalities of Austin. In my mind, he’s the doting father, the man who was willing to try anything to keep his family together, the man who cried after every therapy appointment he attended with his daughter during her recovery. I picture him as the rock of a husband who kept his wife from sinking into despair. But here, in this room, he is Daggerz. President of Rebels of the Undead. He is a force of nature, dangerous, and willing to put his life on the line for the other men in this room.

“It's good to see ya, Doc,” he says, and his eyes soften some. “Although I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“You and me both, Daggerz.” I give the room a small smile, even when tears are prickling my eyes.

“I need to give my brothers the whole scope of what we’re dealing with so we can best know how to protect you. Can I have your permission to share that information?”

I suck in a deep breath over and over again, trying to keep my heart calm. Until Austin, anytime I’ve shared my story, I’ve never felt believed. I’ve always felt like I was the perpetrator in what happened. “I can tell them.”

He looks over at me, concern clearly evident on his face. “Are you sure?”

I nod, even though I feel shaky and that muffin I ate is now threatening to come back up. I can feel all of their eyes on me, waiting, but it's knowing that Colt and Zane will see that my life hasn’t been roses since they left that makes me the most nervous. After everything that happened, I wanted him to see that I had flourished. I survived. And in many instances, I did, except one.

“I was going to grad school in Alabama when I met Stella. We worked together at a shelter for women and children experiencing domestic violence. She was my friend and we were always close at work, but it was rare I saw Stella outside of work unless it was at school. When I first met her, she was dating Lukas Deveroix and was in love with him. Everything was always perfect with them. He took her out to expensive restaurants, he bought her designer label gifts, they talked about taking vacations and the future, and he met her every day after classes to drive her home. Things didn’t start out bad right away. It was maybe a year before there were changes in how she talked about him and their relationship. She would mention that he was out drinking again with his friends. One day she was late to work because he didn’t like the jeans she was wearing. I mean we worked at a shelter, we dressed casual, her jeans were by no means fancy or overly tight. Then she came in crying one day because he said they should break up and then hehad a breakdown and they spent all night on the phone talking about their issues, which caused her to be late to class the next morning. He didn’t always like when we studied late. He would text her constantly and was always early to pick her up. I never said anything to her because when there weren’t issues, she would always say how great of a guy he was and how much she loved him. This went on for a year or so with his changed behaviors.”

I take a deep breath, my eyes closing and remembering the night everything changed. “Then, I was working the late shift at the shelter when she called me crying. She knew I was at work, but she needed me to call her and say there was an emergency and they needed her. It felt off, so I asked our supervisor to do it. When Stella came to work, she was shaken, pale, and in shock. Lukas had been cheating on her and she caught them at her house. She confronted him and he got physical with her, so she ran into the bathroom and called me. She said it was the first time, but I don’t know for sure.”

“I hope she left his candy-ass right there.” One of the brothers sits forward and knocks his knuckles on the tabletop.

I shake my head, wishing he was right. “He love-bombed her. Anything and everything she wanted, he pulled out all the stops with his apology and told her he loved her, finally. He wanted to marry her. She had loved him for so long that she wanted to try and get past it. He promised he’d go to counseling, that he would stop drinking, he wouldn’t have boys’ nights at the club. Everything she had concerns about he addressed. She said yes to the marriage proposal, and I think we all assumed it would be like a year or two until the big day. Nope, he marched her down to the courthouse and they got married that week. Stella had one more good day at work before she all of a sudden quit.”

“I hate where this is going,” Zane huffs under his breath and leans back in his seat.

“Same.” I look at him and offer a tiny smile. “I only saw Stella at school after that, but she was becoming a shell of herself already. She barely talked to anyone, especially the guys in our group. Which was hard because we were all friends before she was married. I tried to ask her to talk or to hang out and she always made an excuse about wanting to be home with her husband. Then she began to show. She was pregnant. I’m not sure what the catalyst was for her; I think something to do with the baby, but Stella came back to the shelter. Only this time she wanted in as a client. We processed her intake, and once she felt safer, she just broke. All the horrible things he did and said to her, the fact that he didn’t stop cheating; he didn’t even try to hide it, and the perpetual blame that it was her fault because he couldn’t do the things he wanted because of her. I felt so bad for her, but she was adamant she needed to think about the baby. She was worried he was going to do something because he wasn’t happy she was pregnant. Lukas became unhinged. He wouldn’t let her go. He stalked her at school and would show up there all the time. He called the shelter or had other people calling pretending to be concerned family members. He straight up lost it. He cornered her off-campus on her way back and choked her until she passed out. When she told the police, he sent her a message that he would kill her when he saw her again.”

“And here in lies the root of the biggest problem we’re goin’ to be facin’.” Austin meets the eye of every man around the table. “Deveroix was able to skate by with Tuscaloosa’s PD because his dear old daddy is chief of the department and his brother is a detective. I have a strong suspicion that is how he was able to find you, Doc.”

My gaze falls to the table. Hearing it out loud feels like a form of validation. I had my own strong suspicions, but I’ve also been hiding in fear for four years.

“Why is he so fixated on you? You did nothing wrong.”

That question is from Colt, and I’m forced to raise my head and meet his gaze. The brown of his eyes is black, swirling with something that looks like rage, and my stomach warms knowing it's not aimed at me; he's mad for me. I have a room full of people who are listening to my story rather than judging.

“When we realized that the police weren’t going to do anything, and that a judge wasn’t honoring the protective order, I helped Stella escape. We kept her at the shelter and I brought her all the information she needed so she could unenroll from school. When a really good friend of mine passed away, he had left me a huge chunk of his inheritance, and I cashed it all out to help her get out of Alabama. I had always planned to stay there after school, but I knew it would be too risky. I couldn't go home, so I landed close enough but also far away, so he wouldn’t try and track down my family. Everything was fine for a few years and then suddenly in the past year or so, I started to feel like I was being watched or followed. I reached out to Daggerz about maybe security cameras or a system I could buy for my house and he recommended some to me. It helped for a while, but within the past six months, his antics increased. Letters came first, then pictures of me out and about, and a screenshot of my little sister’s blog on social media. I went to court for a restraining order but had no way to prove it was him, and they had no way to serve him. Last night was the first time that he came after me in person. I saw him, and he was in my house. He wants Stella and the baby, and he blames me for helping hide her.” My breath shudders in my chest and I swallow past the pain, pushing down the sobs.

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