Page 28 of Sadistic

"Go home, Njal." Her voice is steady, but I feel her trembling. "Please. Just go home."

He takes a step forward. I shift, putting myself between them.

Behind me, I know Mikhail's already out of the car, ready.

"She was mine first," Njal spits.

"Was," I agree. "Past tense."

Dalla grabs his arm. "Come on. Let me drive you home."

"I don't need?—"

"Yes, you do." She's stronger than she looks, already steering him toward his bike. "Rev, I'll be back."

Revna nods, fingers tightening on my arm as her sister leads her ex away.

We stand there, watching them go, her grief obvious.

"Thirty-six minutes," I say quietly.

She stiffens. "What?"

"You were in his apartment for thirty-six minutes." I turn her to face me. "Did you think I wouldn't know?"

"I thought you'd have the decency?—"

"I don't do decency when it comes to you." I touch one of the earrings. "But I understand goodbye. We all have ghosts in our past, little wolf."

Something shifts in her eyes.

Not softening exactly, but... considering.

"Inside," I say. "Time to make this official."

The clubhouse reeks of beer and testosterone.

Everyone in here, except the women, have leather cuts on, hard faces watching us enter.

My parents are already here—my father commanding one corner with his presence, my mother somehow making the grungy space look like a photo shoot.

A man comes up and escorts us down a hallway, opens a door, and there's a few men seated around the table.

Runes holds court at the head table, gray creeping into his beard, eyes tired.

The deaths of his prospects weighing on him.

"Volkolv," he says as we approach.

"Runes." I guide Revna to a chair, my hand on her back. "We need to talk about your dead prospects."

The room goes silent.

"Erik and Anders were good boys," Runes says finally. "They didn't deserve what happened to them."

"No one deserves a baseball bat to the skull." I remain standing, Revna seated beside me. "But these new Culebra fuckers don't care about what people deserve."

"Which is why we're here," my father interjects. "The alliance?—"

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