Page 109 of Their Property
Holy shit, Dyno. You were right.
“It all makes sense now,” I said. “Everything, going all the way back to the beginning. You’ve never given the Sons the credit they’re due because it grosses you out that they have sex with each other.”
“Kyrie, please.” Dad raised his hand in protest, the disgust clear on his face.
“You gave them just enough to keep them on the hook,” I went on. “Paid them well enough, let them stay in town for as long as they wanted. But you never gave them a home, not even after their clubhouse burned down and they lost so many members. Not just club members, butfamilymembers! And the three that remained finally caught on and said, ‘Fuck you, Four Corners.’”
“Kyrie, please don’t use that language.”
“That’s why they left and never came back. Now your daughter’s all wrapped up in not just bikers, butqueerbikers.” I emphasized the word to make him even more uncomfortable, and it worked. “Seems like leaving was the right idea.”
I turned to the door, only pausing at my father’s desperate, “Sweetheart, wait. Please don’t leave.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Are you going to force me to stay?” I had a strong hunch that Mari would let it slip to the public if he did, and he’d be in hot water for that too.
Dad’s shoulders slumped with a heavy sigh. “No. I…just, I’m asking you not to go. Not so soon after you got back.”
My hand went to the doorknob, bitterness rising in my throat. “You’ll release them?”
He sighed again. “Yes…I have no reason to hold them, so I must.”
I closed my fingers around the knob. “Will you ever support me being with them?”
It took a long time for an answer to come. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but no. I can’t support it.”
I turned the knob and left my father’s office.
THIRTY-THREE
DYNO
“Give it a rest, T.” I leaned my head back against the brick wall, closing my eyes to the sight of T-Bone inspecting the bars of his cell again.
“Shut your fucking mouth, D,” he growled back. “You wanna sit here while I get our girl back, you keep that to yourself.”
“It's not that Iwantto be here. You're just driving yourself nuts looking for a crack in those bars. Take a step back, that's all I'm saying.”
He ignored me, as expected. Once T-Bone set his mind to something, there was no changing it. The governor's soldiers had stripped us of all our weapons, even my mini Molotovs, so we were sitting ducks in our jail cells. And with someone as precious as Kyrie taken away from us, T-Bone was only more determined to break out. So I looked away, leaving him to scrutinize the joints in the metal bars and turned my attention to Grudge.
He'd requested a pen and several sheets of paper from the soldiers who tossed us in here. They'd granted him the materials without protest. We'd been in here over twenty-four hours by my estimate, and Grudge had been writing nonstop. He had paused in his furious scribbling when I looked over, now leafing through the sheets as he read them. We had been placed in separate cells, and he was sitting on the bench in his, one leg stretched out, the other on the floor as he scanned his writing with a furrowed brow.
“What've you been working on over there?” I called. “Your autobiography?”
To my surprise, he nodded and said, “Mm-hm.” He wrote something at the top of one page and held it up to show me that it said,For Kyrie.
“Grudge...”
T-Bone even stopped pushing on his cell bars to look over. His hands dropped away, limp at his sides when he realized what Grudge had been doing.
"Grudgie, come here," he ordered softly.
Grudge stood and moved to the wall of bars that bordered his cell and T-Bone's. Our president reached through, tugging the other man closer until they were both pressed up against the bars.
“You didn't have to do that again,” T-Bone whispered. “You heard what she said and you know she meant it. You're perfect, and she...shelovesus. She wouldn't make you—”
“Hm!” Grudge jerked his head down with a sharp huff to cut T-Bone off, then he stabbed at her name at the top of the paper with a finger.
“But he did have to,” I said, voicing my interpretation of Grudge's body language. “It's because of how much she means to us that he had to write it all down again. Because she deserves to know. Right, Grudge?”
