Page 52 of Knot My MC
We’ll be your devils if you let us.
The temptation was strong. It would be easy to give in. Falling in with them would be as simple as picking up a bicycle and riding it. We were good together, weren’t we?
They paid for you, Kiki.
There it is again. Reality. Brutally honest and right. They own me. Only it hadn’t felt like that earlier. For a moment, I had felt like the one with the power. I had owned them all.
Rolling over, I heave out a breath. Day three without Dad. That’s enough to obliterate any demented happiness I’d felt while hanging out with them. There are things to be done. Funerals to arrange.
Axel never mentioned anything about a body. They buried him before coming home. Of course they did. They couldn’t risk someone finding the body and tracing it back to the club. Somewhere out there, Dad is rotting in some poorly dug grave.
He deserves better, but even if I figured out where they buried him, it wouldn’t matter. Dad’s soul—if he ever had one—is already gone. He does deserve a tribute of some sort though. He’d want that at the very least. I don’t know if Wrecker MC has anything planned, and I don’t really care. I’ll have my own service. Something meaningful.
The idea gives me purpose, and with that, I climb out of bed and use the en suite bathroom, doing my best to tame the rats’ nest of hair at the nape of my neck. At some point I’ll need to get clothes and toiletries. That can all wait though.
The doors to the other bedrooms are closed when I open Jag’s door. There are two extra doors in the hallway as well, and I pause, wondering if I should take the time to explore while they’re all asleep, but rustling in the living room reminds me where Jag decided to sleep. Saving my explorations for another day, I pad down the hallway with a yawn.
The three of them are sitting on the couch, and I stumble to a stop when they all turn to look at me. Jag with his playful smirk and mid-length blond hair. Crow with his curiosity and that swath of dark hair across his forehead. And Knox with his controlled and precise focus. The beard—if it even qualifies with how short he keeps it—is the only thing that seems out of place, but even then it’s well kept with clean lines.
“What?” I ask.
Crow snaps his notebook closed, pencil smudged on the outer edge of his left hand. Drawing? Writing? I’m curious, but I don’t ask.
“We have something to discuss.” Knox gestures to the chair. “Will you come sit with us?”
Not come sit. Not sit down.Will you come sit with us?A question, not a demand.Nois on the tip of my tongue. There’s already a strange itch crawling over my skin; impatience. I should have demanded to find my father as soon as the Hell Hounds had me on the back of their bikes. I didn’t, and now every second that passes without giving him a proper sendoff seems disrespectful.
“Okay,” I concede, taking the seat. A fat stack of cash sits on the coffee table. I stare at it before turning to the guys. “What’s this?”
“Yours.” Knox pushes it toward me.
“For?”
“It’s what… it’s what we paid for you. We’re giving you the same amount.”
I clench my fingers. “Why?” I grind out, though I suspect what they’re doing. Getting rid of me. So much for being my devils.
Crow drums his fingers on his pants. “Because we don’t want to own you.”
There it is. The dagger I’d been waiting for. That old wound in my chest—the one they gave me when they abandoned me—rips wide open. I’m so fucking naive.They don’t want me.I bite down on the inside of my cheek and pinch my eyes shut, shoving that vulnerability down.
“Why would you say it like that?” Jag growls.
I open my eyes in time to catch him smacking Crow on the back of the head.
“I thought she’d know what we meant.” Crow glares at him before looking at me. “We don’t want to own you, Kiki. We want you to choose us.”
Now they’re being cruel.
“Angel,” Knox purrs. “He’s not lying.”
“You don’t know me,” I snap. Heat washes over me. Anger like I’ve never felt before simmers close to the surface. They make me so mad.
He scoffs. “Like hell I don’t.” He’s so sure. So confident. Sofuckingalpha.
“You don’t,” I snarl, grabbing the stack of cash and throwing it at him. The bills aren’t banded together. They scatter in the air, fluttering and raining all around us. “If you knew me better, you would have known how much you hurt me! You would have known giving me cash is no better than buying me. You would have fucking known” —I stand and step toward them— “thatIdon’t want you.”
The lie hurts me. It’s ugly and wrong. My arms tremble, and I make fists at my side to hide it.
