saw he was watching me. Jerking my chin at him, I beckoned him over.
“Can we go somewhere private without causing trouble?”
I whispered the words in her ear, because Black Sabbath suddenly roared through the speakers. I didn’t wince at the change of volume—I’d heard shit far louder than this, I’d been born rocking to this music, but Kenzie did. Kenzie’d been reared like me, and yet, this music had her flinching.
The hell?
What had the bastard done to my sister? My pain in the ass, sabe-lo-todo sister?
“Yeah, come with me,” she whispered back, and pushing her hand into mine in a move that made me wonder if she’d been taken over by a pod person, because Kenzie had never held my hand before, yet, here she was, dragging me through the dense crowd of partiers.
Surreal.
We passed a pool table that had clubwhores snorting blow as brothers fucked them from behind. Far as I could tell, the game was the bitches had to snort it faster than the guys could ram into them—and mess up their perfect lines.
Behind them, on a grimy wall, was a dart board that a cluster of brothers were throwing darts at. When we passed it, I saw Lucifer, Ama’s grandfather, studying us with narrowed eyes.
Because I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, and if I thought about it, I’d know it would be nothing good, I just tipped my chin at him and kept my face blank before I turned to my sister, pretending that she’d said something to me that I needed to listen to.
With Saint at my back, we headed out of the common room of the Knights’ clubhouse, and made it into a hall. There were all kinds of club paraphernalia lining it, and Kenzie didn’t stop dragging me down the corridor until she opened a door.
Half expecting this to be her place, I was surprised to see it was an empty bedroom—probably for high-ranking visitors. Prospects like myself, and Saint who, though a brother, was too newly patched to have any merit, would have to camp out in the common room for the night.
It was plain but clean, and that was pretty good from some of the horror stories my dad had told me when he was on runs up the East Coast and spent the night at friendly MC clubhouses.
“What the fuck, Kenzie?” Saint bellowed. I’d have told him to watch his tone, but I understood it. If ever there was a woman who you’d never think would allow herself to be beaten, it was Kenzie.
And I knew that made me sound like an outright bastard, but fuck, you had to know Kenzie to understand what I meant.
She was the kind who, in school, had sneered at girls if their boyfriends had hurt them. Had shouted loud and clear that she was a feminist, for fuck’s sake. Yet, here she was, beaten, pregnant, and cowed.
I wanted to fucking cry for her, truly I did, but instead, I had to fix this because if my dad found out about this shit? More than he already knew? Christ, he’d be serving a longer sentence for beating a fellow prisoner up just to burn off some of his wrath.
Kenzie whimpered at Saint’s bellow, and I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose at the sound my intrepid sister should have never had to make.
“P-Please, help me,” she whispered, her eyes too large in her pale face.
“I can’t believe he’s beating on you when you’re pregnant,” Saint rasped, his words like mine, his tone just as perplexed.
This life was hard, and not every brother treated his woman right, but fuck, when she was pregnant? That was a lack of respect just compounding a total and utter lack of respect.
If I could have beaten the fuck out of Hex without starting shit between our clubs, I would.
I fucking would.
But I couldn’t.
I was nothing, no one, in this world yet. The second I went to Hex and tried to start something, his brothers would be on me, and then mine would be on me too, hauling me back and away from the fight.
As Saint and Kenzie talked—Saint more than Kenzie who was monosyllabic which was crazy because she’d always been an outspoken pain in my butt—I figured out a play I could make.
It was a pussy move, but fuck, I had to do something, and this was the only way.
Reaching into my jeans pocket, I grabbed my cell. Leaning against the door, I kept an ear