hand away, but I persisted. “If you cleaned your cut from time to time, I wouldn’t have to do it for you.”
He squinted at me. “Cuts are supposed to be dirty.”
“Since fucking when?” I rumbled, glaring at him. “Is that in the MC code?”
“Yeah. You don’t get to see it because it’s for dick-owners only.”
“You mean just dicks?” I retorted, but I carried on soaping down his leather cut. “There’s no way in fuck I’m letting you go to this goddamn ceremony with blood spatter on the leather. Ama wants this to be special. You covered in a corpse’s lifeblood doesn’t scream special to me.”
He huffed. “You’re going to ruin it.”
“I’ll oil it later,” I promised, keeping my chin tucked down as I worked a little too hard on cleaning him up.
Smartass figured out there was a reason behind my mania, though. His hand came up to my chin. “Hey.” When I didn’t look up at him, he rasped again, “Hey.”
My throat was a little thick, and it was stupid because I wasn’t a watering pot, but fuck. Ama was already married, so I had no idea why this ceremony was getting to me as much as it was but… God, they’d been through so much already.
“This fucking life,” I whispered, and uncaring about the small suds on the leather, I pushed my nose into it, burying my face in him. When his hands came up to grip me around the waist, I heaved out a breath, and let my arms move to circle him.
“They’ll be okay.”
“I know they will. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“This was your path and it’s hers.”
My brow puckered. “I hate how you know me so well.”
I could feel his lips quirk up against my cheek. “That’s not supposed to be a bad thing.”
“Well, in this instance, it is.” I heaved a sigh. “I can’t help but think—”
“Think, what?” Dagger whispered, slipping behind me and sandwiching me between both my men. “Think that this shouldn’t be? That we, as a unit, shouldn’t have come together? That the boys shouldn’t exist?” I tensed at that. “That’s what you’re saying,” he rumbled. “You’re saying that if you’d stayed away all those years ago, hadn’t come back to Rutherford, that everything would have worked out differently. But you were always destined to come back here, and she was always destined to meet her men in the MC.”
“Couldn’t she have married a fucking lawyer?” I half-cried. “Instead, she has to go for our trigger man?”
“Ink’s good with a gun. Be it ink or rifle.” Flame shrugged. “But he’s even better with her. You know that. You know how she depends on him—”
“I do, and that’s what scares me. I know she can’t sleep without him. Hell, all those years of her sneaking around just to get some rest?” I shook my head, feeling my ponytail whisper against Dagger’s cut behind me. “She depends on them all more than I ever depended on you.”
Wolfe snorted. “Since when don’t you depend on us?”
Peering out from my space, I glowered at him. He was on the sofa, on his laptop going through some work before we headed into the ceremony.
My mania was triple fold.
Things were getting complicated in our world.
After things had gone to shit with Ama in Rhode Island, we were now at war with the Famiglia in New York, and as a result, we were tied in with the Five Points’ Mob. Eoghan, Aidan O’Donnelly’s son, was actually attending today’s ceremony with his wife, and we were using the celebration as a means of discussing business.
Ten years Wolfe had promised the Five Points we’d work with them. But for the help they’d given us? We’d have done anything.
Crossed every fucking river, climbed every mountain.
That was what you did for your babies.
Especially when you’d already let them down once in their life.
The reason Ama was fucked up was our fault. That Ink was cut up like Frankenstein was something else we could lay at the MC’s door.
Fuck.
This life.
I loved my men, loved the world we’d created together, the family that wasn’t just us and our kids but the entire club, but fuck, what I’d give to protect Ama from the harm that had befallen her.
My stomach twisted as I focused on Wolfe whose gaze hadn’t even lifted from the computer at my words. Beside him, Axe was looking at me. He had papers on his knees, but his gaze was on mine. I could see his concern. Feel