Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,102
he was right, maybe he wasn't.
There was no way of knowing.
"I was up there to protect the clubhouse. You know I'm better than most of the guys in the club with a rifle. I'm worth ten of your best shooter."
"What with Lancaster and then the shit with Dog, Jesus, Lodestar, how the fuck do you think the brothers will trust you if you keep pulling stunts like this?
"I get that you're working to your own rules, and I understand that you have plans that don't include the club and you're keeping them to yourself, but we brought you in, we sheltered you, and housed you, and we did so with no questions asked.
"How the fuck do you repay that? By getting news we're under threat and not saying a word."
Anger hit me, because I knew he was right, but, he was making out that I had a say in anything that went down around me.
"Look, I get why you're mad, but you're acting as if I took Katina and lit out of the place before the attack happened. I did nothing to save my ass over yours, and you know that's true because Katina was tucked up in bed, Mav." I refused to plead with him, but I was definitely speaking with more diplomacy than he was used to with me. "I heard that there might be a hit. I never imagined there'd be a goddamn bomb. I thought if I sat on the roof, made a nest, I'd find out if the chatter was BS.
"These lines aren't accurate," I urged him to believe. Christ, nothing about the New World Sparrows was. "Last week, they said that Kennedy was fucking alive and walking around at a Presidential rally, for fuck's sake.
"I was acting on gut instinct and thought that my being there was a preventative measure in a worst case scenario."
The stubborn set of his jaw told me he didn't want to listen, and his hands moved down to grab the wheels so he could drag his ass out of the ER cubicle.
But, as he did, Ghost murmured, "Maverick, she did what she thought was right."
His jaw tensed, and he peered down at her with such a softness in his gaze that tears pricked my eyes.
He'd never looked at me like that, though, and in all honesty, I'd never wanted him to.
I wasn't soft.
I was hard.
And that was before what had gone down in fucking Tel Aviv.
I cleared my throat and rasped, "I really did, Mav. I'd never want to hurt you or the MC. You have to know that."
His nostrils flared, but he spat, "I want to know everything. What you heard online, what you saw, what went down."
I winced. "I didn't see much. There was another gun there for sure, and I might have hit him, but the bomb struck after I took my shot.
"It was a quiet night aside from the noise of the party. Out of nowhere, this biker appeared, and I thought he might be the threat until I heard one of the Old Ladies just below me say who it was."
"Stone," Ghost uttered softly. "She identified him first of all."
I shrugged which had the pounding in my head starting up for real. "It could be, I don't really remember."
"If Ghost says it was Stone, then it was Stone." His eyes were mean as he peered at me, telling me, silently, that her word meant more to him than mine did.
I scowled at that. "Since when did you become such a prick?"
"Since my home just got bombed, and half my fucking MC looks like they've been in a fistfight with Smokey the goddamn Bear."
I hissed under my breath, because I couldn't exactly argue with that, could I?
So, hunching my shoulders, which did interesting things to my back as it pulled on my hip, which stung. Badly. And when I said badly, well, I'd been through so much in my life that I had a very high tolerance to pain.
Torture did that to a girl. So when I said this ached, it did.
Shit.
Hissing again, I winced as I processed the pain, letting it flow out of me, before, in a low and raspy voice, I said, "After I heard Bear's name, I saw a laser light on his chest before it drifted over to his bike.
“I followed the sights and took my shot, but the next thing I knew, the place was lit up like a goddamn firework."