Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,147

he wasn't." I swallowed nervously. "We used to sit in a local Starbucks for hours, discussing the most random shit.

"The craziest thing is that some days, I actually miss him. I miss those conversations. Nobody else my age ever gave enough of a crap about me to want to discuss anything that I was interested in, and as much as I love the brothers, the shit that got my juices flowing, well, it was just more than many could understand.” I thought about how elitist that sounded, and grumbled, "I don't mean to sound like a prick."

"I get it. You're intelligent, that comes with a price. I, just, I'm not like that either, Cruz. I don't want you to feel like I'm dumb or something."

I grunted. "Don't make me spank you when you're tattooing me." She snorted out a laugh. "This was Darren, Indy. I'm not him anymore."

"You're not a split personality, and you have his brain."

"That brain got me into trouble, and what sucks the hardest, is that what I'm most ashamed of, the council wants me to repeat."

She paused at that, the needle no longer digging into my skin, creating trenches of color that would last a lifetime, but still wouldn't last as long as what I felt for her.

"You're not supposed to talk about club business with me," she whispered.

"I know I'm not, but this is me, the real me, and I..." I reached up to cover my eyes where an ache was starting to brew. "They want me to make some bombs, Indy."

"Retaliation?" she asked shakily.

"Yeah. Multiplied by three."

"So many?"

"There must be three targets." I shrugged. "I have no idea, and I don't really want to know, but I don't have much of a choice. What happened to us was wrong, but I just don't know if I can do it again."

She froze, I could feel the air around us beginning to chill, the temperature dropping dramatically as she processed my words.

"Again?"

My jaw tensed. "Yeah."

"Why?" Then she grunted. "Of course, Dean."

"He made me what I am today."

She pressed the flat of her hand to my stomach again. "What is that?"

"A mass murderer."

The choked breath escaped her. "Explain," she demanded, and because I needed to, I did.

"He was anti-war, to the point where he was almost rabid with it. Some days, I felt like it was the only thing that fired him. We morphed from discussions on Asimov and the Three Laws of Robotics and dark matter, to the internal politics of a peacekeeping solution in Afghanistan and Iraq."

I hadn't realized, at the time, just how our conversations had changed.

They'd gone from rousing debates on theoretical principles to hardcore anti-war diatribes.

Like a fool, I never said anything, too enamored by the idea of having a friend at long last that I let myself get swept up in a shower of bullshit.

"After Dean, I promised myself, and I know this sounds stupid, but I promised myself I'd never have friends again."

"But... The brothers?"

I shook my head. "Exactly. They're not friends. They're brothers. It's completely different. They're family by choice, and they're family that has never, ever let me down.

"Mom and Dad divorced when I was fourteen, and though I didn't blame him because she's a psycho, he moved to New Mexico when my stepmom got pregnant. My life was in the city, that was where I was going to college so I was left with her.

"Friends, blood relatives, they do that to people. They use that connection because they want something from you, and when they get it, they leave you in the lurch."

She hissed under her breath. "Cruz, I won't believe that. What Stone has done for me, and what I've done for her, that's what true friendship is. Dean wasn't a friend. I'm not sure how he made you do whatever you did, but that isn't friendship."

"Isn't it? Or maybe what you and Stone have is sisterhood?”

"Synonyms," she argued.

"My experience is different than yours, but I know that I'd go to war for every single brother in the clubhouse, and that's why I'm about to do something that I swore I'd never do again."

She pulled the ink gun back, and it switched off. Her voice was hushed as she whispered, "You're going to build them for them?"

"I have no choice. They've done so much for me, how can I let them down when this is something only I can do? Especially when it's such a dangerous job! At least I'm trained to do it. Anybody else