Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,64

shit wasn’t the reason why I was losing sleep, but I’d known he was delicate. That he had to be handled.

That he was gone was a weight off me, a burden that disintegrated into dust that I no longer had to carry on my shoulders.

But my biggest concern was what he’d done.

What he’d learned and who the fuck he’d told.

And who he’d used to infiltrate the clubhouse.

Christ.

I sucked in a breath, unsure of what to do. Who to call.

Did I want the Sinners involved in this? Did I just call the cops and plead innocence, tell them it was self-defense?

My instinct was to call Cruz, but what David had said blew that all into question.

Cruz had gone to a Fed.

A fucking Fed.

And David had learned that because he had to have been boning a clubwhore. Someone on the inside who’d given him that information.

All the while my brain raced through options, time ticked on, as it had a habit of doing, until it eventually ran out because the front door opened and I heard boot steps.

Ever since Kevin, I’d learned to listen to people’s steps, and to use them as a means of identifying whether or not someone was friend or foe.

That, and the fact I knew it had been long enough for him to find his way here, was proof enough that Cruz had just walked through my door.

Was he a traitor?

And if he was, what did I do with that information?

He’d betrayed the Sinners. I already had one brother in prison. I couldn’t deal with Nyx being in there too, and never mind the council, most of whom I’d grown up with. Steel and Stone had just found each other, Link was happy with Lily for the first time in forever, then there was Sin and Tiffany, and Nyx and Giulia—all of them lost souls that had found their other halves in each other.

My mind whirred at that, because I couldn’t let them be torn apart. I just… fuck, I just couldn’t.

Scrambling off the stool, I raced over to David’s side. Grabbing his gun, I held it in my shaking hands as I started to back away from the door that led to the reception area.

“Indy? Are you down here? You shouldn’t have left the place unlocked,” Cruz called out, his grumble clear.

If this was any other night, he’d have spanked me for it. I could hear it in his voice. There was anticipation as well as annoyance. Need, too.

For me.

And I wanted that. I wanted him so much.

God, how had this situation derailed so terribly? How had things exploded in my face when I’d only just been saying to Stone that I wasn’t involved in the MC? She’d called me out, said that was a steaming pile of BS, but this was a thousand times worse than anything she could have hurled at me.

“In here,” I hollered, and I cringed because, even to my own ears, I sounded shaken.

Cruz was getting more and more used to reading me, to sensing my non-verbal cues so when I gave him verbal ones, I knew he wouldn’t fail to recognize that something was wrong.

The door kicked inward, but as it did, it slammed into David’s body.

“What the fuck?” Cruz muttered, before he shoved harder, forcing the corpse decorating my floor like it was some kind of messed up art exhibition to slide across the tiles.

The blood dispersed, running into the cracks of the tiles, and I bit my lip, trying to use the pain as a means of keeping myself grounded, of not letting panic overwhelm me.

Now he was here, the timeline had shifted, and I had to act.

The question was, it had been easy to take David out of the picture.

As for Cruz, even if he was a traitor, it might not simply be difficult to take out the rat, it might very well be impossible.

Ten

Cruz

I knew something was wrong the second she called out, but when I saw the dead body on the floor, I’d admit, I hadn’t expected that.

My interest caught, I kept my focus on the corpse, trying to figure out who it was. Definitely a guy, from his clothes and stature, but with his face kissing the floor, I couldn’t make out the man’s identity. Then, I looked at her, and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun.

A shaking gun at that.

Attributing that to nerves, I murmured, “Indy, it’s okay. You took out the threat. Well done.” I had to assume that whoever