Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,93
be more than just—
"He's not dead," I reassured myself, refusing to believe that the massive force that was Rex, the Sinners' Prez, could be vanquished by anything so paltry as a bomb.
It just wouldn't happen.
Rex would be the first to say that only the good died young, and even if, he'd done as I'd told him to a long time ago, and he'd gone into politics, I was no fool. He wouldn't have been a good politician. He'd have been dirty as hell, but he'd stand by his promises, and that was why I'd always wanted that for him.
So much so that when he'd become Prez, I'd refused to talk to him for a month.
Biting my lip at the time, the wasted time, the foolish moments I'd spent on trying to change a man who'd been destined to be exactly what he was—the leader of a bunch of Sinners—I pulled up on the driveway.
What I saw was enough to terrify a civilian, but I wasn't exactly that. I'd been raised on this damn compound, so it wasn't the first attack I'd had to live through, but this was just so much more terrifying than I'd expected.
The screams—Jesus, I'd never get them out of my head. I could hear the cries as women and men escaped the burning building, but they weren’t as petrifying as the flames. The roar of them. The sheer power. It was almost magnetic, in fact, no. They were magnetizing. I felt like an electromagnet being dragged toward them, their massive fury, their beauty.
If I hadn't been shitting myself, I'd have been mesmerized.
In the near distance, I heard sirens, which told me that the explosion had been heard over in the town because no way would the emergency services have responded to Rain's call as fast as this.
The sirens shook me out of my stupor with the flames, though, and I surged forward, rushing toward the clubhouse, my phone raised as a flashlight so I didn't fall over the stupid pebbles they had lining the drive.
Only, as I ran, moving toward the chaos of sobs and screams, of heat and fury, I found him.
The man who'd been like an uncle to me.
"Oh, Bear," I whimpered, dropping to my knees at the sight of him.
Tears welled in my eyes, and it had nothing to do with the smoke choking the air, that was hitting me straight in the face like a sledgehammer into a wall.
This man was family.
And he was gone. Dead—
"Rach..."
My name was slurred. Barely audible. Not just because of the noise ricocheting around the compound, but because his voice was so faint as to be nearly imperceptible.
Only practice at listening to my brother attempt to sneak out of the house put my ears in good stead, and I whispered, "Bear! You hang on in there—"
"No. Time." A rasping breath heaved from his lungs. "Tell. Rex. New World. Sparrows. Must remember, Rachel. Must. Remember." The last word came out as a barely understandable slur, but if those were Bear's dying words, there was no way in hell I was going to forget them.
Now, I just had to make sure that they weren't the last words the man who I loved like he was blood uttered.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done when he wasn't in one piece.
"Oh, Rex," I moaned to myself as I encountered space where there should be limbs. "What did you get involved in?"
Indy
I sighed when Laura reached up and rubbed at her eyes, brushing away the tears that constantly flowed out of her like she was a leaky faucet.
I got the determination, I truly did—it was half of the reason she was still roaming around the world, after all. That fight, those inner flames that kept a person going, even through the pain, even through the discomfort and agony that was part and parcel of cancer treatment, made a person infinitely stronger.
Laura was exactly that.
But the scar tissue corded around her chest was so beyond sensitive that covering one inch of it on her body felt like I was covering feet of it on another person's.
"S-Sorry, Indy, I don't mean to be a cry baby."
"Shut up, girl. You're no cry baby," I soothed, championing her when she wasn't going to champion herself. "It's a little soon after the last session. Maybe we should reschedule?"
Laura sighed, but it came out around a hiccup. "I want it done."
"There's no point in rushing these things," I chided. "Look what's happened as a result."