Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,97
reached up and rubbed them as I rasped, "Stone, why are we doing this to ourselves?"
She released a shaky breath. "Because they're family. This is our family, Indy."
"I don't want to be involved in this," I rasped. "I don't want to be in a world where someone can bomb you because you don't like—"
"Let me just stop you there, Indy. You think the Sinners would put their women in danger? Knowingly?"
I tensed up at the anger in her voice and knew I was only going to hear shit that defended the guys coming from her.
I got it.
She loved Steel. Had loved him for a lifetime, had spent a lifetime getting back to him, but she wasn't me.
I wasn't her.
Did I have Cruz?
I wasn't sure.
He said things, all the right things that made me think I did, but...
"I know you want to run, Indy. When Giulia told me you hadn't arrived yet, I knew what would be going through your head. That's why I wanted to be the one to tell you, but I'm helping out with the staff. They're not used to emergencies like this and, unfortunately for me, I am." She released a breath. "It's bad, but there's always worse."
"That's the only consolation you can give me?" I interrupted bitterly. "That, hey, it's not 9-11? The difference is you don't know what the fuck the Sinners did to deserve this, and those people were innocent. You don't know what the Sinners have done, and the bitch of it is, because you have a pussy, you'll never fucking know.
"You could die for the goddamn MC, you could lose your fucking life, your world, everything, but they'll always treat you like you're less because you don't have a fucking cock."
Silence met my answer, and a for second, over the pounding of my heart, the panting from my lungs, I wasn't sure if she'd hung up, then, she murmured, "You're right."
"I-I am?"
"Yeah. You are. It isn't fair, but nothing about life is fair.
"I got kidnapped by a psychopath, Indy. I was almost killed because I figured out she was hurting innocent people in a place they came to for help. To be cured, or if not that, to end their days in relative peace and quiet.
"That had nothing to do with the Sinners. One thing I learned, Indy, when I was in that goddamn hospital bed, some people are just like magnets. We're that way. We attract it because we were born into it, it's all we know. It's in our fucking genes."
Eyes awash with tears, I burst out, "But I don't want that!"
"You can't avoid it, sweetheart. It's who we are."
This time, I didn't just rub my eyes, I dug my fingers into them, because I knew she was right.
Hadn't I killed David?
Hadn't I done that as easily as fucking pie?
It hadn't even occurred to me to let him corner me, to let him have information he could hold against my family. And after, hadn't I been A-okay with letting Cruz and Nyx handle things? When their version of that probably involved a nearby pig farm or some godawful way of making a dead body disappear?
Not once had I felt remorse. Had I looked at the floor in my studio and seen the blood pooling around him, fanning out like some kind of obscene art.
Any other woman would have been traumatized.
But I was a Sinners' brat.
I was made of stronger stuff.
"Indy," she rasped. "You need to come to us. We need to be together."
I knew by 'we', she wasn't just talking about me and her. But the whole Sinners' family.
Which I, somehow, was a goddamn part of.
Lord help me.
Seventeen
Cruz
I woke up to chaos.
The green curtains that separated me from another ER bay were pulled, and I had one of those crappy blankets covering my legs. As I peered at myself through groggy eyes with a head that was banging from all the noise in the hospital, I saw I was wearing one of those wanktard gowns which always sent the worst drafts up your ass crack. From the compression bandage on my chest, I knew I’d fractured some ribs, and every breath felt like I’d swallowed a knife.
Fun.
Worse than that though was my foggy brain, like I'd been walking through clouds and instead of plummeting to the earth, I'd just started flying higher and higher.
Had I smoked weed or something tonight?
The last time I'd felt this crappy was when I'd eaten some funky pot brownies.