voice thick with hate. “Don’t look back. Get on that plane. Run back to your daddy, little girl. That’s all you really are. And it’s time for me to burn it all down again.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sydney
For a week, I stayed in a state of limbo. In shock. It helped that Shannon was pretty much in the same place. Sticks hadn’t reached out to her either. Not directly. He’d only left word with Amy that he didn’t want Shannon to be hurt, but that it was better if she just moved on.
Torch’s worst fears came to fruition on the local news. All detained members of the Great Wolves M.C. were denied bail. They were bound over and sent to prison in Milan. I knew how this worked. It would take months, maybe years for the RICO case against them to go to trial unless they worked out a plea deal. It meant, for all intents and purposes, the leadership of the Great Wolves M.C. was finished.
“Can’t you do something?” Shannon said to me one day after she played a recap of the bail hearing on her laptop.
“What can I do?” I asked. “Believe me. If I could think of something, I would. Torch isn’t talking to me either.”
Even saying his name hurt. His eyes had gone dead ... no ... worse than that. They’d gone hard that day on the bridge. He wanted to push me away. To hurt me. To make me stop loving him.
I couldn’t.
I could only try to keep breathing even though it felt like I’d been asked to do it without my heart.
“Sticks won’t survive in prison, Sydney,” Shannon said. “And he doesn’t have the full protection of the club. He’s not patched. They’ll try to use that against him. The feds will try to get him to flip on the rest of the guys.”
“Flip over what?” I said. “You don’t really believe they’ve done anything wrong, do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe. I just wish I could do something. If I could just see him, even if it’s only for a minute. I think if he knew … maybe it would make it easy for him.”
She put her hand over her stomach when she said the word “knew.”
“Shannon,” I said. “Are you pregnant?”
She bit her bottom lip.
“Shannon!” I came around her kitchen table and went to her.
“It just happened,” she said. “I didn’t even know what I was going to do about it yet. I still don’t. No, that’s not true. I’m keeping it. I love Sticks. It’s just ... he might never come back to me. I don’t have a job anymore.”
I sat down next to her. “That second part you can fix. Don’t wait around for things to get normal at the Den. Maybe they never will. You’re good at what you do. You’re smart. You work hard. Find another job. You have to keep yourself together for Sticks. For this baby. How far along are you?”
“Just two months. Sydney, you can’t tell anyone. I mean it. It’s like I said, Sticks doesn’t even know yet.”
“Have you been to a doctor?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Okay, well, that’s the first thing. Do you have a gynecologist?”
She nodded. I grabbed her phone. It had been sitting on the table next to her.
“Call and make an appointment. I’ll go with you.”
She let out a choked sob. Then Shannon flung herself into my arms. It felt good to help someone else. It took my mind off my own broken heart.
A little while later, Shannon calmed down. We ate takeout Chinese together. As I got up to gather the empty cartons, she put a hand on my arm.
“Sydney, do you think you could talk to your uncle, at least? I mean, you worked for him. He’s been all over the news defending the club. I just ... I want to know how bad it is. I want to know if they are trying to flip Sticks. I know he wants me to stay out of it, but I think seeing me might help. If he’s falling apart in there, I know I can get through to him.”
“What did Amy say?” I asked. She’d been very clear. If any of us needed anything, we were to go to her first.
Shannon looked down. “She told me to sit tight. She said she’d cover my rent for another month and that we’d take it day by day.”
“Sound advice,” she said.
“Sydney, she can’t tell you what to do about your own