Verek (Savage Kings MC - South Carolina #3) - Lane Hart Page 0,32
scoffs. “Too little, too fucking late! The time for you to keep her safe was the night everything happened to her. It was your fucking fault she was taken by those assholes in the first place!”
“My fault?” I repeat. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw the videos from the club when we were searching for her, and I called you that night, remember?” he says slowly, deliberately, leading up to his point. “Tessa deserves better than the man who was inside someone else while she was getting gang raped!”
And there it is.
Finally, someone has voiced aloud the guilt that I’ve carried with me for months now. No wonder Roman didn’t want her around me. He blames me for the kidnapping. And he’s right, it is my fault that she left the club alone. She ran away from me and right into those fuckers.
“I’ll pack up and leave town tonight,” I assure him, knowing it’s best for the club and probably best for Tessa too. She thinks I’m a hero, a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue, when really, I’m the villain in this story – the stupid son of a bitch who hit on her when she was engaged and about to marry another man. It was the lowest of the low, something my father would do, and I hate myself for it.
“Good. It’s about fucking time you do the right thing.” Roman shouts. “Don’t even think about calling or texting her either! I’ll know if you do, and you’ll pay for it.”
“Take care of her,” I tell him as I straddle my bike and adjust my helmet.
“I will, better than you ever could,” Roman replies.
Chapter Fourteen
Tessa
* * *
“It’s unfair for Roman to take his anger out on Verek,” I tell Charlotte once we’re inside the house. “I’m just as guilty.”
“Not really,” she says. “And we were worried sick about you when I finally found your note! I can’t believe you left without telling me what you were doing!”
“Would you have let me leave if I had? No, you wouldn’t have, Charlotte,” I explain to her. “And I needed to do this, more than you can probably ever understand.”
Before she can respond, Roman comes storming back in. Pointing his finger at the sofa behind us, his chest heaving with fury underneath his leather cut, he says, “Sit down and tell me every fucking thing you two did so we can try and clean it up.”
“Watch your tone with her!” Charlotte warns him.
Taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, he says, “I’m sorry, Tessa. But the two of you are acting like crazed teenagers who could be in deep shit right now.”
“Everything went fine,” I say to him honestly. “Really, Roman. We’re not stupid.”
“Tell me everything, from the beginning,” he says, walking over and taking a seat on the edge of one of the sofas.
“Fine,” I say with a sigh as I follow him with Charlotte right behind me. “But after I finish telling you this, I’m going to get a shower and go to bed, not sit here arguing with you for hours. You can have your opinions, but it’s done and over now. I appreciate you letting me stay with you, but if you’re going to bitch about it all the time from now on, I’ll find somewhere else to stay.”
Charlotte glares at Roman as if in warning, before he grits out, “Fine. Talk and I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.”
I sit down and start from the beginning at the funeral home, all the way until the end at the boathouse, which is apparently a big surprise to Roman. While he looked calm for the most part during the story, other than grinding his teeth to dust, his green eyes widen, and his face turned a bright tomato red at that point.
“So, all four men are dead. The setup with Floyd looks like he killed himself because of the guilt, and then he pointed fingers at the other guys for their involvement, which will lead the police to believe that the other three are on the run.”
“See, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Charlotte says into the silence that follows the conclusion of my report. “They were smart. Maybe it was better to keep the rest of you out of this since it’s less likely someone will notice two people passing through town compared to ten Savage Kings storming through.”
“I need to make some calls,” Roman mutters when he