listen. If it had been you, you’d have come, and you know it.”
He doesn’t argue with that because he knows I’m right.
“What happened?” Bates asks him as the two soldier brothers eye us from across the room.
Tate motions for us to step to the side a little so there is no chance of anyone overhearing.
“There was another victim, a young girl. Same as before only, when Trav arrived on the scene, he was shot at.”
“You think this asshole was waiting around on the off chance he was going to be the investigating officer?” I question.
“Unless it was this Garrett guy. He would know Travis would respond to the call,” Bates adds.
“Except Garrett was on the call with Travis. They were both shot at, so whoever the shooter is, it’s not Garrett.”
“Fuck,” Priest grunts.
Fuck indeed. This meant we still have no idea who this asshole is and the one suspect we had is now in the clear.
“Either Garrett or Travis see the shooter?” Bates asks.
“No. Garrett is at the scene now, but he was here earlier. He says they were ambushed from behind.”
“What a fucking mess.” I shut up when I see Reign approaching with her brothers behind her.
“Hey guys, these are my brothers Kayden, Alex, and Owen,” she introduces them before taking a breath and stepping forward. She turns so she is standing between Bates and me with Priest at her back.
Her brothers don’t miss the move either. Whether intentional or not, a line in the sand has been drawn and a side has been chosen.
“This is Saint, Bates, and Priest. My men,” she adds, not shying away from who we are to her, even after Tate’s reaction to our relationship back at the clubhouse.
If I didn’t know before that this girl was destined to be ours, this moment would have cemented it.
“Your men?” the guy Reign introduced as Kayden says incredulously. She slips her hand into mine and squeezes, so I squeeze back, letting her know I’ve got her back.
“Yes, Kayden, my men. Before you pull a Tate and say something you can’t take back, now is not the time or the place. I came here to see—”
“Raindrop?”
She shuts up at the sound of her name being called and looks around her brothers as they part.
“Daddy,” she whispers before walking away from us and into the arms of an older-looking man who had come from the corridor adjacent to the waiting room.
“Her men?” Kayden repeats quietly, but with no less venom.
“Yeah, her men. Now back the fuck off,” Bates growls out.
“No, fuck that. That’s my sister you’re—”
“In love with, yeah, I know. I knew it the moment she punched me in the face, and not you, your brothers, or a crazy fucking stalker will take her from us,” Bates swears, and not a man in the room doubts his words.
“She punched you in the face?” the youngest one asks, looking impressed.
Bates just nods, once, done talking.
Alex looks Bates up and down before smirking. “Please tell me she remembered to tuck her thumb over her fingers??”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Reign
I take a deep breath as I leave behind the tension of the room and make my way in to see Travis.
He’s asleep, but that is so much better than what I was expecting when I arrived here. Dad says he’s pulled through the worst of it. A bullet punctured his lung and nicked his heart, but thankfully they were able to repair the damage, although it was touch and go for a while.
I sit beside him in the uncomfortable chair and slip my hand into his, feeling strangely alone. Trav has always been larger than life. As the second oldest, he was busy with parties and girls when I tried following him around as a kid, but he always made time for me. He was the one who learned how to do braids, teaching the rest of the Foster men so I could go to school with pretty hair like my friends.
“You need to wake up because I have a feeling there might be a fight in the waiting room in a minute, and I could really use a brother on my side.”
Trav would take my side even if he didn’t agree with my choices, just to be different from the others. He was a pain in the ass like that. Stubborn and pigheaded to a fault.
“He’s going to be okay, you know. Travis is a fighter.”
I turn at the sound of my dad’s voice, as he sits in the chair next to