“I saw everything.”
“Then act like it.”
Whiskey says, “Careful.”
Derby’s eyes don’t leave mine. “I am being careful.”
The room gets tight.
Derby is a loyal brother, but loyal men still test lines when a woman gets under their skin. Especially a biker who don’t want to admit she has.
I hold his stare. “You think I’m going to throw her out?”
“No.”
“You think I’m going to hand her to Vale?”
His jaw flexes. “No.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
He doesn’t answer.
Royal does.
“He’s worried you will treat her like a threat until she stops feeling human.”
Derby’s face hardens because Royal has put words to something he wanted to keep ugly and nameless.
Whiskey leans back in his chair. “And he’s worried because the kid looked at him.”
Derby points at Whiskey. “Stay out of my soul, money man.”
“Gladly. It appears cluttered.”
Under any other circumstance, I might laugh.
Tonight, I drag a hand over my face and feel ten years older.
“She’s a threat,” I say. “Not because she means to be. Because blood is always a threat in the wrong hands.”
Royal’s expression changes at that.
He knows.
His sister showing up has already proved it.
“Two sisters,” he says quietly.
I look at him.
Royal’s face is still, but his eyes are not. There is a storm there. Old grief. Old rage. The kind that made him dangerous before he ever patched in.
“Yours,” he says. “Mine. Same damn season.”
Whiskey taps his fingers once against the table. “Could be coincidence.”
All three of us look at him.