Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(80)

But to wear a wire... My throat closes and an ache ripples through my chest. She ran for the gun, and when that shot reverberated around the room, my knees gave and the pain that consumed me nearly crushed me to the point of death.

“I love you,” I say. “And I don’t want to live without you.”

Violet pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “And I love you and I don’t want to live without you. Even if we can’t work things out between us, I will still love you and I still don’t want to live without you. If you go down roads I can’t travel, then I need to know you’re safe. I need to know Eli is safe, and Cyrus and Pigpen and Oz and Razor and my mom and my brother, and I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.

“I have the opportunity to end it all. The war between the Riot and the Terror finally over. Years of pain and hurt and blood will end. What Cyrus’s and Eli’s generations could never do, I can. I won’t lie, I’m terrified, but I will not let fear stop me. I will be the one to do what no one else has been able to do. I will bring peace.”

The fire illuminates her face and there’s an edge to her beauty I’ve never seen before. Violet’s never been a shrinking flower. She’s always been a ferocious storm, but her bursts of anger were like short downdrafts that could do damage but then quickly recede. She had the temper of a child, but now she shines with a light that only comes with maturity, with growing up, and before me is a gorgeous warrior holding her head high as she readies for battle.

“Then we do this, but I’m involved. We make up a story telling them I came to you upset with the Terror over my father and that you told me the plan to put Eli away. Yeah, you’ll have to meet with them again to make the switch from you being the lead to me, but you don’t have to wear a wire for that. We tell them I want to be the one to give them the account numbers because I want revenge. I’ll wear the wire.” I’ll take the risk of death. “The Riot have been playing me, too, with my dad being a traitor. Maybe they’ll be convinced I’m flipping on Eli.”

“Even you have to admit how ridiculous that sounds,” she says. “Cyrus and Eli are your family. You would never flip on them. The Riot know this and that’s why they picked me and not you.”

“I’m breaking a promise to the Terror right now.”

“True,” she says slowly. “But I’m not asking you to betray them.”

“Eli and Cyrus will see my not telling them about you and the Riot as a betrayal.”

“But it’s not. We’re trying to save them. If you honestly didn’t believe I was doing all this to save the people you love, regardless of your feelings for me, you would have already been down the road telling Eli. But you aren’t and you didn’t tell Eli last night about the Riot because deep down you know me and you trust me. You know I would never purposely hurt the people I love.”

“Yet the Riot chose you and they were wrong. I can convince them they were wrong about me.”

Violet looks away and that one cast of her gaze feels like being hit by a car at breakneck speed. She knows something I don’t. “Tell me.”

“You failed their test.”

“What test?”

“They told you your father was a traitor. You told the board, and you believed what they said enough to not go looking for answers on your own.”

“I don’t believe what the board said.”

She bobs her head in agreement. “I know, but deep down you trust the club enough not to have asked for the woman’s name who could in theory tell you the truth and you have yet to reach out to them for that information.”

I slam my hand to my chest. “You don’t think it’s a problem for me if my father was a traitor? You don’t think it’s eating me alive?”

“I know it is, but the point is you aren’t searching for answers. Your loyalty is still with the club. That’s how you failed with the Riot. They won’t believe anything you say otherwise.”

“Don’t you get it? The reason I haven’t asked is because I haven’t wanted to know the answers. I’m James’s legacy! Who I am with the club—it’s all built upon who he was, and if he was a traitor, what does that make me?”

Violet’s head slowly tilts to the side as she assesses me. “Chevy...” She closes her mouth, opens it again, and a small sound comes from her throat. “Chevy, if the Riot told me my father was a traitor, I’d be devastated. But...” She scratches the back of her head as if she’s struggling to get her thoughts out. “I’m not my dad and neither are you. I’ll be the first to admit that Eli and Cyrus can be dense, but they aren’t going to change how they feel about you if they find out James made mistakes.”

My head falls forward because that’s exactly what I think. “Mom told me things about Dad. She said he knew she was pregnant, but he didn’t want the club to know. She said he told her he was done with the club, that he wanted something different out of life. He was going to take responsibility for me and Mom, but without club involvement.”

“Wanting a different life doesn’t mean he was a traitor.”

“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t, but I’ll tell you what it does mean. If my father did want a different path and it wasn’t the Riot, then what the hell happened? James left town, he went to Louisville, and Eli and Cyrus won’t admit it, but they broke ties with each other. Family means everything to them. If James wanted something different from the club—did the Terror shut him out? I turn eighteen next week and thanks to the wild-card slot there’s still a shot that my team can make it to the play-offs and state. Becoming a prospect will be the final nail in my coffin for playing. If I choose to play football over becoming a prospect, are they going to shut me out? Am I going to lose my family because I’m not exactly like them? Because you’ve said it yourself—they don’t forgive betrayal and will they see my choices as unforgivable?”