Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2)(52)

“Naw, it’s just a flesh wound.”

“And Nikki? Two-man job?”

“Yeah…and, Cox?”

“Yeah?”

“You know what you gotta bring, yeah?”

“Don’t worry, I got you covered. Ain’t nothin’ about that bitch will be left to find.”

No shit. He was not going to allow one shred of evidence to remain that could in any way, shape, or form be traced back to Danny.

Ripper blinked back to the present as Deuce stood up, placed his palms on his desk, and leaned forward. “This is my club, you’re my boy, and that makes you a part of my motherf*ckin’ family. So this is how shit’s gonna go down. Frankie Deluva is done f*ckin’ up my family. So, yeah, you take some’ time, ride it out, and then you get your ass back here where you belong.”

Ripper lowered his eyes. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t thinking about what Frankie had done to him. In fact, he hadn’t been thinking about Frankie at all lately.

“SHUT UP!” Cox roared, startling everyone in the room. To everyone’s astonishment, Cox bent over the desk and shoved his face up in Deuce’s personal space.

“I get why you’re lettin’ him go, but if you let him go and some shit goes down and we’re not there for him, then what the f*ck is gonna happen?”

Fuck him. As if this wasn’t hard enough.

His expression sad, Deuce lifted his arm and grabbed the side of Cox’s face. “Say good-bye to your boy,” he said quietly, giving Cox’s cheek a soft slap. “Then go home to your family.”

Family.

Ripper’s throat closed up. He was leaving the only family he had.

Before he broke down, he shrugged off his cut, pulled his dagger from its sheath on his boot, and started slicing through the stitches that held his sergeant-at-arms patch on the vest. By the time he was finished, all eyes were on him. Stalking forward, he slammed his patch down on Deuce’s desk and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, turned to leave.

“Ripper,” Deuce growled.

Reluctantly, he turned back around.

“This is still your club, brother. This will always be your club and you are still my boy, ain’t no shit ever gonna change that. You get your shit together, you come back, your patch will be waitin’ on you, you feel me?”

Jesus Christ, he had to get out of this room.

“Yeah,” he muttered and left the office. A handful of brothers playing pool all stopped to watch him walk away. He quickened his pace, headed for the door.

“Ripper,” Cox said, grabbing his arm.

He closed his eyes and let out a frustrated breath. Brother wasn’t going to make this easy on him.

“Don’t do this,” Cox said quietly. “Don’t run just ’cause shit went down bad with Nikki. I ain’t gonna say a word and you know, sure as shit, she ain’t never gonna be found. Not after what we did.”

He wasn’t running away and he couldn’t give two shits about Nikki. Nikki had been fill-in, like an old pillow he’d only kept around just because it was there, had been for a long time, and what the f*ck, it was a pillow, he needed a pillow and she’d fit the bill.

Until Danny.

And like everything else in his life, that had gone to shit real f*cking quick.

If Ripper had learned anything in his thirty-something years of life, it was that dark roads only get darker if you stay on them, and his road was pretty damn dark.

So he was giving Danny the only good thing he could give her, what he couldn’t give her if he stayed here. The sooner he left, the sooner she could go back to being a normal girl, having a normal life, one without his inner demons and his dead girlfriends. A life without a man who could kill without a second thought. Yeah, his girl deserved better and so better was what he was going to give her.

“Brother,” he choked out. “Right now me and the road, we got some reconnecting to do, yeah?”

Cox stared at him, his dark eyes narrowing.

“I need to go,” he said firmly.

Shaking his head, Cox released him.

And he left.

Left his brothers.

Left the club.

Left Miles City.

Left Montana.

Left…Danny.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Danny girl,” Cage whispered, softly brushing my hair out of my eyes. “Danny.”

I blinked several times, trying to blink back sleep and dried tears and memories I didn’t want.

“Gotta get outta bed, little sister.”

“Go away,” I whispered hoarsely.

I shoved his arm away from me and rolled over on my side.

Two weeks. Four days. A handful of hours.

Ripper had been gone for two weeks, four days, and a handful of hours.

At first, when he hadn’t answered my text messages or phone calls after dropping me at Anabeth’s house, unable to sleep or eat or do much of anything except pace and shake, the next day I’d tagged along with Eva and Ivy to the club.

And that’s when I saw the sad faces, heard the whispered conversations. That’s when I knew.

“Ripper left.”

I pushed my sweatshirt hood off my head and turned to Tegen.

“He just up and left,” she continued, shrugging. “Didn’t even give a reason. Isn’t that, like, against the rules or something?”