King's Reign (Sydney Storm MC #6)(63)

My body tensed, every inch of me alert as her words triggered my fury. “What the fuck did you just say?”

She flinched at my tone and tried to move away from me, but I grabbed her arm and held her in place. “Tell me what the fuck you mean by that, and so fucking help you God, if you mean what I think you mean, shit isn’t gonna be pretty.”

Swallowing hard, she said, “You were right about Brant—he was crazy. Insane probably. I didn’t know about his past, but I knew he was the kind of man to do anything for the woman he loved. And he loved me, so I let him close and I let him help me escape Tony. But I swear I didn’t know he was going to shoot that woman. He’d told me he was tracking the woman you were seeing, and that he wanted to get back at you for all the stuff you did to me years ago. I told him to drop it, because that stuff was in the past, but he was intent on hurting you through her. I honestly thought he meant he was just going to hurt her. I never imagined killing her was on his mind.”

I shifted my grip from her arm to her neck. Holding her tightly, I backed her up against the wall, pressing her hard to it. “Tell me the fucking truth. You fucking knew he was going there to kill her, didn’t you?”

Fear flashed in her eyes as she clawed at my hand around her throat. “Let me go, King! I didn’t know. I promise.” She struggled to get the words out, but I didn’t give a fuck. I was dancing the line between sane and crazy here with her revelation, and it was a fucking taut line close to snapping and taking us all down with it.

Thrusting my face forward, I stared into her eyes. “Fucking tell me the truth, Ivy! At least fucking give me that!”

Tears streamed down her face, landing on my hand, but I ignored them. I didn’t care about her tears anymore. “This is the truth. I might hate you, but I love you more. If I’d known his intentions, I would have made sure I stopped him. I wouldn’t allow anyone to hurt you like that. Just like I didn’t let Tony hurt you.”

Hard, angry breaths forced their way out of me as I searched her eyes madly for the truth. It was in the blink, and she hadn’t blinked. She hadn’t fucking blinked.

Fuck.

With one last squeeze of her neck, I let her go and jerked away from her.

We stared at each other, a furious and bitter tension sitting between us. After all these years, this is what we had come down to. She said she loved me more than she hated me, but I didn’t think she did. Love didn’t lead to actions like hers. It was a false love. It was the kind of love rooted in fear and doubt. She might have thought she still loved me, but that was only because she didn’t trust herself enough to love herself and let me go. I could blame myself for her brokenness, but she’d had years to move past what happened between us. She’d had time and resources to help herself, and she’d chosen not to use them. We were all responsible for our own happiness; no one could do a damn thing to make Ivy happy until she decided to make herself happy.

“I’m going to walk out that door and I’m never coming back. You need something, you ask Brian. He sees fit to ask me for help with it, I’ll do what I can. Other than that, this is the end of the road for us, Ivy. And as much as you may not believe this, I just want you to be fucking happy.”

Her tears still fell, but they didn’t register with me.

Not like they once did.

We were well and truly finished.



I got sidetracked with club business that gave me a headache on my way to see Detective Stark, which meant by the time I finally tracked her down and stood in front of her, my skull felt like it had been hit by a sledgehammer a hundred fucking times. Between the bullshit that had gone down with Ivy this morning and the hours I’d spent on club shit, I was in no mood for her to say no to my proposal.

Isabel Stark was grieving the loss of her husband. Well, to the world she was. She’d taken a few days off, so I found her at her home again. She was not grieving the loss of her husband. She was cleaning her oven when I got to her.

She met me at her front door with cleaning gloves on, her hair a mess, and more light in her eyes than I’d seen the last time I called on her. Staring at me through her screen door, she said, “Are you here to finish the job you came for the other day?”

I arched a brow. “If you’re asking me if I’m here to put a bullet in your head, the answer is no. However, if you’re asking if I’m here to save my club, that would be a yes. Do not send me away without giving me what I want, Isabel. I’ve had a fucking shit of a day and you won’t like the consequences of an incorrect answer.”

She unlocked the door. “You better come in then.”

I followed her into the kitchen where she pulled her gloves off before looking at me, and asking, “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to drop the fucking case against me and my club. I want you to walk the fuck away from it and never look back. And I’ll fucking pay you to do that.”

She considered that. “It’s tempting, but I don’t need your cash. My husband left me a great deal of money. So much that I don’t have to work another day in my life if I don’t want to.”

“Well that leaves you and me with a big fucking problem then.”

She took a deep breath. “No, not really. Not if you agree to a deal I have for you.”

“What?”

“I’ve worked my job for too long now that I know how shit goes down. I put you away, and maybe some of your club, it still doesn’t fix the problems on the streets. You guys are a dime-a-fucking-dozen. And you just keep coming at me. I’m tired of working the system legally and never achieving my goals. I do this job so my daughter can be safe from men like you, but I’m jaded and don’t buy into the bullshit anymore that what I do makes a difference.” She paused for a beat. “But then you showed up here to kill me and didn’t go through with it, because of the very reason I do my job—because you want to protect my kid from bad people. That surprised the hell out of me, Zachary. I did not see that coming from you. So here’s what I propose—I leave you out there doing your thing, and while doing that, you help me keep the streets clear of as much bullshit as you can.”