Page 30 of Bolt (Iron Thunder MC 1)
“Spike and Ghost are on it,” he said. “And we need to get the girl out.”
Cassie fell down on her knees in front of her brother. “Chip, please, tell us why you did this. I don’t believe you did it out of greed. You wouldn’t betray your Club just for the money. You wouldn’t!”
Flash came to stand beside me. He gave me a look, like this had to come to an end. We’d let Cassie and Chip be around each other long enough.
I took a step toward them. I would physically haul her out of the room if I had to, but I needed to put some distance between brother and sister now.
“You promised,” Chip said to me. I nodded.
“I’m going nowhere until you’ve told me the truth. Why in the bloody Hell did you do this?” Cassie shrieked so loud Flash cursed under his breath. Chip stared at his sister. The color had drained from his face.
I stopped for a moment. If Chip was going to tell his sister his reason for betraying the Club, I wanted to hear it.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Chip said. He couldn’t hold Cassie’s gaze. She was on her knees, directly in front of him now.
“But it has. Look at where you are. Where I am. You need to tell me why you did this. It wasn’t just the money, I know it wasn’t…tell us the truth, Chip.” Cassie’s voice was weak and shaky. I hated seeing her like this. For her sake, I wanted it to stop. I wished Chip would just say something so she could move on.
“It was for the money,” he replied. Somehow, he’d managed to make his voice stern. He kept his face turned firmly away from his sister.
“No. You wouldn’t! Why, Chip?” She stood up with a jerk. Hand on mouth. Cassie refused to believe her brother would do something like this out of pure greed.
“I needed it for the house, okay? Now you fuckin’ know!” Chip growled. He finally looked at his sister, spittle flying from his mouth. He was angry. Cassie winced and took a step back. I was right there behind her. Ready to hold her if she needed me.
I wanted to punch Chip’s head in for hurting his sister.
“What are you talking about? I really don’t understand. Why did you need money for the house?” she continued in a small voice.
Chip breathed out deeply and looked away.
“Our house is going into foreclosure, do you understand? I was supposed to make payments on the mortgage that Dad and then Mom owed the banks. I couldn’t keep up with them. I was never good enough to make those payments.”
“Chip, why didn’t you say something? I could’ve helped. I have some money, not a lot, but…”
“We owe them a lot of money, Cassie…”
“But you didn’t need to resort to this, you could have spoken to me…”
“I didn’t want you involved, okay?” Chip snapped. I had to clench my fists to stop from pulling Cassie away from him. “This was supposed to be a one-time thing. One drop-off, one large payout and I could make our problem go away.”
Cassie whipped around, away from her brother. She faced me and I saw the tears streaking her cheeks.
“Do you see now? He did this for our family home. To protect me. He had a reason for it. Will you let him go now?”
She was searching my eyes, pleading with me. I said nothing because there was nothing to say. I couldn’t make this problem go away for her, as much as I wanted to.
“We have to go now,” I said to her instead.
“I want to stay here with my brother,” she cried.
“Get her out of here,” Flash grunted.
I reached for her hand and started tugging her out of the room. She was struggling again, pulling and trying to escape.
“Chip!” She repeated her brother’s name.
“Bolt, you promised,” Chip called out to me, just as I banged the door shut. Cassie yanked her hand away from me, turned and started banging on the door again with her fists.
I didn’t know what Flash was doing in there with Chip, but I was pretty sure Cassie wouldn’t want to be a part of it. I let her do what she wanted for a few minutes. She screamed and banged. Eventually, she was going to tire herself out.
I reached for her, wrapping an arm around her waist, and instead of fighting me, she rested herself on me. I carried her away from the door and put her down gently. She’d stopped fighting me. She wasn’t trying to get away to her brother.
There were tears on her cheeks, which she’d tried wiping away.
“What is going to happen to him now?” she asked. I could sense she tried her best to control her voice.
