Page 8 of Colt
“Bullshit.” I’d slammed him against the wall. “Lilac wouldn’t—”
“We had them verified, Colt.” His voice had been gentle, pitying. “I’m sorry, brother. She was planning to leave you. She was cheating, and she cleaned out your accounts before she ran.”
I’d wanted to deny it. Wanted to believe there was another explanation. But the evidence was in my hands. Cold. Concrete. Undeniable.
The woman I’d loved had betrayed me. Had stolen from me. Had walked out of our life together without a backward glance.
The divorce had been rushed—filed within days, finalized within the month. The club had greased the right palms to make it happen fast. A judge who owed Scar a favor, a clerk who looked the other way when the timeline didn’t quite add up. That’s how things worked in our world. You needed something done quick and quiet, you paid the right people, and suddenly the impossible became routine.
She never contested it, just signed and moved on with her life. The lawyer said she’d accepted without a fight.
That had been the final nail. If she’d wanted to fight for us, she would have.
She hadn’t wanted to fight for us.
I lay on my bed in my room at the Venom Riders clubhouse, seven years and two thousand miles from Texas, and tried to make sense of what I’d seen today.
Lilac, with two kids. Twin boys who looked about the right age to have been conceived while we were still married.
Proof she was cheating, my brain insisted.Your brothers were right all along.
But something didn’t fit. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The confusion on her face. The genuine fear when I’d confronted her. The way she’d saidI think you have me confused with someone elselike she actually believed it.
My Lilac had never been a good liar. Today, she hadn’t looked like she was lying. She’d looked like she genuinely didn’t know who I was.
But that was impossible. You don’t just forget years of your life. You don’t forget the person you shared a life with, a home with, a bed with. You don’t look at your husband and askdo I know you?unless you’re playing some kind of sick game.
Unless…
No. I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to let her fuck with my head again, make me doubt everything I knew to be true. She’d cheated. She’d taken my money, my trust, and my fucking heart.
Whatever game she was playing now, I wasn’t going to be a pawn in it.
But even as I told myself that, I couldn’t shake the image of those boys. The fierce one who’d squared up to a six-foot-two biker without flinching. The quiet one grabbing his brother’s arm, trying to protect him even while he was scared.
Brave kids. Good kids.
Kids who’d looked at me with fear, because I’d been too blinded by rage to control myself.
I’d scared them. I’d scared her. And some part of me—whatever was left of the man who’d loved her—hated myself for it.
“Fuck,” I muttered into the empty room.
This was supposed to be simple. See her, hate her, move on. Not this twisted mess of anger and confusion.
I pushed myself up from the bed and headed back to the bar. I needed another drink. But more than that, I needed answers.
Chapter 4
?
— Lilac —
Three days. Three days since the grocery store. Three days of jumping at every motorcycle engine, of scanning every parking lot for a black leather vest, of lying awake at night seeing his face.
Three days of pretending everything was fine while my whole world tilted on its axis.
