Page 105 of Property of Fang
I drop the blanket from my shoulders. “I didn’t want you to judge me based on who he is.Was.”
“It’s not about judging you,” Darla explains. “We had a right to know.”
“Why?” I challenge. “How would knowing have changed your situation?”
Darla rolls her lips and swallows. Kathy seems content to let her run the argument.
“It’s a matter of safety,” Darla explains. “When you purposely withhold somethingthatimportant, it makes me ask why. Were you there to spy on us? Is that why you’re still here now?”
“No,” I exclaim. “Not at all.”
“Surely they would have let you go, though?” Darla frowns. “The amount of hands we passed through, someone must have known they fucked up.”
I turn the empty mug on my lap.
I stiffen as realization slowly dawns on her face like the sunrise over the fields.Fuck it.
“They didn’t know,” she whispers, hurt and confusion warring for dominance in her eyes. “They had no idea you were one of them, did they?”
I don’t dare look at Kathy.
“Who told you about him?” I ask. “Who said that my father used to be a Devil’s Breed member?”
Neither one appears keen to reveal the source of the information. There are only two people who know, as far as I’maware: Fang and Chaos. But what if they talked about me at church? What if I was a topic of discussion? Then anyone could have filled them in.
“Whatwereyou doing there, then?” Darla asks, leaning in.
I pull my thumbs from the mug’s handle before I clean snap it off. “Same as you. Waiting to be bartered or sold.”
“Bullshit,” she counters. “They wouldn’t do that to a member’s daughter.”
“Ex-member,” I stress. “And they didn’t know, remember? I didn’t grow up in the club. Nobody knew who I was there.”
“Circus said the sheriff wants to talk to us again about Anna,” Kathy interjects. “Do you know anything about that?”
Fuck.Do I continue to lie? Continue to do all the things Fang accused me of for the sole purpose of saving myself?Nothing changes unless we do.Acid churns a hot eddy in my stomach. Somehow,thisseems the worst revelation of all.
“They know who her family is,” I say quietly. “The sheriff probably wants to ask questions about that.”
“I don’t get it,” Darla says. “What would we know about her family?”
I want to tell her to stop asking questions. To wrap my hands around her throat and yell at her to shut the fuck up. A shiver ripples down my body at the realizationthisis probably how it started with Mary-Beth.
I grip the mug in my lap, convinced if I can keep my hands on the ceramic then there’s no chance I can blackout and harm either of these women, too.
“Why would we know anything, Jenna?”
My chest aches, heart pounding. Sacrifice wouldn’t be what it is without the accompanying pain. If it were easy, everyone would do it. But that’s exactly what I have to do now if I ever hope to maintain a relationship with people I care about—sacrifice my ill-bought safety for their peace of mind.
“Mary-Beth is—was—Anna’s sister.”
Kathy inhales sharply, gaze fixed on me, wide-eyed. Darla leans forward, elbows to her knees to bury her face in her hands. The reprieve doesn’t last long, Darla bolting upright to exclaim, “What the fuck, Jenna? You knew that?”
“Not the whole time.”
“But you’ve known for a while, right? How long?”
“I figured it out at the hospital.”
