Page 30 of Kane's Kingdom

A few other men follow. Chains gives nothing except silence, but he stays in his chair and doesn't challenge the call. That's enough for tonight.

I pick up the gavel and bring it down once, ending church.

***

The air around Rourke's Landing still smells heavily of smoke. The fire crews are gone. Yellow tape hangs loose across the entrance, and the front windows are black around their broken edges.

Bella stands inside what used to be the dining room. Her auburn hair is twisted into a knot, though half of it has already escaped. She picks up a piece of the shattered pastry case and sets it in a box.

I stop several feet behind her. She knows I'm there. Her shoulders stiffen before she turns.

Her gaze moves over my face, my hands, the dried blood on the cuff of my shirt.

"You dealt with it."

I stop beside her. “It has."

"What does that mean?"

"They won't come again."

She studies me. She looks around at the burned walls. "That doesn't fix this. Or what I heard."

"I know that."

She folds her arms, not as armor this time but to hold herself together.

"Whatever you heard, they've been put right."

"Because you ordered it?"

"Yes."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"They're not in charge, Bella. I am." The words echo softly through the ruined cafe. "What I say goes, and what I say is you.” Her face shifts.

I keep going before control gives me another excuse to stop. "You're the one I've always loved.” Her breath catches. "The one I always will. I should've told you before any of this," I say. "Before your father lost his patch. Before mine made everything between us something I didn't think I had the right to touch."

Her eyes fill.

"I thought wanting you meant taking one more thing from Red. Then I told myself protecting you was about the club, because duty was easier to carry than the truth."

A tear slips down her cheek.

"The truth is I went to the Landing because it was you. I put you in my room because it was you. I told Dekker I'd tear his world apart because it was you."

Her mouth trembles.

"I can't separate you from the club," she says.

"No, you can't."

"I don't want to live like this."

"I won't ask you to."

"You're the president."