Page 28 of Colt

14

Colt

As soon as Ember left the room, I turned to face my president. “Fuck! Do you believe her?”

“She has no reason to lie to us, Colt. And she looked scared out of her mind.”

Ember told us so much at once, I didn’t even know where to start. Part of me was ready to drive to Reno right now and kill Torch with my bare hands for betraying the club. All I wanted to do this morning was find out if Ember had any information about what happened yesterday, and now we had a complete shit show on our hands.

“She brought this on herself,” I said heatedly. “She should have never hooked up with Torch. What kind of woman sleeps with a married man? Torch isn’t that smart; if he wanted to betray the club, he would have fucked up somehow and exposed himself at some point. He’s been able to prolong staying in the club by attaching himself to her.”

Viking gave me a hard look. “For fuck's sake, Torch may have just tried to kill her—and if he’s got eyes on her, he might have done it to keep her from telling us about him.”

I backed off a little. “Maybe—”

“You’re going to have to deal with the shit Jenna and your mom did to you at some point, because I think you’re letting that cloud your judgment right now. Did you not hear the part where she said she was being blackmailed into helping him and was forced to pretend she was with him?” He paused to let that sink into my thick skull. “I know you act like an asshole and pretend you don’t give a shit about anyone, but even you can’t be okay with that. Her loyalty to her family was at the root of her actions. It's something all of us understand and live by.”

Viking was right, just like Mac had been back at the hospital. Shit from my past was always finding a way to fuck with me. But all this info was hitting me fast and hard and I hadn’t had time to process what it all meant. It didn’t help that my feelings about Ember were all over the place and now a sliver of guilt was forming that my ego didn’t want to acknowledge. I’d thought I knew what kind of woman she was and to have it blow up in my face, it ticked me off. Not at Ember so much, but at myself.

My opinion of her should have risen from the ashes, but I was still enraged by Fitz’s death because she was tied to that undeniable fact in every way.

At this point, I knew my pride was getting in my way. She wasn’t Jenna, and now that I knew she’d been forced into playing a role, that messed up my opinion of her even more. But at the moment, I couldn’t get over the fact that she was there when Fitz died and in some way, she played a role in it, however directly or indirectly. How did I let something like that go? I was pissed at everything and everyone.

Then a memory hit me, Fitz’s comments about Ember’s behavior when Torch was around, how it wasn’t normal. I’d missed it because I was mad at Ember for something she’d had zero control over.

“Fitz had a bad feeling about him, you know. I thought maybe he wanted something more with Ember and that was making him see things that didn’t exist, but now…” I let that thought hang in the air. He must have been waiting for her to share something with him to confirm his suspicions. Too bad she seemed hell-bent on keeping her secrets.“What are we going to do?”

Viking took a long minute before answering. “We need to think of a way to keep Torch from hauling her ass back to Reno. We also need to come up with a plan to find out what he’s up to. He asked Ember to get information for a reason, whether he was behind the shooting or not. Figuring it out is going to take some time and patience.”

“How’s he keeping tabs on her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Could just be something he made up to keep her under his control, which wouldn’t be difficult considering she’s been emotionally abused by him for months. The fact that she hasn’t cracked yet speaks volumes,” Viking said soberly.

“If Torch actually had something to do with Fitz’s murder, we can’t just sit here and not do anything about it.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting, but we need to be smart about this. For now, we keep what Ember told us between the officers of this club. We need to make sure Torch is acting on his own. With him claiming someone is watching Ember, we can’t be too careful. We’ll watch him when they come down for the funeral and then decide what to do. In the meantime, the only way I can think of to keep Ember here is if one of us claims her as his old lady.”

I scoffed at his suggestion. “Which poor bastard are you going to task with that?”

He looked at me like I was an idiot, and I knew what he was going to say before the words came out. “Seems to me like someone already has a property patch sitting around unused—”

“Absolutely fucking not!” I immediately said.

My protests fell on deaf ears. “It has to be an officer since no one else can know. Wolf and Viper would if I told one of them to do it, but Wolf’s not exactly happy with her either. And it doesn’t make sense to ask Viper since you and Ember have a history—”

“We don’t even like each other.”

“Get over yourself and remember that Ember’s the one that’s actually been through hell.” Viking pointed at me, the anger in his voice growing with each word. “You’ve gone out of your way to be a dick toward her. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Can’t say the same for Ember.”

“You just made my point, Viking. No one is going to buy that I suddenly changed my mind and decided to claim her.”

“Better make it believable then. Or else we’re all fucked.”

With that hanging in the air, Viking left me staring after him knowing there was no way out of this.

* * *

I couldn’t believe I was going through with this.