Page 108 of Breaking His Exile

He leaned closer. She didn’t flinch. She’d spent sixteen years learning not to flinch at her father’s voice, her father’s hands.

But Mal Granger was not her father. He was just another man who thought fear was currency.

And she was so done being afraid.

Rainey’s wrist burned. She kept the rhythm going, invisible, her hand working against the plastic while her face held still.

“You’re a sad little boy,” she spat, “playing at being his daddy.”

Mal’s smile dropped away, and he straightened as she’d slapped him. She’d hit a nerve.

Good. She’d keep poking at it.

“Rux was a professional,” she continued. “You know what I remember about your father? He never talked this much. He never needed to explain why something was worth doing. He just did it. You’re standing here justifying yourself to a woman tied to a tire because you need someone to agree you’re scary.” She tilted her head. “You’re not scary, Mal. You’re desperate. And desperate men make mistakes.”

He backhanded her across the face, his knuckles catching her cheekbone, and her head snapped sideways. Pain bloomed hot, and she tasted copper at the corner of her mouth. Her mouth filled with blood and she spit it out.

Hobbs shifted his weight, but didn’t intervene. He wouldn’t unless Mal told him.

Gemma made a small sound of excitement. “Hit her again. Shut the bitch up.”

Rainey turned her head back and looked up at Mal. She didn’t wipe the blood from her lip. She let it sit there, let him see it, let him understand that she’d taken worse from better men and kept talking.

“See?” she said. “Desperate.”

Mal’s jaw worked. He turned away from her, toward the road, and she knew she’d gotten to him. Not enough. Not nearly enough. But somewhere beneath the performance, somewhere in the place where he still measured himself against a dead man’s shadow, she’d scratched the surface.

She tested the zip tie. More give now. The raw skin had lubricated with blood, and the plastic had stretched. Not enough to pull free. Soon.

Gemma moved into her line of sight. She crouched down where Mal had crouched, and her face was different now. The warmth Rainey had seen at Valor Ridge—the easy smiles, the way she’d teased River, the attentive listening—gone. What remained was harder, brittle, ugly.

“You don’t know anything about him,” Gemma said. Her voice was low, intimate, the tone of a woman sharing secrets. “About us. What we have.”

“I know exactly what you have,” Rainey said. “I had it too. For about two minutes, before I saw him shoot a man in the head.”

“Roy Bishoff was a liability. He was going to talk to the feds.”

“And you think you’re not a liability? Sylvie Granger is missing, presumed dead, because she saw what I saw. He probably killed her. His own sister. And now he’s going to kill me, his ex-girlfriend. You’re the only other woman who knows what I know. So how long do you think that lasts, Gemma? How long before you’re the next problem he needs to solve?”

Gemma’s hand closed around her arm, fingers digging into the muscle above the elbow. Her nails were short, practical, but they found the nerve and pressed.

“Mal loves me,” Gemma said. “He’s going to take me with him. We’re going to get out of this state, start somewhere clean. He promised.”

“He promised me a music career,” Rainey said. “He promised Sylvie she’d always be sheltered from club business. He promises things. It’s what he does. And then he uses you until you’re not useful, and then he finds a way to make your death look like someone else’s fault.” She leaned forward, close enough to smell Gemma’s shampoo, the same brand River kept in his shower. The intimacy of that detail—her brother’s smell on this woman’s hair—lit something vicious in her chest. “He doesn’t love women, Gemma. He values us. He values what we can do for him. The second you stop being useful, you’re Roy Bishoff. You’re Sylvie. You’re me. You’re a problem to manage.”

Gemma’s grip tightened. Her face had gone pale, the blood draining from her cheeks, and for a moment—just a moment—Rainey saw doubt flicker in her eyes. The same doubt Rainey had felt in the clubhouse, watching Mal’s hand move to his weapon, understanding too late that she’d walked into something that would not let her walk out.

Then the doubt curdled into anger. Gemma’s mouth twisted. She shoved Rainey back against the tire and yanked the zip tie tighter, pulling Rainey’s wrists together with a vicious jerk that made her gasp.

“You don’t get to tell me what I am,” Gemma said. Her voice had gone high, brittle, the pitch of a woman holding something together with force of will. “You don’t get to poison this. Mal gave me a job when I had nothing. He gave me purpose. He gave me a way to matter.” She leaned close, her breath hot against Rainey’s ear. “And if he asked me to put a bullet in your head right now, I’d do it. I’d do it and I’d sleep fine. So don’t tell me what he feels. Don’t tell me what I mean to him. You don’t know anything.”

She stood. Brushed gravel from her knees. Walked back to Mal’s side, and Rainey watched her go and understood that she’d failed. Not completely—she’d planted something, maybe, a seed that might grow if given time—but Gemma wasn’t going to crack today. Gemma had invested too much. She’d slept in River’s bed for a month, learned his routines, his fears, his hopes, and delivered his sister to death. That kind of investment didn’t unwind because the victim said something true.

Rainey’s wrists throbbed. The zip tie was tighter now, Gemma’s adjustment costing her the progress she’d made. She’d have to start over.

Okay. It was okay.

She had time.