Page 17 of Best Laid Plans

Probe growls. “Does Delphi know your fuck⁠—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Probe, or I swear I’ll rip your tongue out of your head,” Kruger warns him.

The room goes quiet as I sink into my seat, trying to fade away into the background.

“Look at her,” Havoc snarls. “Fucking look at her.”

I hear a sigh before Probe mutters, “Yeah, alright. I was out of line.”

“Damn fucking right you were. You want her to share her story, then shut the fuck up. She’s already surrounded by men in an enclosed space, days after being attacked and almost fucking raped. You think she feels safe here, Probe, huh? No, she doesn’t. She probably doesn’t feel safe anywhere. But so help me god, if you make her disappear into herself any more, I’m going to throw you in the octagon with Ambros and get that fucker to knock some sense into you.”

I don’t look up to search out Ambros, not after what happened to Star and Citi. Powers told me they are an item now, so he must hate me something fierce.

“You’re pissed that she’s not the girl you thought you knew. I get it,” G adds, his eyes locked on Probe. “But right now, I’m guessing you’re not the man she thought you were either.”

Probe flinches as if G’s words make a direct hit.

Fuck this. I straighten my shoulders and lift my head. “Ask me your questions so we can get this over with. And then if you want me to leave, I’ll go.”

“Like fuck you will,” Powers snarls.

I look at him with sad eyes. “All my life, I was searching for a place to belong. For a while, I hoped it would be here. Raven Souls has been the closest thing I’ve had to family for a long time.”

“Family doesn’t lie to each other,” Toot pipes up. The man who is usually the joker of the bunch has been quietly watching me with a cool gaze.

“No? Then how come you’ve been lying to Mac all these years about Greer?”

Chapter Six

POWERS

Mac whips his head around to look at his brother. “What is she talking about?”

“Now is not the time,” Havoc barks at them before it can devolve. Something tells me that conversation won’t go down well. He turns to Lil. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

She taps her fingers on the table, looking so fucking lost that I want to pull her into my lap. But this has to be done—for her, for the club, and for us. And then we can deal with the pieces, wherever they may fall.

“I don’t even know where to start,” she admits.

“Just start at the beginning,” Dice tells her gently.

“Right, the beginning. To understand that, I’d need to go all the way back to when I was a kid.” When nobody argues, she sighs and leans back a little, dropping her gaze to her hands on the table as she slips into the past.

“My real name is Lilith.”

She looks at me, a small smile on her face. Now I know why she’s fine being called Lil. The smile slips as she continues. “I don’t know what my last name is or was. Not sure I ever had one.”

The room goes silent as everyone throws each other a confused look.

“My grandparents used to belong to a cult that called itself the Untainted. Some shit went down, and they fled with my dad when he was a boy, along with a dozen other members who lived completely off the grid.”

“The Untainted? Why is that so familiar?” G taps on his laptop a minute before images of news articles about an incident a few years back, involving another MC, appear on the wall. The Vegas chapter of Kings of Carnage.

“I remember this,” Kruger says, staring at the info. “The old lady of the presidents Priest, Saint, and Bates was kidnapped and taken to a church…” His voice drifts off before a picture of a rundown place appears with a grisly headline above it. “All Saints Chapel, that’s it. The psycho was a serial killer. He nailed Reign to a fucking cross.”

“Wait, was that the place that was filled with the corpses of the congregation?” Mack asks.

G nods. “Yeah, it was fucked-up, especially since the killer turned out to be a cop and Saint’s father.”