“Yeah,” Eden said.
Her mother leaned in. “The way he’s looking at you right now is the way your father always looked at me. Never let that go.”
Eden felt her body gush.
Trev entered the apartment and shut the door. “You two talk?”
“Yeah,” Jenn said. “She knows all I can really tell right now. I guess we have to move to the bad news.”
“The bad news?” Eden asked.
Trev ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, beautiful. I’m sorry. There’s really bad news…”
__
twenty-one.
Eden started to shake as she rested in the corner nook of where the counters made an L shape. She wanted to hide there. Fall to her butt and shut her eyes. Wake up in a different time and a different place. But she still wanted Trev. She forever wanted Trev.
“It’s going to be okay,” Trev said. “I’m trying to be as open and as honest as I can with you, Eden. I hope you know that.”
Eden looked at her mother. “This is all true?”
“All of it,” Jenn said. “That’s why Ripper came after me. He started piecing things together and started swinging.”
“How does it work?” Eden asked. “Why would he believe you?”
“He’s desperate,” Trev said. “I give up my cut and go outlaw. I show up at his bar and offer myself. I make it clear that me and the Frelen charter had a falling out. Saw that I found out the truth about you, Eden, and that I wanted to kill you. They voted me out and told me I was their next target. I say things that only I would know about you, Eden. To play this right. Ripper will fall for it. His pride has been fucked from the day Griffin touched Jenn. He’ll let me in because I’m outlaw. I’m the one who could help him secure his deal with the O’Nuall family. His play is bigger than anything we can see right now. He wants to push down into Frelen and take control. That’s where I come in. I know everything about this town. The PD. The people. The club. The members. You.”
Eden shook her head. “No. Trev… he won’t believe you.” She looked at Jenn. “Right? He’s not that dumb. Look at how crazy he is.”
“He hates the setup,” Jenn said. “He’s gotten drunk so many times and slipped things to me. He’s tried to build crews outside the MC to attack you all. The thing with Giovanni… that wasn’t an Irish thing. That was an internal thing.”
“What?” Eden asked.
“We’re going to vote on it still,” Trev said. “But Jenn heard them arguing. Giovanni was trying to work the deal with Ripper. He wasn’t in all that deep though.”
“Ripper had been saying things about Miller,” Jenn said. “He was filling the guys heads with bad information. Every time there was a shooting, a fight, an attack, Ripper would point to it. Your war from a year ago was a big deal to Ripper. I know it’s been quiet around your charter…” Jenn looked at Trev. “Ripper has been making it clear that he’s been watching Miller and sees something bad on the horizon. He’s pulled reports that show people talking to the police about Back Down Devil MC. I can tell you this though, the men at that table are fiercely loyal to the cut. Not to the man behind the cut. I think they all know something is wrong, they just don’t know where.”
“This is our shot,” Trev said. “To fix a problem. A problem that could end up with all of us dead if we don’t act. Beautiful, I think Ripper was the one who set up that attack on you. The tattoo shop. Having some of his other crew digging around for money.”
“How did he know about me?”
“Maybe he was on the look,” Trev said. “With Griffin gone. You didn’t show up at the club, did you?”
Eden shuddered. “No.”
“Don’t feel guilty, sweetie,” Jenn said. “You followed your heart when you needed to. That takes guts. You’re safe here and this can work.”
“Listen,” Trev said. “I go up there, running outlaw. I make it clear that Jenn came down to Frelen. That will piss him off. I can turn him in a second, Eden. I can twist him up. He’ll slip. He’ll fuck up. And then we have the truth and we can take action.”
“Action,” Eden said. “Your version of justice.”
“Exactly,” Trev said.
“You’re going to kill him.”
“There’s no other choice,” Jenn said. “Look what he did to me. This has been years of it.”
Eden looked right at Trev. “What if you get killed?”
Then there was silence. Nobody responded to the question.
Eden started to cry.
Bad enough she had been forced into this life, she now had to face the possibility of losing someone she loved.
Her mother went to her side and rubbed her back. “It’s what we all do, sweetie. We all know the risk of survival. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
Trev came forward. He took Eden’s hand and kissed it. “I’m not going to get killed.”