Chapter 30

Ella

I was shocked to wake up Sunday morning with only a faint headache, given the amount I'd had to drink the night before. I had a vague recollection of stumbling out of the club, flanked by Kim and Camille who had both stopped drinking long before I had. Thank God for Camille's nursing background, because she'd loaded me up with electrolytes, B-12 vitamins, and a Tylenol chaser before putting me to bed. It had also probably helped that I'd purged some of the alcohol from my system…all over Kim's front stoop after the rideshare driver dropped us off. It wasn't my finest moment.

I felt almost normal after a hot shower to steam the residual alcohol from my pores. I didn't bother with makeup, and after drying my hair, I just plopped it into a messy bun. I pulled on my jeans and an emerald, green shirt, then padded downstairs to the kitchen to find something to absorb the last of the alcohol in my system.

Kim and Camille were seated around the small kitchen table, chatting quietly over toast and coffee. I prepared a couple of pieces of toast for myself and poured a cup of coffee before joining them.

As I ate, I noticed the two of them seemed to be engaged in some kind of silent conversation. My curiosity got the better of me, and I finally asked them what the hell was going on.

"El, honey, King – or Dante, or whatever the hell we're supposed to call him – he's here, in Chicago. He wants to talk to you," Camille started off hesitantly. I stared at her in disbelief, my coffee cup raised halfway to my lips. I carefully set it down, knowing that I wouldn't be able to swallow anything right now due to the sudden tightness in my throat.

Kim rushed to explain, "Since he couldn't get through to you, he contacted us. I don't understand everything, but he claims that there was some kind of threat, and that everything he said to Cowboy was an act to try to keep you safe. I think you should probably listen to your messages."

I shook my head, and tears sprang to my eyes.

"I don't want to hear –"

Camille put her hand over mine to stop my protest. "You know that we love you, and we will support you in whatever you decide, but…he sounded sincere, and I hate to think of you hurting for even one second longer if he's telling the truth about it being an act. He swears he didn't cheat, and that he didn't mean anything that he said."

"When did you talk to him?" I couldn't help the hurt that bled into my tone at the thought of them going behind my back to speak to the man who had ripped my heart in two.

"We didn't talk to him. He called us and left messages." Kim looked a little unsure of herself, which was rare for her. After a few seconds, she handed me her phone, explaining that after a few drinks she'd taken a video and sent it to him in response. She had the text chain pulled up, and I read it through.

I barely remembered telling the DJ about what Dante had said, but I did remember dancing to the song, thinking how perfectly it mirrored the rage and the sense of betrayal I was feeling.

Camille handed over her phone next, and I gasped as I read Dante's message saying that he loved me. I had no clue why he thought I'd been in danger, but I was stunned at the feelings he was professing. He'd never told me that, ever, and I didn't really believe it now.

I handed her phone back to her as I shook my head. "He's only saying that so I'll keep taking care of Pop, remember? This is the act. What I heard was the real Dante-fucking-Morgan."

Kim sighed and reached for my hand. "At least check the texts and messages he sent you," she urged quietly. "Then, if you still don't want to hear him out, Camille and I won't let him anywhere near you."

Camille nodded, then nudged my phone toward me. I hadn't even noticed it on the table next to her. I eyed it for a moment, then reluctantly reached for it and powered it on.

It buzzed and pinged as text and voice mail notifications loaded. I took a deep breath, and then pulled up my text messages first. I avoided the text chain with Dante but read the others. They were all short and simple, asking me to call Dante, or to let them know I'd made it to Chicago. I hesitated, my finger hovering over Dante's name, then took a deep breath as I pulled up his texts.

I read them through a haze of tears. Most were just asking me to call, but then came a picture of him in bed, sent in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Dante: I miss you, and wish you were lying here next to me. I hope you're having fun. Goodnight, sugar.

I wiped away a tear, and Kim handed me a box of tissues.

"Do you want us to give you some privacy while you listen to the voicemails?" Camille asked softly. I nodded, unable to speak, and the two of them got up and left the room.

It took a few minutes for me to work up the nerve to press the button to play the first message. I thought I was prepared for the sound of his voice, but I wasn't, at least not for the hint of panic I could hear. I was so shocked that I had to listen to the message twice before I realized what he'd said.

"Hey, sugar, uh, I'm sending Trick to your office to pick you up and bring you to the clubhouse. Everyone's OK, but I need you here. We've got some shit going on, and some threats have been made. I don't have a lot of details right now, and I know this fucks up your plans, but I don't want to take any chances. So, just stay in your office if your meeting ends early. Trick will be there soon. He'll be driving the club van and will have one of the prospects with him."

My mind spun as I tried to figure out what kind of threats he was talking about, and then I grew angry again as I reminded myself that this was just Dante trying to cover his ass because I'd heard the truth. Doubts assailed me again though, as I looked at the time stamp on the voice mail.

He'd sent it at least thirty minutes before I'd heard him talking to Cowboy in the kitchen.

I stilled as that fact sank in and confused my muddled brain even more. I reached out a shaky finger and pressed play on the next message, which sounded more like the Dante I was used to, although there was still an edge to his voice that I'd never heard before. He assured me I was safe now that I was in Chicago, and that I didn't need to worry, then asked me to call and he would explain. I wondered if he had actually known I was here by then, or if he'd just assumed. The next message came in around ten-thirty Friday night.

"Hey, sugar. It sucks that your phone is acting up, because I'd love to hear your voice right about now. Call me if you can." He sounded so sincere, like the Dante I had fallen in love with. He also sounded tired, and a little lonely.

Then came his final message, and the tears I'd been trying to hold back finally broke free as I heard the sheer desperation in his voice.

"Ella, what you heard yesterday, none of it was true. It was an act, sugar. I was…dammit, I was trying to divert attention from you to keep you safe. I didn't mean any of it. Not one fuckin' word, I swear. Please call me."

I dropped the phone in my lap and covered my face as I sobbed. I felt arms surrounding me from all sides and knew that Camille and Kim were there to support me, just as they always had.

When my tears subsided, they sat down and listened as I explained the contents of the messages. When I told them about the timing of the first message – the one about threats – Kim clenched her jaw and angrily tapped her fingertips on the table.

"I have no idea what the fuck was going with that club of his, but it sounds like something scared the hell out of him. First," she ticked off one finger, "you need to talk to him to find out what happened, so you can make sure you're going to be safe when you go back to Indy. Second," she ticked another finger, "you can ask him why the fuck he said that shit. And third," she clenched her hand into a tight fist, "if you don't like his answers, I'm going to give you my brand-new chef's knife and let you filet his dick like you threatened to in the first damned place."

I had to laugh as Camille seconded that plan, then added, "I wonder if Amazon will do a same-day delivery on that Luminol and black light kit you told us about. A fileted dick is going to bleed profusely, and we don't want to leave any trace evidence behind."

I waited another forty-five minutes before working up the nerve to text Dante, telling him I was ready to talk. I asked him to come over at noon, and he'd immediately agreed.

Dante: Thank you for giving me a chance to explain, sugar. I'll see you at noon.

That gave me just over an hour to fortify the walls around my heart, and to make sure that no traces of the pain he'd caused were visible on my face.

Kim and Camille declared themselves my fairy godmothers and set out to make me look and feel fabulous. Kim opened her refrigerator and pulled out a gel face mask containing green tea and cucumber and clapped it over my face, instructing me to leave it on for ten minutes to get rid of the evidence of my sobfest.

She raided her closet next, pulling out a shirt that I knew would cling to my boobs, given the fact that she was two cup sizes smaller than me.

"It's the perfect shade of blue to match your eyes, hon. The asshole won't know what hit him when he sees you in this."

I heard his voice in my head again, telling Cowboy that gravity is a bitch when it comes to the female body, and resolutely pushed the thought away. There would be time to dwell on that later, once I knew why he'd said it in the first place.

Once the face mask had worked it's magic, they started working on my hair and makeup, much as they had last night.

By the time I smoothed Kim's shirt down over my favorite jeans, I felt ready to face him. Well, as ready as I was going to be, anyway.

He arrived five minutes early. I tensed as I heard his bike pull up to the curb. He killed the engine, and then moments later, I took a deep breath as he rang the doorbell. Kim answered the door with Camille on her heels. They had a fiercely whispered conversation with him for a minute or so, which I knew likely included threats. I waited in the hallway until they called out that they would be waiting on the back patio, in case I needed them.

That was my cue, and I slowly turned the corner and walked into the living room, to find Dante standing there with one hand shoved in his pocket and the other running through his hair. From the looks of it, he'd done that a lot today.

I took satisfaction in the fact that he looked like hell. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his face looked strangely pale for a man so tanned. His jaw was set, and his beard looked a little scruffy compared to the neat trim that I was used to.

"Thank you for agreeing to see me," he ground out, his voice rougher than usual. I nodded, then gestured to the couch. He sat down, looking disappointed when I chose to sit in one of the side chairs that flanked the couch, rather than next to him.

"Explain." He inhaled sharply as I uttered the demand for the one thing I wanted…answers.

"There was a threat made by a former club member who was angry with me. He's strung out on meth now, and he's completely lost his shit. He threatened to go after you. When we couldn't find you, I tried to divert his attention away from you by pretending that you didn't matter to me."

"Why was he angry with you?" I could tell by the look on his face that Dante hadn't expected that question.

He hesitated, then shook his head. "I can't tell you more than I already did. It's club business, but it's taken care of now, so –"

"Club business?" I interrupted with a screech. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? Your club business sounds a hell of a lot like my business if it involves a threat to me ."

"It's handled, Ella. You don't have to worry about it anymore. You're safe now."

"How was it handled?"

He hesitated again, then sighed. "That's club –

"I swear to God, if I hear you use that fucking excuse one more time, it will be the last thing you ever get the chance to say to me." I shouted, then stood up and started pacing the room.

He stood as well, his eyes flashing with anger as he squared his shoulders. "It's not an excuse, goddammit. Club business means that the club handled something in a way that could come back and bite us in the ass. If you don't know about it, you can't be asked about it by the cops or be threatened with it by our enemies."

"Really? Well, apparently, I was being threatened anyway, so what's the damned difference?"

"Dammit, Ella, I…" he dropped his head and sighed. "Look, I'm trying to protect you."

I shook my head angrily. "No, Dante. You're protecting your club. I'm just the boring, saggy, old woman you've been stuck fucking, who managed to get caught in the crossfire."

" No," he roared, then grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. He stared down at me, nostrils flared. "I didn't mean a fucking word I said that day, Ella. I told you I was trying to throw him off track so he wouldn't go after you. I didn't touch DD. I made up an excuse and I got her out of my room, and nothing happened. It was all a lie." By the time he stopped speaking, his voice was almost a whisper. He raised his hand and cupped my cheek gently, and I was shocked when I realized his hand was trembling.

"I didn't mean any of it, sugar."

"Then how did you manage to hit on every single insecurity I have? I've just managed to heal from the damage Clayton inflicted on my self-confidence, and you shot it all to hell again in mere seconds." I looked at him then and decided to let him off the hook. I knew what he was really worried about. "You don't have to lie to me, Dante. I'll still take care of Pop."

"This isn't about my dad, for Christ's sake. I know you won't let my fuckup end your relationship with him. You're a better woman than that. You're a better woman than I deserve," he said bitterly, "but I'm going to keep fighting for you – for us – because I love you."

I stiffened in his arms and pulled away. "Don't. Just…don't."

"You don't believe me?"

"You never said it before, so why should I believe you now?"

He reached for me again, refusing to let me pull away a second time. "I think I started falling in love with you the moment you pulled that knife on me. I knew it for sure the first time I was inside you. I rode home that night, and I knew my life had changed but by the time I was ready to tell you, you mentioned that you had broken things off with that insurance guy you dated because he was moving too fast. I didn't want you to do that shit with me, so I kept my mouth shut."

"I started falling in love with you when you brought me flowers to apologize that first time. I knew it for sure by the time you sent me the forget-me-nots for my Gran." He started to smile, but it faded when I shook my head sadly. My heart aching as I realized we were at an impasse.

"Love isn't enough, Dante. I can't trust my heart to a man who doesn't trust me enough to tell me the truth about something that jeopardized my safety. You want me to trust you after the awful things you said, when you don't trust me to keep your secrets safe. I'm not asking you to tell me everything…just the things that directly affect me, my kids, or you."

He nodded and took a step back, and I thought that was it. I thought he was going to turn around and walk out the door and it would be over.

Then, he sat down on the couch and pulled me down next to him.

"A former member of our club left town a few months ago. He stole money from one of the business accounts and his joint account with his wife, too. Then he took off with a stripper he'd been fucking on the side. We've been trying to track him down, and finally got a lead on them a few weeks ago. When I disappeared for a few days right after we met, that's what I was doing."

He paused, as if waiting for a reaction, but I wasn't willing to give him one. Not yet anyway. I needed to keep a tight hold on my emotions for the moment.

"It turns out, he'd gotten hooked on meth. He'd beaten his girlfriend, and I gave her a bus ticket to go back home to New York, and some money to start over. We couldn't find him, and that's when I came back home. Thursday, she called me. Told me that the fucker had tracked her down and had beaten the shit out of her again. He ran when her neighbors called the cops. Then, the next morning, his ex-wife called me."

He stopped and swallowed hard, then continued speaking. "She said Pic was in town and going off the rails. He wasn't making much sense but told her that he blamed me because he was alone now. We had suspended him for fucking an Ol' Lady from another club, and that's how she first found out he'd been cheating. When she found about the stripper a little while later, she left him for good. Somehow in his mind, that's my fault. When he realized that I'd helped the stripper get away from him, that sent him over the edge. He…" Dante clenched his fists as they rested on his thighs, then relaxed his hands as he finished his story.

"He told her that he'd heard about you, that I had a special lady now, and then told her he was going to kill you so I would know how it feels to lose the woman I love."

He closed his eyes, and I saw the pain etched on his face. "I immediately sent Trick and Linc to your office to pick you up. I called to tell you, but you didn't answer."

I nodded as I remembered that first message.

"I sent them to your house, but you weren't there either. We kept trying to reach you, but you weren't answering any of us, dammit," his voice rose, and he thrust his fingers through his hair again.

"While all this was going on, Bull was checking the clubhouse for bugs, because Pic mentioned something to his ex-wife that I'd said the night before when I was standing in the clubhouse kitchen." My mouth fell open in shock at that news. The very idea of a listening device seemed like something out of a spy movie. "He found one on top of the refrigerator, which explained how Pic knew about you, and how he'd stayed one step ahead of us while he was on the run."

"So how does that explain the things you said to Cowboy?"

Dante reached for my hands before I could pull them away.

"I panicked Ella. I fuckin' panicked because I didn't know where you were or how to reach you. I didn't know if he'd already found you. I didn't know, and I panicked. I needed to buy us some time to find you, or to find him. I thought…" Dante's voice trailed off as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, then met my gaze. He looked tortured by his memories.

"I thought that maybe if he believed you weren't important to me after all, that I could divert his attention away from you, and you'd be safe until we could find you. So, I told Cowboy to follow me to the kitchen, that I had a plan, and for him to go along with whatever I said."

"And it was just a coincidence that you mentioned the very things that Clayton complained about when I caught him cheating?"

Dante looked ashamed. "I'm so sorry, sugar. Maybe, somewhere in my brain I remembered you telling me those things, and that's why I said them. I don't know, but I do know that there wasn't an ounce of truth to it. I'm begging you to let me spend my life proving that to you."

I wiped away a tear as I pulled my hands from his and stood up. "Thank you for trusting me with the truth about what happened. I think…I think I need a little time to think things through. I've survived one failed relationship that I thought was going to be my forever. I'm not sure I could survive another one, not if I've allowed myself to plan a forever with you ."

"Ella," Dante implored, "we won't fail. I won't let that happen. We'll get our forever, sugar."

"I need time to wrap my head around things. Please, just go home. We can talk again in a few days."

He swallowed hard and looked away as he nodded.

"OK, sugar, but I'm warning you now. I'm not giving up on us…even if you do."