* * *
“Sofie.Sofie, baby, I am so fucking sorry. So sorry that I dragged you into this, sorry that I’m not there for you right now. I had no idea it was even going on. They surprised all of us, and then when Breaker told us... Cookie… please call me back. Or come down here. Tank’s lawyer added you to my visitor’s list, and he said he’d bring you down here himself. Come see me, or at least call me back or answer me when I call. They’re pulling all the strings they can, which is why I’m calling from the station line, and why you can call me back, and Tank is thinking if they get my hearing moved up they can get Abernathy on it and we’ll be set. I’m sorry, Cookie. So goddamn sorry. Just, will you please let me know you’re ok? Please, baby? I need to hear it from you because hearing it from Harlow isn’t the same. I need to hear it from you, Sofie. Please call me back.”
* * *
“My hearing is scheduledfor tomorrow morning. Eight in the morning. Tank has bail money and got it ok’d for you to come into the private meeting room with us, and he’ll have a seat waiting for you right behind me. Things aren’t… it would just mean a lot to me if you came to my hearing. Yeah… tomorrow morning, the fourteenth, eight a.m.… I hope… I love you, Sofie.”
I swipeat the tears that haven’t stopped falling since my birthday, tears of anger so hot it burns white, tears of heartbreak so deep I don’t think the pain will ever go away.
Sam has been locked up for three days for a slew of charges including drug trafficking, and possession with intent to sell ridiculously massive quantities of cocaine, heroine, and several other things I didn’t catch the name of when I spent ten hours getting interrogated myself. Which was four days ago. My boyfriend and I spent my birthday and the majority of the next day sitting down at Sabine Woods PD being questioned by Chad the Dick and about ten of his friends.
When we got to the station, Marbles, Jackal, and Cy were sitting in a cell, cuffed and looking about as bad as Sammy, and they actively joined in thefree Sofie Berkcause because I had nothing to do with anything. And while I didn’t know, let alone have anything to do with all those drugs, I had everything to do with Sam and his friends—his brothers in the club—and I was going to help Tank pull every connection possible to get them out. I stayed at the station well into the night on the day after my birthday, made every phone call I possibly could, and spoke to every single human I’d ever met during my dad’s career as a coroner.
Short of bribery or blackmail, I did everything within my abilities to help and I had no intention of leaving the police station until I had some sort of silver lining ahead of me.
But then I got sick.
I’d been feeling a little off for about a week or so, mostly tired and a little flu-like, but I didn’t think anything of it.
I went to work and had my daily breakfast or lunch with my dad, hung out with Harlow, I spent time with Sam. Nothing was out of the ordinary except for the fact that I thought I was coming down with something. So, I kissed my man goodbye, promised I’d come back the next day and that I’d keep working to get him out.
That’s when the universe threw a big fatfuck youour way.
Conner Martin, Breaker’s only son, took his own life.
And his two-year-old sister, Maci, found him.
My heart broke into a million pieces when Gus called to get my dad and I on the case, and for the first time since I’ve been doing this kind of work, I almost turned it down.
All I could think about was that scared little boy I met a year ago, the one surrounded by some of the most dangerous men I’d ever met while his mother cradled him in her arms and sobbed. I kept thinking about Breaker and Shannon when they came to the funeral home to make sure Hamish was nothing but ash, how broken and sad they looked waiting outside my father’s office.
And I’ll never forget the day they welcomed me into the club asSnipe’s old lady, how Shannon and Trudy were the first two to carry on about how much Sam had changed since we started dating and how happy I seem to make him.
We were so goddamn happy. Perfect. Sammy and I were just…soulmates.
I believed that from the second I looked into his eyes and saw past the biker, and I still believe it now, but even soulmates may not be destined for a happy ending. Just look at Romeo and Juliet. The purest hearts so in love but so distraught that even they weren’t granted real happiness. They were torn apart by circumstance, by the people and situations around them, and even their love wasn’t enough.
True love that started and ended in death.
I choke down a sob as my eyes flick to the timer.
Just a few more seconds.
That’s all it takes, isn’t it?
Just a few seconds and your life can change completely.
A split second at a crime scene, a couple more at a funeral home. Less than thirty in a small apartment after professions of love.
It only takes a few seconds for fate to alter your path, and when it does, you have to change course and start figuring out a new direction to take.
And when I glance down at the little tray on the counter, the two very faint, thin pink lines barely visible, I know without a doubt that my path has changed drastically and it means… it means I know exactly what direction I have to take.
“Hey, Sofie.” A soft knock on the door has my head lifting toward it. “Sofie… it’s uh, it’s Pope.”
A new patch into the Wulven Kings. A mysterious holy man who volunteers with kids down at the community center. A man I like well enough, even if I can’t quite figure him out.
Conner’s counselor and closest confidant.
