“So, who is Eliza?” I asked, taking a seat at the edge of the porch next to Romeo. He was picking at the grass, one blade after another, tearing them to shreds and then starting again with a new piece.

I wondered if he was even going to answer me because he continued to sit there, ripping and tearing silently, his eyes unfocused and sad.

“I’m not going to leave until you tell me,” I tried again. Refusing to back down. “If she’s important to you, she’s important to me. I want to help, but you have to give up this hard-ass, ‘I can do it on my own’ act that you have going on. It’s me. I have your fucking back. The club, too.”

Romeo finally snorted, the first show of emotion I’d managed to drag from him. “I don’t need anyone to have my back, Hamlet. I’ve done just fine so fucking far.”

“Oh, yeah, you’ve done fucking dandy, haven’t you? You know, got yourself buried so deep in this pile of shit that Meyah was attacked, then Leo and Hadley’s wedding was shot up, and I got shot protecting Harlyn. You know Harlyn? My president’s eight-year-old daughter?”

I wasn’t fucking around anymore. Things with Romeo were so fucking unpredictable constantly. One moment he was acting like he felt at home here with the club, and then suddenly, he would shut down.

“Oh, and let’s not forget the fact I went to fucking jail because your hot-headed dumb ass took a gun that I legally owned. And to top it all off, you fucked one of the girls in my bed, and now my Old Lady thinks I’m a fucking cheating bastard. How am I doing so far? Because I think we have a different definition of ‘just fine.’”

I wasn’t going to let him get away with downplaying the shit this club had done for him.

Yeah, I was waiting for his comeback about how this was all my fucking fault because if I’d fought harder, or if I hadn’t been such a goody-two-shoes than things with Visser would have never reached this level. But there comes a point where we all have to take responsibility for our own choices and our own actions.

“Fine. You want to be my fucking therapist? I’m confused okay,” he finally admitted, and for a moment, I saw a flash of that little boy I grew up with. When he was so young, he would follow me around and want to be just like me. The little boy that did a runner from his classroom on his first day at school and came and found me, refusing to leave my side for the entire day. The little boy that trusted me to look after him and protect him.

“Why are you confused?”

I was always so sure that Romeo knew exactly who he was. Yeah, things hadn’t been fucking easy for him. He’d been beaten down and broken for years, forced to do a lot of shit that I can’t even imagine having the stomach to go through, but to hear he was feeling lost, that twisted my gut.

He cleared his throat, finally turning his face to look at me. “You found your place. I get that. I’m you know… I’m fucking glad that you did. Phee, too. I see how happy she is over in Cali now she has a home where she’s safe. She’s going to school. She has friends that are solid.”

I nodded, hearing what he was saying. At least, I thought I was hearing what he was saying. “You feel like you haven’t found your place?”

He shook his head and my brow knitted together in confusion. “That’s just it. I think I have, but honestly, I don’t want you or Phee to think less of me for it.”

Now, I was finally hearing him.

I wasn’t stupid.

I knew there was a part of Romeo that thrived on the way he lived on the wrong side of the law. That wasn’t exactly a foreign concept to me. I knew he didn’t agree with everything he was made to do. But essentially, he was a big player, he was respected by criminal leaders that the club would even have second thoughts about working with or even being in the same room as.

He was powerful.

But he’d also spent a long time being controlled and manipulated at the same time.

I tried to sum it up. “You’re confused because as much as you hated Visser and how that motherfucker treated you and used you… you loved being a part of the darkness?”

His head instantly fell, hanging low as if he was ashamed and embarrassed. “He forced me to take jobs that seriously questioned my morals. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed every single part. And if I decide to go back, things would be different.”

Here I was thinking that maybe Romeo would join the club.

Actually, being completely honest, I knew he never would. But I guess I was holding out fucking hope. Having him here with me would make everything so damn complete.

Phee was happy.

Romeo would be a real part of the brotherhood.

And I’d have Meyah by my side.

Needed to work on that shit.

“You know everything the club does isn’t exactly above the fucking law,” I started, swiping my hair back from my face. “I’m not trying to make comparisons, but there’s been shit we’ve had to do that made me question whether I was a good person, whether I deserved to be fucking happy.”

Romeo’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “Yes, exactly.”

“And that’s how you know that you still are. Because if you were really a dead cold asshole, you wouldn’t even blink at that shit.”

He huffed out a laugh. “When did you get so smart?”

I smirked and reached over, slapping him on the back. “You know, you aren’t the first person to ask me that.”

“Because it’s so damn shocking when you say something of worth?” Romeo fired back, and my friendly pat quickly changed to a closed fist, which I drove straight into his arm. Romeo barely even flinched, the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth disappeared quickly, though, like it had never been there. “I thought you’d think I was completely fucking broken.”

“You not hear me when I said I’ve got your back?”

He would go back to Vegas when everything was said and done.

The place where he was a king.

The brotherhood was never a place for a man like Romeo. He didn’t want to rely on others. He didn’t want to have the pressure of feeling like there were times when their lives would be in his hands. For him, it was always going to be better for him to be alone, to make his own rules, and not try and live by anyone else’s.

In his own way, that was how he protected the people he loved.

Seclusion.

I knew, though, that this time he would make his own rules, be his own man, and there was no way in fucking hell anyone would make him do anything he didn’t want to.

He’d done his time here.

I was a little surprised he’d lasted so long.

With Visser gone, Romeo was free to do whatever the fuck he wanted without having to look over his shoulder. But he’d chosen to stay at the clubhouse for the few months I’d been locked up. He’d even taken on some of my work at X-Rated, and a couple security jobs when the club needed an extra hand. He wasn’t exactly an open book, but he made sure everyone knew how much he appreciated what the club had done for him.

And soon, he was going back to the shadows, a place where I would never be able to survive myself, but where it just so happened that some living things found their home. In the darkness. It was where they felt like they could be themselves. Where they felt in control of not just themselves, but of the world around them.

“So, we still haven’t covered this who is Eliza question,” I noted, turning the conversation away again.

“She was the one person who kept me sane the first few years in that house,” Romeo explained. “She had her own issues. She was damaged, she was broken, but she got me.”

“Foster kid?”

He shook his head, and I saw the sadness in his eyes. “Sheriff Visser’s actual daughter.”

I couldn’t stop myself from cringing, a cold shudder running from my toes straight up the back of my spine. The idea of that man having a child made me feel sad. But the fact he had a daughter made me feel sick because I instantly knew by the way Romeo had described her that it wasn’t as though Visser had treated her much better than he had treated Romeo.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, trying to get my head around that.

“Exactly,” he replied through gritted teeth.

“Please tell me she got out.”

His hands squeezed into fists, his knuckles turning white and the veins all up his arms protruding to the point where I thought they could burst. “I fucking thought she had. I packed up all her shit one day while he was at work. Had a guy in the force owe me a favor for not fucking killing him when he tried to jack some shit. She was meant to be put in hiding. He swore he would. Somewhere even I wouldn’t be able to find her.”

“But apparently that never happened.”

“Visser must have found out. He must have taken her and…” he paused, and I could read the pain on his face. The way his brow pulled together and his nose scrunched up. “That was his parting fucking blow. That I’d thought for two years she was safe and making a life somewhere. Instead, he’d destroyed it.”

He really cared about this girl.

Whether it was romantic, or whether he was just protective of her like a brother would be of his sister, I couldn’t quite tell. But it didn’t matter.

I pulled my phone from my pocket.

Romeo watched curiously out of the corner of his eye as I found the contact I needed and his dial.

Ring. Ring.

“What’s up?”

“Hey, Wrench, I need your help.”