I inched slowly backward, pulling Evelyn out from the corner she’d squeezed herself into. I wrapped my arms tightly around her and scooped her up off the floor. She was soaking wet and shivering. As I moved across the bathroom, I rested my chin on the top of her head.

Evelyn clung to me and held her breath as I stepped over Jason.

I hated that I’d put her in this position.

She was terrified and rightly so. Everything she had just seen was simply too much. A man, more like a kid, had died before her eyes. I was still trying to process the consequences of Jason’s death, but Evelyn’s safety was still my top priority. I moved slowly into the bedroom and sat her down on the edge of the bed.

“Your sheets,” she mumbled, looking aimlessly around at my bed.

I knelt in front of her. “Don’t worry about the sheets. I’ll get new ones.” I looked over my shoulder at Caleb, who was watching us from the doorframe of the bathroom. “Can you go get her a glass of water from my kitchen?”

Caleb nodded and left.

I put my hands on her shoulders. She was still trembling. “Let’s get this wet shirt off of you.” She let me peel it off over her head. I tossed it into the corner and grabbed a dry towel from my linen closet. I rubbed her down, making sure there were no little droplets of pink left on her skin. She sat with it wrapped around her shoulders as I went and grabbed a sweater and a pair of jogging pants from my dresser.

I helped her get dressed. She swam in all of it, but she wasn’t shivering anymore. Caleb arrived shortly after, and I had her sitting propped up against the pillows on my bed. He handed me the water, and I pushed it into her hands. “Drink.”

She did as I asked and sipped at the water delicately.

Caleb was lingering off to the side of the bed with his hands in his pockets. “Ryder and the others are going to be here any minute. I feel like we should, I don’t know, cover him up or something.”

I nodded. It was a good suggestion. I stood from the edge of the bed. Evelyn watched me and gave me a small nod. “I’m all right. Do what you have to do.”

I kissed her cheek and followed Caleb into the bathroom. I gathered nearly six towels and laid them out all over the floor. They soaked through right away and didn’t do a good enough job, but they were all dark colors. At least this way, Ryder wouldn’t see all the blood. Caleb went to my linen cupboard and found a navy sheet, which he brought over and delicately draped over the body.

Then, we stood and stared at each other.

Caleb raked his fingers through his hair. “This is going to change things. It’s going to be a manhunt.”

“I know,” I said.

“Are we ready for that? Can we fucking handle it? The destruction this guy leaves in his wake is—”

“We can handle it,” I said flatly. And for the first time, I believed it. “He’s just a man like us. And we have more information this go-around. We have his name. Dani’s a damn good detective. With her on the job, we’ll find out everything we need to know about him to bring him down.”

“I fucking hope so. I’m getting tired of this shit.”

I looked down at the navy sheet. “Yeah. I hear you.”

My muscles tightened with dread when I heard footsteps down the hall. Several voices were talking loudly, and Caleb leaned out the bathroom door to call them over.

Sabian emerged first and drew to a dead stop. He looked at the sheet and then up at me. Jax and Axel appeared behind him. “Is this him? You fucking killed him?” Sabian asked.

I shook my head.

Sabian and the others looked back and forth between me and Caleb, who sighed. “It’s Jason.”

“Oh,” Jax muttered. “Fuck.”

Axel weaved between them and crouched down beside the sheet. He lifted up the corner to peer at Jason’s body and let it quickly fall. “This isn’t going to be good.”

“You should leave, Derek,” Jax suggested. “We can handle this shit. Ryder’s going to be pissed, and you know how he gets. Tunnel vision. He’s going to want someone to pummel.”

“Let him,” I said. “This is my fault. I fucked it up.”

Axel shook his head and got to his feet. “No. Ryder will regret it once it’s done. We’ll keep him off you if that’s what it comes to.”

“It will come to that,” Sabian muttered, rubbing the back of his neck anxiously.

Then, we heard Ryder yelling for us. We all exchanged an uneasy glance. My stomach rolled. Then I called out, “We’re in here!” This was going to go down, one way or another, and no matter what, it was going to be brutal. I clenched my jaw and squared my shoulders. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

The men in the doorway parted and came all the way into the bathroom, stepping over Jason’s body—all except Axel, who remained outside to greet Ryder when he came into the bedroom. Axel caught him by the arm before he turned to come in. “Johnny. It’s not good in there. All right?” Axel was one of the closest of all of us to Ryder, and I’d never heard him call our president by his first name before. He was letting him know that shit was about to get real.

Ryder narrowed his eyes. “Who’s dead?”

Axel stepped aside and let Ryder come in. He looked at all of us first, no doubt doing a tally in his head. Then, he looked down at the body. He didn’t ask the same question that Sabian did. He knew right away from Axel’s warning that the corpse did not belong to Isaac. It was someone he cared about.

I stared down at the navy sheet. “I’m sorry, Ryder. I tried to do everything I could to save him, but it wasn’t enough.”

Ryder dropped into a crouch.

Axel put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “It’s Jason, man.”

Ryder flinched. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he decided whether he wanted to lift the sheet.

I swallowed. “You should know he chose us in the end, boss. He was a Lost Breed when he died.” I wasn’t sure if the words were comforting or not, but I had to say them. Ryder had to know, and Jason deserved them.

Ryder sighed and hung his head. Then, he lifted the sheet to stare into his nephew’s lifeless face. He let the sheet fall after only a couple seconds, put his hands on his knees, and pushed himself to his feet, where he looked over at me. “This was Isaac’s doing?”

“Yes.”

“And Jason didn’t hurt you or the woman?”

“No.”

Ryder nodded slowly.

Then, Dani blew in through the open door behind him. Axel caught her as she nearly slipped and fell on a patch of still exposed white tiles. Ryder turned to look at her, and as soon as he did, she must have seen the grief in his eyes. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his big shoulders. She pulled his head down to her, to rest his face in the groove of her neck, and hugged him tightly.

The rest of us stood around like idiots, none of us daring to look at them until they broke apart.

Dani stroked his cheek and offered him a sad smile. “We tried, baby. All of us did. And he knew that.”

Ryder nodded. His expression was stiff as he forced himself to keep it together. “The punches just keep coming,” he growled. “One after another. Hyde. And then this. What’s next? How much are we going to let this fucker take from us? And when the hell are we going to get a break?” His voice shifted from calm to angry in a split second. He was almost yelling.

None of us dared answer. There was nothing to say.

Dani took his arm and gave it a tug. “We still have a lot. All of us. The rest of the MC. It’s not all lost yet. We’ll take him down. Derek got us his name.”

Ryder shot me a dark look. “How did you come by that information, by the way?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” the President said. He wasn’t asking. He was demanding I explain it all now.

So I did. I told them all about how Warren had set me up in the park so that Isaac would be free to break into my house and go after Evelyn. I knew she could probably hear every word I was saying as she sat on my bed, waiting for this shit to be done, so I glossed over what happened to her in the tub as much as I could. But they all understood the gravity of what had been done to her. She was almost drowned. I then explained that Rhys, an old buddy of mine, had shown up to save my neck when Warren’s thugs almost had the best of me.

“Rhys? As in the guy who ditched you on a job, and you had to take the heat for it?” Ryder growled.

“Yeah. That’s the guy.”

“Do you think he wants something from you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. And at this point, I’d be prepared to give it to him. If he hadn’t shown up, this would be a much different scene.”

“Yeah,” Ryder said, “Jason might not be dead.”

The room went quiet. Axel shifted nervously. “You’re right. He might not be. But Derek would be and so would Evelyn. If I’m being perfectly honest, Jason made the choices that put him in the situation. Derek tried to save him on more than one occasion. He passed up his chances to walk away from this shit.”

Ryder never took his eyes off me, but after a few seconds, he sighed. “I know.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

Ryder closed his eyes and dragged his hands down his face. “I know that too. You did what you could. I’m glad you and Evelyn are okay. If she needs anything after all this shit, you only have to ask. Dani can help too.”

Dani piped up from behind him. “Yes. Of course. We can debrief her and set her up with a trauma counselor. I know the best in the city.”

“I’ll talk to her,” I said.

Ryder leaned back against the doorframe. “It would be nice to get some good fucking news for once.”

I noticed Dani biting her bottom lip and watching him. She lifted her gaze to me, blushed a bright shade of pink, and then looked back at Ryder. “Um. I might be able to help with that.”

He looked at her, as we all did. Good news was getting harder and harder to come by these days, and if she had a sliver of something positive, we were all more than willing to eat it up.

Ryder nodded. “Go on then, baby. Don’t keep us all waiting.”

Her smile surprised all of us. Maybe it was a bit bigger than just a sliver. “This isn’t at all how I pictured having this conversation with you,” she said slowly, “but I’m pregnant, Johnny.”

It was like the clouds parted over our heads for a few minutes, and sunlight beamed down on us and the angels started singing. Ryder let out a short bark of laughter before clamping his hand over his mouth as he processed what she’d just told him.

Our President was going to be a father.

He engulfed Dani in a big bear hug as she cried tears of happiness. He stroked her hair, and for a moment, we were all able to forget about all the death under the promise of new life.