He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Cabin Key

"Why would I stay?" I asked.

"Because you're the only person in thirty years who made my son say the truth in front of this table."

"I didn't make him. I played a tape."

"That's what I mean."

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two thick fingers.

I noticed, as I had a hundred times, that his eyes were the same pale gray as Jared's.

"I'll tell you something nobody here says out loud," he said. "My brother died in Lebanon Correctional eleven years ago."

"Jared's father."

"Jared's father. He took a prison sentence for a club job that went wrong. And what put him there was a witness, a man named Haskell."

The name sat on the table between us.

"Delilah's brother," I said.

"Her brother. After that, a Haskell was never going to walk through our door, and I said so to my son. I said any man who brought one in could take off his cut." He looked at his hands. "Gage heard that and went and hid her, and married the girl I picked for him."

"He married me to keep his patch."

"I think so. I'm sorry, Mara. I let him do it because I didn't want to know."

I stood up and smoothed my shirt.

"Thank you for telling me," I said. "I still won't stay."

"Name what you want."

"My twenty-six thousand dollars. From him, at this table, with the whole club watching."

"I could write you a check this afternoon."

"I know you could."

"That'd be quicker."

"It would," I said. "But it would let him off."

For a moment he almost smiled, and it made him look like Jared.

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