Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

I backed off and gave her some space.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “You take as long as you need to either forgive me or hate me,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”

I turned then, abruptly, so I didn’t have to see her cry – but it was too late. I’d seen the crystalline tears of her pain slip down her cheeks, and it gutted me, worse than what I’d done to that pig in her name.

“You alright, man?” Sauley asked at the bottom of the stairs as the door shut behind me.

“No, man. No, I’m not,” I growled, and he nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said. I swallowed hard and nodded.

“Yeah, me too.”

I went back to the club, Sauley walking silent as my shadow beside me and when I got there? I got good and fucking loaded.

“Get up!” Someone kicked my booted foot that was hanging off the end of the couch or chair or whatever the fuck I’d passed the fuck out in.

“Fuck off,” I growled to a track of masculine chuckles.

“Now is that any way to talk to your president?” Mav demanded.

I groaned and cracked my eyelids. Regret in the form of the dim club lights lanced through them into my skull and set shit off into pounding.

“Fuck me,” I rasped and closed them again, tight, colored starbursts going off behind my eyelids.

“Oh, I know what that’s like,” I heard Glass say, laughing.

It felt like my brain was sloshing around, banging into the inside of my skull as I went to sit up. Nausea rolled through me and I stopped moving, gritting my teeth, waiting for shit to fucking settle.

“This fucking sucks,” I grated.

“Yeah, well that’s what your ass gets for hittin’ the bottle like that, homey,” Glass declared.

I glared up at him and he just laughed at me.

“That’s not what we need to talk about,” Mav said with an unhappy sigh. “It’s what you said after hitting the bottle that hard.”

He gave me a plaintive look, and I felt my stomach drop like a motherfucker.

“What’d I say?” I asked. Glass and Mav exchanged a look.

“You’re fuckin’ lucky you didn’t have shit to say in mixed company,” Glassjaw told me.

“Just us brothers,” Mav agreed.

I laughed a little and tried to ineptly cover my ass when I glibly said, “Y’all act like I confessed to murder or something.”

Mav’s expression turned even grimmer if that were possible.

Shit. I totally fucking had… I was so fucked.

Mav sat down across from me and Glass kept to his perch on the arm of the couch I’d racked out on.

“I’m going to let you confess your sins and then Glass and I are going to confer whether this shit needs to go to full council for a vote,” Maverick declared.

Fuck me…

I spilled my guts. All of it. Except I wouldn’t give up Fen. No fucking way. This was my deal and not his. He didn’t need to go down with me.

“And you want us to believe you did this shit all by yourself? Solo? First time and all?” Glass Jaw demanded, scratching amidst the raw stubble on one cheek.

“Damn right,” I said. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” I said grimly.

Mav shook his head.

“Fen helped, we already know he did, but mad props for not throwing a brother under a bus to save your own ass.”

“Mav, I’m loyal to this fucking club. Raven’s mine, for all that she broke it off with me last night, I couldn’t let what that pig did to her stand without consequence even if it did happen before we fuckin’ met.”

“Loose lips sink ships,” Glass said, and it was borderline unkindly – but I deserved it. I really did.

“Who sold me out?” I asked a little put out.

“You sold your fuckin’ self out!” Glass barked. “Ain’t no one dipped in shit but you, right now.”

I winced at the sharpness on my ears and how his voice thundered through my skull, but he was right. As much as my fuckin’ mind was lookin’ for someone else to blame for my stupidity, the buck stopped with me.

Mav was a little gentler when he said, “I need the full picture, bro. What did this asshole do to your woman that retribution so brutal and so swift without informing the rest of your club was required?”

I shook my head, grimacing, and said, “I already violated her trust once – maybe lost her forever for it. I don’t want to fuck up like that again.”

“We’re your brothers, yo, not some rando motherfuckers off the street. Like it or not, as a part of this club, you made it our business last night lamenting how you fuckin’ killed for her and shit. We need to know the fuckin’ ‘why’ of it.”

“Nothing you say goes past us, bro,” Maverick declared.

I looked up at him and the sincerity in his dark eyes won me over. He was right. This wasn’t the state pen, these guys were family beyond blood, thicker than the water of the womb.

I sniffed.

I told them everything. How he’d raped her, brutally. How she’d been so fuckin’ brave, had gone to the cops, done everything a citizen was taught to do and how she’d tried to work within their fucked-up pretend system of justice. How they’d dragged her off in cuffs and beat her fucking ass half to death in some parking garage for it.

Glass’s face held rage; Mav’s was carefully neutral.

“With that kind of reasoning, I can’t say either one of us blames you the slightest bit for going off the rails on this,” Maverick declared.

“Still, there has to be some kind of consequence,” Glass said.

“I’m getting my ass beat, aren’t I?” I asked, wincing.

Both of them grunted and nodded. I winced.

Glass’ fist came out of nowhere and crashed into the side of my face. It was fucking lights out all over again from that one punch.

I fucking deserved this.

22

Raven…

“Hi.”

“Be right with you, honey,” I said without turning around right away as I slid the bottle of top