Shades of Love (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 3) Read Free

to form stable relationships with the opposite sex.
     
    “Not married, Mia, just complicated. But we’re not talking about me and my sorry excuse for a love life right now. We’re talking about you. So how are you, really?” The concern in Cassie’s voice is touching and it’s all Mia can do not to burst into tears. She’s been an emotional wreck the past few days and today didn’t seem to be shaping up to be any different.
     
    “I’m doing okay, Cass, really. It’s only been a few days. I figure I’ll be back to my old self in no time.” She cringes at the false-jollity in her voice even as the words are out of her mouth.
     
    Cassie takes a deep breath and Mia knows she’s gearing up to tell her something Mia already knows. “I saw the news.”
     
    Mia sighs deeply, leaning her back against the wall, seeing the images from the news reports that had sent her to bed early the night before. A liquor store had been held up – not a particularly surprising event – but the press had grabbed hold of the story with both hands because the storeowner had been shot and killed. As if that weren’t enough, witnesses on the scene had identified the perpetrators as bikers, bikers wearing a very distinctive patch. Before the newscasters had even said it, Mia already knew what they were going to reveal. It was the Mad Jackals.
     
    “The storeowner had a little boy. He was only eight.” Mia bites hard on her bottom lip to stop the tears from coming. But it wasn’t just the little boy who was waking up without a father that she wanted to cry for. The idea that Ray had anything to do with what had happened made her want to scream the house down.
     
    “I’m sure he wasn’t involved, Mia.” Cassie reads her mind as Mia’s hand tightens on the cellphone.
     
    “You can’t know that, Cass. I’ve told you what he did.” Mia takes another sip of her scalding coffee, knowing with her psychologist hat on that it was a way of deflecting her attention from how she was feeling – physical pain to take away, or at least dull, the emotional. It was so cliché it was textbook. She forces herself to put the mug back on the counter and not to touch it for the next few minutes.
     
    “Yes, you did and I’m not absolving him of any blame for last night. But what you described to me was an emotional situation that got out of control. Ray didn’t go into that house with the intention of being the only one to walk back out of there alive.” Cassie has her attorney voice on now and Mia bites back her irritation.
     
    “It’s not just the intent that matters, Cassie. His intent doesn’t change the fact that he killed those people.” Mia takes a deep breath to lower her voice that’s edging up in decibels.
     
    “If one of your girls told you she’d killed the man that was abusing her in self-defense, would you tell her that made her a criminal? Or would you understand that it was her only way to survive?”
     
    Mia doesn’t appreciate the way Cassie is questioning her as if she’s on the witness stand. “No one forced him to join the Jackals, Cassie. Ray could have done anything he wanted. He could have been anything he wanted. He chose that path.” She swallows her words before she finishes the thought out loud; he chose that path instead of her and he’d done it again the other night. “Look, Cass, I really don’t want to argue with you. I don’t have the energy for it and you’re much better at it than I am anyway.”
     
    “That’s why they pay me the big bucks!” Cassie huffs a mirthless laugh, letting Mia quietly steer the conversation away from a subject she’d been playing Devil’s Advocate on since Mia had confided in her with Ray’s story. “So how are things going being back at Eli’s? Bet that’s cozy!” She doesn’t try to hide her disdain, there was no love lost between the two of them.
     
    “That would be one word for it.” Mia’s response is flat but Cassie doesn’t miss the