"She stays," the lowly spoken command held an undercurrent of ice as it settled over the leather clad group milling around the stuffy courtroom doors. Those two words issued more fear amid the members assembled than the charges that were pending over the club's collective heads.

"Son," a questioning voice broke the rising tension trying to bridge the chasm that had unexpectedly torn through their brotherhood during the legal proceedings leaving longtime loyalties suddenly frayed.

"Don't call me that," instantly came his bristled reply. "Don't you ever call me that again."

The threat was implicit, the promise of pain and injury all too clear if the older man tried to claim that bond of familial affiliation again and the seasoned man argued, "She left you. The first time you were in lock-up, she packed her bags and left you. She deserved-"

"No, don't even try to go there with me," the words exploded from the misery in his soul like deadly bullets. "She was just doing what I told her to do while I went away."

"You never said anything," the useless justification slipped past the other man's gray mustache. "You didn't-"

"I told you that Tara was fine," he raged back cutting off anymore trivial excuses from the grizzled MC President. "I told you to leave her alone."

Sidestepping his assertion, Clay's brows furrowed in response, "She never said anything even when-"

Cold fury erupted through him then making his fists nearly tremble with the need to make the other man hurt for all that he'd done. "She wouldn't," he immediately shot back. "She probably didn't even beg as you made her bleed."

"Jax," the head biker shied away from the all too astute condemnation but he couldn't hear another word of easy dismissal from the man who'd stepped in and raised him like a son. "No," he furiously countered. "My Old Lady never left me," he gritted out with certainty, "until you laid hands on her."

With nothing remaining to defend himself with, the wizened biker used truth that cut deeper and faster than any blade, "Maybe, but she never came back either."

Desolation sliced through him steadily draining Jax of the latent hope that had flared to life under the instantaneous need for retribution after hearing what had really happened to the girl who'd stolen his heart when they were only sixteen and never seen fit to return it. Even after a decade of her absence; she still held it in the palm of her surgeon's hand.

"Well, Tara's back now," Jax ground out with feral promise to his fellow Brothers, "and she's staying no matter what anyone says including her."