6. TIFFANY
“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes...”
As I stared into the hole where my father lay, I tossed some dirt onto the shiny casket and blinked back tears.
This was all avoidable.
That was all I kept on thinking. It was like a litany in my head, an endless song that was on repeat and I couldn’t switch off.
I wanted to.
How I wanted to.
But I couldn’t.
It was impossible.
The record was already in motion, and I’d lost everything.
Everything.
The only thing I hadn’t lost?
My sanity, and honestly, that was a hard-won thing.
A hand moved to my lower back, and I quickly turned around, recognizing the scent, and buried myself in my best friend’s arms.
Lily hugged me tight, exactly how I needed to be held, as she whispered in my ear, “Sweetheart, come on. You need a breather.”
I needed more than that.
Gnawing on my bottom lip, I let her draw me away. Behind her, there was her new boyfriend, Link.
He was, to put it kindly, a bruiser. Blond, very blond, very stacked, and the definition of ripped.
I’d seen him before at the clubhouse on the few occasions I’d been there, and what I’d seen didn’t make me predisposed to like him, but now that he’d claimed Lily?
There was definitely a change in him.
He looked around the cemetery like it was full of enemies, and that was the exact opposite of the truth.
Not even my mom was here.
I was by myself with Lily, Link, and a few bikers who were on the road, just up the path, watching the show like it was entertaining.
Not even my father’s business partners were here.
It was like Dad had been erased or something. By everyone who was supposed to care for him except for me.
I wasn’t even sure how this had happened, and so swiftly too. It had all started the night when Luke had been murdered by one of the Sinners’ Old Ladies.
She was here as well.
Sitting on the back of her man’s bike, looking like a queen atop her chariot.
It didn’t matter that she was riding bitch and doing so behind a man that made Lucifer himself look friendly. She appeared regal, even as she looked watchful.
They all were.
I wasn’t sure what they expected to happen, but I got it.
Ever since that night, things had changed, and my world had turned upside down.
Lily’s dad had warrants out for his arrest now, and as a result, his business assets were frozen.
Turned out Daddy had been relying on Donavan Lancaster like he was his own personal piggy bank. With those funds cut off, his real estate empire came toppling down around him.
And the fallout devastated all of us.
But devastation was something you could come back from.
What you couldn’t?
A bullet to the head.
“I can’t believe he killed himself,” I rasped to no one in particular. Hell, maybe I was muttering it to the world.
Maybe the universe could answer, because I sure as shit couldn’t.
“I know, love,” Lily whispered mournfully, and her grief was genuine.
She loved my dad. Everyone did. He was awesome.
Mom was too, but she was a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, and now more than ever. She wasn’t taking the family’s fall from grace into bankruptcy lightly, and she was starting to irritate me.
The only reason we were staying afloat was because of Lily.
We were staying in her home, living on her dime, all because the IRS had taken every piece of property my father or his company owned, freezing every single one of his assets.
She’d even offered to float us enough money to cover the company’s debt, and while I’d taken her up on that offer, and had used it to funnel funds toward the employees who were suddenly being laid off, there wasn’t enough to cover the amount of monies outstanding.
Especially when a mountain of those debts belonged to Lily’s family anyway.
It was a clusterfuck.
But it was something we could have survived. We could have ridden it out.
However, there was no riding out anything when you were six feet under.
I paused, unable to take another step away from my daddy.
Pain flooded me, and a keening cry escaped my lips as I clung to Lily, letting her embrace me, burying my face in her hair as I sobbed out my grief.
My world was nothing.
Everything was built on a lie.
We weren’t rich. We were indebted to the max.
My parents’ marriage wasn’t strong—if it was, Daddy wouldn’t have killed himself when Mom threatened him with divorce because he was poor.
Everything was…
Gone.
All of it.
All ruined.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.
That was my life.
Only, my heart still beat and my body wasn’t withering into nothing—I had to remember that.
I could survive this.
I was stronger than my father.
The thought had me sucking in a sharp breath, one that was loaded with guilt for thinking that about Daddy, but it didn’t help me fight the cascade into panic.
She must have realized how close I was to freaking out on her, because Lily squeezed me again. “Come on,” she murmured, “we need to get you home.”
Home?
What was that anymore? Where was it?
I bit my lip but nodded, and the silk of her hair rubbed against my face.
A hand grabbed my shoulder, big and strong, and a husky voice stated, “It’s okay, Tiffany. Everything will be fine. With time.”
Those were the key words.
With time.
I peered up at the big, mean biker who had the power to make grown men piss themselves, and who was softening his tone for me.
Little old me.
“Thanks, Link,” I rasped.
He shrugged. “Sucks, doll. Sucks.”
It really did.
Somehow, with a couple of words, he was capable of condensing my feelings. I didn’t resent that, if anything, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
“Yeah.” I reached up, knuckled my eyes, and dragged the tears away. “It does.”
Lily snagged a hold of my hand. “We need to get some food in you.”
Her look was pointed, and I turned away, not even wanting to think about why she was saying that.
She swore I was pregnant.
I was refusing to believe it.
Look, when a woman’s world collapsed around her, she missed her period, and sometimes, when things were really stressful, she barfed.
Simple.
Stress related.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to think about Sin.
I’d have to tell him soon.
I’d have to, if what Lily said was true.
This morning, before we’d left for the funeral, she’d appeared at my bedroom door with a baggy in her hand. Then, she’d almost refused to leave until I used the damn test.
The only way I’d gotten out of it?
I puked, and after I puked, Mom had wandered in like Greta Garbo, her hair in a fucking turban of all things, demanding to know why I was sick.
I’d lied, of course.
I’d told her that I was just feeling under the weather and had taken that moment to make a dig at her refusal to attend the service today.
I was only putting off the inevitable.
Knowing the second I got home, Lily would make me piss on a stick, I had a nasty feeling I knew what the result would be.
As we wandered over to Lily’s car—my Jag had been one of the things lost to the debt collectors—Link veered toward his bike the second he’d dropped us off.
He kissed her with a tenderness that made my heart ache, made me long for Sin, and she smiled at him with so much love that it hurt to behold.
A shaky breath drifted from my lips as I climbed into the car, and when she got behind the wheel, switched on the AC, and turned to me, I knew why.
The bikers kicked off before they spread around her like she was being shielded on all sides by metal.
As a protective detail, it was better than what she’d originally had when her dad was around.
All her guards were gone now, replaced on the regular by Prospects from the MC, and it was weird to always have her tailed by dudes on bikes, even if I was glad for her sake.
When they were situated, she cranked the ignition, and we set off.
“It’s going to be okay, Tiff.”
“I can’t let you float us forever,” I whispered, turning my face to the side as I peered out onto the gravestones.
It was hard to see, thanks to one biker’s ‘tail’ getting in the way, but I focused on the gravestones, thinking about how Lily’s dime was going to be covering my daddy’s funeral too.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whispered, my eyes flooding with tears. “Friends don’t do this for friends. This is too much.”
“Hey, enough of that!” she chided, and her hand slapped down on my pant-clad thigh. “We’re more than friends, we’re like sisters. You know that.”
“I do, but still. This is going above and beyond, even for sisters.”
“Hardly. How much money do you think I need? And, sweetheart, I don’t say this to hurt you, but your mom can’t be poor.
“You and I both know she can’t survive without having money. It’s impossible. If she does, we’ll lose her too.”
“She’s being so awful,” I whispered, because I knew Lily was right.
If Mom had to be poor, she’d slit her wrists, and then I’d be left with the doctor’s bills in the aftermath too.
The only consolation was that Daddy’s debts weren’t mine. They were Momma’s, sure, but she was going bankrupt too.
You couldn’t get blood out of a stone, and somehow, Mom’s heart had turned to that in the past few weeks.
“She’s like a mother to me too,” Lily reasoned, and while she was right about that as well, while my folks had been kinder to her than hers had ever been, it just wasn’t right.
“You’re too good to us.”
She whistled past that, saying, “Your mom can stay with Link and me as long as she needs, Tiff. You don’t need to worry about her. She can have that half of the house.” She shivered. “I hate that side anyway.”
Her father’s side.
It wasn’t hard to figure out why.
He’d always given off bad vibes, so had Luke, and that was one of the many reasons why I’d never let his come-ons turn into something else.
See, back when I was eighteen, I thought it was the height of romance for Lily and me to be best friends and for me to be with her brother.
Luke was handsome, he was charming when he wanted to be, and he was the heir to an empire. What wasn’t to love?
Well, on the outside, he was all those things, but I’d stopped looking at the outside a long time ago.
The inside was all that counted.
And I’d seen early on in those silly, girlish desires for Lily and me to be tied in a familial way that Luke was not good people.
He was rotten to the core, but no one saw that because he was a damn fine actor.
When I didn’t say anything, Lily heaved a sigh and changed the subject. “Are you going to tell me who the father is?”
“I might not be pregnant,” I muttered, my tone gruff. I sank into my seat, hunching my shoulders as I tried to avoid this topic too.
Nothing, absolutely nada, was high on my conversational agenda right now.
It all involved a future I had zero control over, and at the moment, that just made me feel like I was going nuts.
“You’re pregnant. You’re never sick, Tiff. Ever.”
“My daddy just died, Lily,” I grumbled, peering at the highway now that we’d driven out of the graveyard.
West Orange wasn’t my favorite place in the world, but Daddy had brought us here for his new development.
A development that was now in the can.
Just like Mom’s and my future.
It wasn’t a concrete jungle, but it was nearly there.
As part of his agreement with the county when he started building the subdivision here that brought a lot of Manhattan’s richest people to New Jersey, the area had been spruced up with flowers and plants and shit, but it wasn’t enough.
You couldn’t polish a turd, at least that was my opinion.
“Tiff?”
“What?” I queried absentmindedly.
“The father didn’t…he didn’t hurt you, did he?”
Sin had, but not in that way. “No. He’d never do that.”
My words were truthful, and I felt her tension lessen some. It was like the air in the car had warmed up ten degrees with her relief.
That she loved me was a given. That I loved her was clear, but it was, in the aftermath of this nightmare, wonderful to be reminded of that love.
To know that, come what may, she’d have my back.
“Who is he?” she whispered.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
My throat grew choked as I whispered, “Link knows him.”
“He’s a biker?”
Her squeak almost had my lips twitching. Only, nothing was funny about this situation.
Nothing.
“Yeah. He is.”
“Who the hell is he?”
I hated how we were both talking about my being pregnant without me even admitting to it.
Was I ready to become a mom if I truly did have a bun in the oven?
I couldn’t imagine it. I wasn’t the most maternal of people anyway, and I was young. Christ, I was barely twenty-three.
Placing a shaky hand on my stomach, I wondered if there was a kid in there, if that kid could feel me, could sense my emotions, my stress, and my concern for the future.
I wouldn’t have been ready for a baby if I’d still been loaded.
But to be facing this without a penny to my name? Without the man I’d come to care for in a ridiculously short span of time at my side?
Fuck, was it any wonder I was terrified?
“I need to get a job,” I muttered.
“Huh?” Lily swerved the wheel so hard that the bikes had to swerve with her.
Her shoulders hunched just like mine had when, in different stages, the bikers turned around to glower at her.
Link drove up beside her and tapped on the window.
She waved him off and carefully mouthed, “Sorry.”
His stare was hard until he fell back a pace, returning to the moving circle around us.
It was hard to imagine Lily with a biker. She was all class. We both were. And yet, somehow, we’d both fallen for bikers.
Rough and ready men that moms warned their daughters about.
Men who said daughters ignored their moms over, and who they tried to toy with until they got burned.
When they did, they were burned badly.
Just like me.
Only, Sin hadn’t meant to hurt me.
He couldn’t help that he’d been transferred. If anything, it was my fault. And Luke Lancaster’s. May he rot in hell.
“You can’t get a job.”
“Why can’t I?” I mumbled. “That’s what people do, isn’t it? Work when they have no means of supporting themselves?”
“You’re different. You don’t need to work. You have me.”
I released a shaky breath. “You have to stop saying that, Lily. Your generosity is too much. It isn’t fair for me to take from you and give nothing in return.”
“If things were different, wouldn’t you do the same for me?” she reasoned, and I knew I’d hurt her, even if that wasn’t my intention.
“You know I would,” I muttered, “and I know that, just like I am, you’d struggle with it.”
“Yeah, I’d struggle, but I’d expect nothing less. We’re sisters,” she stated staunchly. “Sisters have each other’s backs.
“Plus, what the hell are you going to do? You’re pregnant, you’ll be getting tired in the afternoons soon and?—”
“Pregnant women work, Lily,” I said dryly, amused by her declaration.
“I know they do,” she huffed.
“Women manage to get through morning sickness in the afternoon during a business meeting as well, all while keeping their homes clean and sometimes caring for more than one kid at the same time. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be one of them.”
“Why would you take a job away from someone who needs it?” she countered, and I growled under my breath.
“That’s fighting dirty.”
“That’s the truth. You don’t need the money. You’re not a spendthrift, so I won’t even have to give you that big of an allowance?—”
“Oh my God! That’s enough, Lily. I can’t handle this conversation right now. I’m not thirteen?—”
“No, I know you’re not, but you’re potentially a mom, and you have to think of that kid.
“Anyway, I’ve already told you that the Sinners want your help. You can work for them as a favor to me.
“You’re living with me at the moment, and food isn’t an issue. If the father doesn’t want anything to do with you, then there’s no reason to worry. We can raise the baby together.”
My lips curved at that. “Like a commune baby?”
She snickered. “Yeah. I don’t see why not. The baby can grow up knowing what pedicures are while fixing bikes in their spare time with Link?—”
My heart clutched at the thought. Damn, I was really nuts if I thought that sounded like an epic idea.
Raising a baby with Lily? Knowing that Link and his men would protect it, even if Sin wouldn’t?
Heaven.
Because I didn’t entirely trust heaven right now, uneasily, I argued, “I’m not trained.”
“Only because you quit school. We both know you could?—”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be jealous.”
“Of your 4.0 GPA without you even having to open a book?” She snorted. “Bet your damn ass I’m jealous. Anyway, they need you. Whether or not you’re officially trained, those women need you more than you will ever know, Tiff.
“Fuck, what they’ve been through?” She shuddered. “You’re the only help they’ll get too. It’s either you or nothing. I’ve been building up the courage to get you involved with them for over a month, but I’ve just been too nervous to.”
I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. “I still don’t understand what they’re doing there?—”
“It’s complicated.”
“You’re telling me.”
As far as I could figure out, two of the women weren’t ‘technically’ there.
As in, the authorities weren’t aware of them.
They knew about one woman, and she was the one who’d gone to the cops and was the reason Donavan Lancaster was flitting around Asia trying to evade arrest warrants and extradition orders.
It was like something out of an action movie, where the man I’d known pretty much all my life was the villain.
Surreal didn’t cut it.
“They need you, Tiff. Working in a restaurant, in a store…you’re not going to be helping anyone.
“Sure, you’ll be earning an honest buck, but that money could be going to someone who actually needs it, and you won’t be helping three people who my family destroyed. Please, Tiff. Please? Do it for me?”
Her tone wasn’t wheedling. It was filled with an urgent need I couldn’t hide from, one there was no avoiding.
I stared ahead, seeing a future open before me that I’d never anticipated. There were two reasons I’d stopped training as a therapist. One because of politics, and two, because I couldn’t do it.
Literally.
I got too involved.
It wasn’t…
Fuck, it just wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t healthy with it.
My education had been derailed, but I was too self-aware to fail to realize that being a therapist wasn’t good for me.
Yet, equally, she was right.
Why wouldn’t I do something to help women who’d been hurt by the men in Lily’s family when it was within the realms of possibility?
If anyone deserved for me to try, it was her. She gave and gave, and at the moment, all I was doing was taking.
And for that reason, I knew she deserved for me to be honest with her. “Lily?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Sin’s the father.”
Her brow puckered. “Sin? The brother who was?—”
“Shipped off so that Nyx wouldn’t behead him? Yeah.” My tone was a mixture of dry and tortured. “That sums it up.”
Her shoulders straightened. “Well, this changes things. I’ll speak to Rex.”
My lips twitched at the thought of little Lily shoving her nose in club business and bullying Rex, the Prez.
I’d taken in a lot when I was at the clubhouse parties. Watched dynamics, studied interpersonal relationships, learned things that the bikers probably wouldn’t have anticipated me picking up on…
There were secrets in that clubhouse, but then, weren’t they everywhere?
My life was riddled with them, Lily’s too.
The thought had my heart twisting as I stared down at the hand which I’d covered my belly with. “We’ll get through this, won’t we, Lily?”
“Of course we will.” She smiled at me, and her love for me shone through.
I reached out with my spare hand, slipped my fingers through hers, and whispered, “Thank you.”
She squeezed me back. “No thanks necessary.”