31. SIN
The feel of her arms around my waist on the back of my hog was a sensation that wasn’t going to stop giving me a boner for a long time to come.
And riding a bike with a boner wasn’t ideal, that was for fucking sure.
Still, I’d deal with it, because it felt epic as fuck to have her with me.
To have her at my back, at my side.
“Sin?”
Her hollered screech reached my ears, as did the way she tensed her fingers around my waist. I pulled over, indicating the second I could, and when I came to a halt, she murmured, “Can we ride past my old place?”
The request surprised me, but I did as bid, taking us the long way around West Orange to reach her house.
The subdivision where her place was located epitomized the word ‘swank.’ I didn’t like it. I preferred shit to be more real than a place where the roads were lined with fucking palm trees.
This was goddamn NJ, not LA. The sheer ecologically unfriendliness of the place was a testament to corporate America not giving a shit about the land we lived in, but hey, not my monkey, not my circus.
As we pulled up to the manned gate, an older guy approached in a security uniform. He eyed the bike, then me, then his gaze softened on Tiff and, without a word, he raised the gate for us to enter.
Each house on the six-dozen strong estate was a mansion and belonged on an old-school episode of Cribs. Massive gates and long driveways were pretty much all you could see except for the roofs that peeped through the filigree lacework rails.
The streets were beautifully lined, not a pothole in sight, and I was sure that a bird wouldn’t dare to fucking shit on the sidewalk, not without fear of being shot.
It was inauthentic and extravagant, but that was nothing compared to her place.
When we approached, she tugged at my waist again when we were around twenty feet from the gates, telling me, I figured, to stop here.
“I’m surprised the security guy let us in.”
“I was kind to Leonard when his wife was sick,” was all she said, before she fell silent as she looked at a house that had once been hers but now wasn’t.
By comparison, my place was a shithole, but she seemed happy there.
Not once had she even suggested she spend the night at Lily’s. Neither of us had said anything to indicate otherwise, but yeah, she’d moved in with me. After this palace, while it wasn’t my thing, it had to be a come down.
Unease settled heavily on me, and then I stopped it in its tracks.
There was no point in second-guessing her reasoning for anything. She wanted me. And she kept on showing me that.
“You okay, angel?” I rasped when we just sat there, idling. I didn’t mind, but her arms around me were tight, and her face was burrowed into my shoulder.
“I-I miss him.”
It was a whisper.
A hurt, pain-filled whisper.
“I wish I could bring him back for you, sweetheart,” I replied softly, reaching down and covering one of her hands with mine.
“He wasn’t perfect. No one is. But I-I just can’t…” She sucked in a breath.
“You can’t what?”
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
My brow puckered. “In what sense?”
“Who’s Grizzly?”
I tensed. “Who the fuck told you about him?”
“Rex. When he asked me if I was some kind of—Christ, I don’t even know. A gangster’s moll or something.”
The tension in me surged to a fever pitch. “He spoke to you without me there?”
She clung to me when I tried to turn around to face her, but she kept her nose burrowed in my cut. “Don’t. Please.”
“He had no right to talk to you without me there,” I growled. “And sure as fuck not about Grizzly.”
“Who is he?”
“Why did Rex think you were a gangster’s fucking moll?” I snapped, unable to moderate my tone, even though she was upset.
I’d smash the fucker’s face in.
“Because Donavan Lancaster went to school with Benito Fieri, who, according to Rex, is mafia.” She sucked in a breath. “Turned out my father attended college at the same time with them.”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. Never. He never talked about the past.”
“Ever?” My brows rose in surprise.
“No. Never,” she hissed. “Do you not believe me either?”
“No, of course not! I’m just surprised.”
“Yeah, well, if I thought about it myself, then I’d be surprised too, but that wasn’t how he worked.”
“How did he work?”
“He focused on the present. On the future. He believed in goals,” she mumbled, her tone telling me she was in the past. With her father. Not here with me. “The irony being that he’d have a daughter who had no idea what to do with herself.”
“You knew. You just weren’t ready to make the decision,” I told her firmly.
“Maybe.” She laughed. “Maybe not. Every step I made took me away from what I thought I wanted, and now I’m here.” A hum escaped her. “Funny how things turned out better than I ever expected.”
Despite myself, that hit me square in the fucking feels. “What kind of goals?” I mumbled, not only because I wanted her to keep talking, it was only now that I recognized we hadn’t mentioned her father once since I’d returned home—how goddamn selfish of me was that? What a fucking prize I was—but also because I had no desire to talk about fucking Grizzly.
“Sometimes it was to own a certain watch or a car, another time it was to have a head office for his company in every state.”
“Christ. Every state?” Jesus. I’d known the bastard was rich. But that fucking rich?
“Yeah. That was before the downturn though. When I was a kid, like, when I was twelve? We suffered a lot of losses, but we got through them.” She gulped. “I think that’s why it made it so hard when he didn’t even try to fight through this one. He was like that. Always striving for more.”
“Sometimes it gets tiring, always striving.”
I knew that from my own past. Fuck, just wishing for a day when Mom wouldn’t forget to put food in the refrigerator had been exhausting.
“Maybe. I guess I’ll never know why he did it,” she said mournfully.
“Did he leave a note?”
“Not that I know of. Mom didn’t tell me if she found one.”
“She found him?”
“Yeah.” Her gulp said it all, and when she changed the subject I let her. “Rex said that his company was funded by the Fieri family, Sin. It’s crazy for me to think that could be true.”
“A lot of corporations are fronts,” I told her. “It’s not that surprising.”
“My dad wasn’t like that.” She made a scoffing sound. “Or at least, the dad I thought he was didn’t seem to be like that.”
Because she sounded like she was on the brink of tears, I muttered, “Grizzly is Rex’s uncle.”
She tensed. “Rex’s uncle? Why would he want me to talk about him with you?”
I pulled a face at nothing in particular as I muttered, “Because he’s my father.”
“What? You’re Rex’s cousin?”
Blowing out a breath, I groused, “Unfortunately. Grizzly and I never got on.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“I don’t get why the fuck he was talking about this shit,” I snapped, determined that I really was going to beat the shit out of my Prez when I got my hands on him.
“Maybe because it was important?”
“It isn’t. Rex and I don’t tell anyone. We never have, and we never will.”
“How come?”
“It’s how I want it. I don’t want to get any perks for being blood?—”
“He doesn’t help you out more than the brothers?” she queried doubtfully.
“No. The only time he has is with the Ohio situation. Fuck knows what might have happened if Rex hadn’t listened to me.”
She squeezed me. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. That fucker’s fault. It’s all right now. I’m back home, you’re with me, and that cunt is waiting on a crypt. Exactly how it should be.”
Tiff burrowed into me as she inquired, “Why didn’t you and your dad get along?”
“Because I didn’t know him. Not until I was older. Mom wasn’t the best parent in the world. She was a selfish bitch then, and she’s still one now, but she’s morphed from being a trashy slut into a trashy wife. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mary Catherine’s father divorces her soon for a younger model.”
She winced. “That’s a little harsh.”
“No, it ain’t. I knew what she was when I was a kid, and I know it even more now. Just because she’s stopped whoring herself out for cash doesn’t mean she isn’t still doing it with her husband. He might be a high-ranking officer in the Five Points, but that doesn’t mean she ain’t still his whore.”
“You hate her?”
The long-held bitterness that had kept me under control almost all my life froze up inside me at the question, then I figured I was the man I was today because of that slut. So I relaxed and thought about it. Thought about how good it felt for her to hold me. How good it felt for my future not to be solely focused on the MC. How good it felt to know I might be the MC’s Enforcer someday… All those things were made possible because of how my past had forged me.
So, I released a breath, expelled the poison, and sucked in some fresh air that wasn’t tainted with hate.
“I actually don’t. I did. I’ll admit that. I fucking loathed her for a long time. The shit she made me listen to, the shit she did, the way she’d treat me? Throwing shit at me when I was little. Now? I know she was a fucking kid herself.”
“She had you when she was young?”
“When she was fifteen.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” I blew out a breath.
“Grizzly was eighteen when he met her, but even though he was young, he knew what she was, and he also was as much of a dick back then as he was before he died.”
“He died?”
“On a run,” I said dispassionately—about his death, not about the lie I just told her. If she knew the truth? She’d never let me near her again. I’d lie to her about nothing else except for that bastard’s death and my involvement in it.
“Oh.”
That summed it up.
I cleared my throat. “I remember Grizzly from when I was really young, like his visits when I was just a brat, but it’s very faint. I almost forgot about him until she mentioned that my father was a Satan’s Sinner because he stopped coming around when I was maybe seven?
“One day, I got sick of being her fucking punching bag, sick of her never feeding me, sick of me having to steal shit just to get by, for having to fight for every mouthful of food, and I left home. Ran away to NJ, found the clubhouse, and almost pissed myself as I walked up the driveway when the Prospect let me in.”
“I’m surprised they did. Thought they’d ask who you were.”
“I’m my father’s spitting image.”
It was her turn to clear her throat. “Well, I’m sorry for your sake, Sin, but not for mine. You’re a beautiful man.”
My nose crinkled. “Shut up. Men aren’t beautiful.”
She snickered, and the sound of her laughter during such a heavy conversation was music to my goddamn ears. “You’re totally beautiful. A rose by any other name?—”
“Still sends ants up your nose.”
She froze. “Huh?”
I laughed. “If you sniff a rose, ants come out of the petals, crawl up your nose, and enter your brain.”
“I need scientific proof of that theory,” she retorted.
“Will a Google search be enough?” I joked, making her snicker.
“Go on though. You were saying?”
I heaved a sigh. “They recognized me. All of them did, but they were the older crowd. The last generation. Lot of them are dead now, and what happens inside the club stays there.”
“You mean they never told their kids who you were? Christ.”
I shrugged. “Nothing to tell. What the fuck does a bastard kid have as any importance? Lots of them around. I was no different. Sure, I was related to the Prez, but again, so what?”
“Did they take you in?” she asked after a few seconds.
“Still here, ain’t I?” I muttered awkwardly, because that wasn’t down to dear old Dad. Nope. That was down to Bear, Rex’s dad, and the MC’s last Prez.
“You enlisted for a reason. A lot of young kids do that because they’re looking to find a home.”
Maybe it was pussy assed of me to do it, but I reached for her hand once more, entwined my fingers with hers, and said, “Yeah? Well, the Marines weren’t no home. This is my home. You, me, the kid. Us.”
A shaky sigh escaped her, and she sank into me like I was all she needed in this fucking world. “Yes. We are.”
“We don’t need mansions. We don’t need?—”
“You don’t have to finish that sentence,” she whispered. “No, we don’t need any of that stuff. I never imagined I’d have someone like you, Sin. Someone who’d want me for me. Who’d want to be with me because I’m Tiffany and not just Tiffany Farquar. It’s… I’m still trying to get my head around it if I’m being honest.”
“What’s to get your head around, Tiff? You’re fucking awesome.”
“Takes one to know one,” she countered wryly, but I heard her smile and knew she’d liked what I had to say.
“You know that first night?”
She hummed under her breath.
“I knew where you were. At all times. I saw Storm beside you, and I didn’t like it. Not when he pulled his fucking cock out, not even when he just took a fucking seat.
“I saw you wander around the MC, all wide-eyed and watching shit like it was a science experiment.
“I didn’t like it. I liked your ass, but I didn’t like how you were fucking staring at shit as though it was too good for you.” I sucked in a breath. “Then you goddamn smirked at me. And it fucked with my head. You fucked with my head. It’s what you did from the start?—”
“And what I’ll do until the day you die,” she purred, twisting her hand in mine so she could lace our fingers together.
I had only one word to say to that.
“Amen.”