51. Emery
FIFTY-ONE
EMERY
“Then there was a girl named Sadie, and another boy named Lenny, and another one called Peter. And we can’t even forget my very best friend Nolan who did so many fwips , and I did almost as many, and did you know he’s my cousin?”
It was just before two in the afternoon, and Maci skipped along at my side as I climbed the stairs after doing a load of laundry, the child chattering nonstop.
Kane was at the club receiving a shipment. He was barely a mile away, but he’d still posted Otto out front.
I wasn’t sure it was necessary. Weeks had passed since I’d been attacked in the grocery store parking lot, but Kane insisted we needed to be cautious. The things he’d witnessed and experienced in his sordid, vile world made him unwilling to take the chance.
He promised it wouldn’t always be that way. That once they caught the guy, he wouldn’t be so overprotective.
Because of it, I always was a little antsy while he was away.
At least I had Maci to keep me entertained since she hadn’t stopped talking about her first tumbling class she’d had yesterday.
“Did you and my daddy even see me?” she prattled, her little body turned sideways as she grinned up at me, her chubby, adorable hand on the railing as we ascended.
Amusement tugged on my chest. “We absolutely saw you, and we almost couldn’t believe it. You were doing flips all over the place.”
Kane and I had sat in the parents’ section and watched through a big window. He’d claimed her a natural, even though she’d fallen more than she’d landed on her feet.
“Big ones, too!” she enthused.
“Oh, yeah, they were definitely big.”
“And guess what, Auntie Em?”
“What?”
She lowered her voice like it was a secret. “I even get to learn how to do a back fwip .”
“Whoa. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
We hit the top landing, and her sweet smile filled my periphery as she beamed my way. “I’m ready for anything, Auntie. My mommy told me that’s the way we gotta live. Takin’ evwy opportunity we got.”
Joy pressed down fiercely on my heart. It shouldn’t be real. That I could feel this way. But it was there. A warm glow that surrounded me.
I could almost feel my sister’s presence. Like if she couldn’t be here, this would be exactly the way she would have wanted it.
As if maybe she’d somehow set me on this course on purpose.
Kane’s grin flashed behind my eyes. That gorgeous face and those big hands and his beautiful heart.
I was still having a hard time understanding how I’d found myself in this place.
Trusting.
Giving.
For so long I’d believed I would forever live hiding from my ghosts.
But he’d brought me out of it. Out of the darkness and into the light.
I balanced the laundry basket on my hip as Maci darted ahead of me into her room. “Here, Auntie, I’ll help you. ”
She tore open the bottom drawer of her dresser where we kept all her sundresses.
“You really are a big help,” I told her as I knelt so I could place the folded stack into the drawer.
She shrugged a tiny shoulder. “That’s what my daddy tells me.”
I tucked the stack of dresses into the drawer then leaned down so I could press a kiss to the crown of her head. “Your daddy loves you, doesn’t he?”
“He told me he’s got two very most favorites…” She lifted two fingers in the air. “That’s me and you! I think that’s a special spot, and my daddy’s got a really special spot right here.”
She touched the spot over her precious heart, and mine basically melted.
“I love you so much, Angel Face,” I said, trying to keep the soggy emotion out of my voice as I whispered it.
“As many as all the stars,” she mumbled, then she hopped up and moved to where she’d left her dolls scattered on the floor, her sweet imagination carrying her away in an instant.
I pushed to standing. “Okay, I’m going to get the rest of these things put away. I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”
“’Kay,” she said, not really paying me any attention.
I stepped out into the hall, and I glanced down at the rest of the clothes I had in the basket.
Butterflies lifted in my belly. All of this still felt so new. Kane insisting that I make his room mine.
A nod to our permanence.
I hadn’t really started keeping my things in there yet. Just some toiletries and clean pajamas and underwear in an empty drawer that he’d cleared out for me.
I glanced between the open door to what had been my bedroom and the double doors at the end of the opposite hall. A grin tugged at my mouth as I made the decision, and I walked into his room and directly into the massive walk-in closet that was on the opposite side of the bathroom.
I flicked on the light .
It was long and narrow, and it hooked around at the end. Rows of clothes hung from each side, and there were built-in shelves and drawers in different sections.
I moved down to a spot where there were fewer items hanging from the rod, and I began to hang up a few of my shirts that I’d just washed.
Contentment danced on my lips.
It smelled like him in here.
Cedar and clove. That masculine scent that never failed to intoxicate me.
I ran my fingers over his things as I moved down the closet, no stopping my smile as I experienced him this way.
This rough, intimidating man who kept his clothes perfectly arranged and organized.
There were a ton of different button-up shirts that he normally wore into the club. How much I loved how sexy they looked when he rolled the sleeves up his forearms.
His jeans were hanging, too.
I’d always thought him a complete paradox.
I moved deeper into the closet, and I slowed when I saw a lower shelf that had a bunch of old framed pictures sitting on it.
It looked like a tribute. Maybe a shrine.
Heavy emotion tugged at my chest, and I reached out and ran my fingertips over the glass of a frame, staring at the image of a beautiful woman wearing a floral dress and the little boy who was tucked close to her side, his arms around her waist as he squeezed her hard and grinned at the camera.
Her eyes—they were the same color as Kane’s and Maci’s. That striking emerald tempered by flecks of gold.
Though hers were weighted with a sadness that was unmistakable.
Pain speared me. Looking at this woman who Kane had adored. Someone who I had no question would have wanted her life to be different but had somehow remained trapped. This woman had suffered the types of brutalities that Kane and his family gave all of themselves to try to protect them from .
It was still hard to process it. What they really did. On some level, I recognized it was wrong, but there was a much larger part of myself that couldn’t imagine him doing anything else.
The way he stood for others in a way he hadn’t been able to for his mother, and I’d gleaned enough from the things Kane had shared, the things that Raven and Charleigh had, too, to understand that all the guys had gone through similar situations in one way or another.
It was what had brought them together in the first place, was what they’d known, and now they did their best to end it for as many women and children as they could.
How could I think of it as anything less than honorable?
My gaze traveled, taking in the different pictures of Kane and his mom. He grew older in each.
A soft smile tugged when I saw him with the rest of his crew. All of them so young. Maybe seventeen or eighteen. A little black-haired Raven was smack in the middle of them.
That smile shifted a fraction when my attention landed on another image that sat farther in the back. I reached in and carefully pulled the frame out so I could study it better.
A flare of disquiet fluttered somewhere in the back of my mind.
I narrowed my eyes as I took it in.
Kane was with the rest of the guys. Theo, Cash, Otto, and River. They were older. Maybe in their early twenties. Their arms were slung around each other’s shoulders as they gawped at the camera.
A bottle of alcohol dangled from one of Theo’s hands and Otto was tossing a middle finger at whoever was taking the shot.
But it was what they wore that sent a cold slick of familiarity slithering through my veins.
An ice-cold dread that tightened my chest and soured my stomach.
All of them were in leather cuts. The kind that bikers wore. And it wouldn’t have been all that shocking except for the patch that sat on the upper left side of each of them.
It was the depiction of a vicious owl, its wings stretched wide and in full flight. In its claws was a skull .
Flashes of memories streaked through my mind, and in an instant, horror took me hostage.
The floor was cold and hard below her, her hands and feet bound. Fabric covered her eyes, tied tight around the back of her head, her sight obscured.
She was disoriented.
Sick.
Pain and fear heavy in her limbs.
She went in and out of consciousness, as if her spirit tried to float away. To rise above the torment that had been inflicted.
Raucous laughter hit her ears, pulling her from the reprieve of the stupor.
“Bro, you know how much they’re worth?”
“Don’t care…gonna get my piece.”
Another bark of laughter. A clapping of a shoulder. “Cutter’s gonna cut your dick off and feed it to the sharks.”
“Fuck Cutter.”
Her sister whimpered beside her while Jana wept.
The light was minimally brighter above her left eye, and Emery carefully shifted, her head angled in a way so she could peer around the edge of the blindfold. A bulb hung from the ceiling and poured jaundiced light against the brick walls, and two men stood facing each other.
The only thing she could make out was the one with his back to her.
Brown hair and he wore a black leather vest.
A design was embroidered on the back. An owl in full flight with a skull clutched in its claws. It was circled by an O with an I slashing through the middle.
And inscribed at the bottom was Iron Owls MC.
Sickness pooled in my stomach, and nausea rolled up my throat.
No.
I squinted at the picture, praying that I wasn’t seeing it right. That I was only making it up. Conjuring a nightmare that wasn’t really there.