Chapter 19 #2
She nods a few times and swallows hard. “I can do that.”
I want so badly to tell her that it’s probably nothing and that Barrett is overreacting, but I can’t.
“You getting hungry?” I ask, since I can’t fill the silence with empty platitudes.
“A little,” she answers.
“What sounds good?” Barrett asks.
Syd tilts her head from side to side. “Pizza?”
“Perfect,” I agree, and Barrett shakes his head. “You two and pizza, I swear.”
“What?” Syd asks. “It’s got all the food groups. Meat, dairy, grains, and veggies. It’s practically healthy.”
Barrett rolls his eyes as he stands from the couch. “I should program the damn pizza place’s number into my phone once and for all.”
“You really should,” I say, and Syd lets out a quiet chuckle.
Barrett walks into the kitchen, presumably to grab a menu, and I wave for Syd to come sit next to me.
When she does, I put my arm around her and she rests her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this, honey. I know it must be scary.”
Syd shrugs. “It’s scary. But it’s not like my life was free of scary things before.
At least now I have people I can turn to who I know are going to protect me.
Before, it was only you who gave a shit if I was scared.
You’re the only one who ever cared that I was safe—the only one I knew I could turn to if something wasn’t right at home. If anything ever happened to you…”
“Hey, hey, hey. Nothing is going to happen to me. Your dad and the rest of the club are going to make sure nothing happens to any of us. We’ll always protect you, sweetheart. You have a whole family here who would do anything for you.”
Syd tilts her face toward me. “I know. It’s pretty cool, huh?”
I kiss her forehead and smile down at my niece. “Yeah, it is.”
Barrett walks back into the living room and smiles at us. “Pizza will be here in thirty. The guy knew my order as soon as I told him my address.”
“We may eat too much pizza,” I say.
“Nah. They’re just really good at their job,” Syd says.
“Sure, we’ll go with their outstanding customer service.” Barrett rolls his eyes, but can’t hide the smile tilting his lips. “Alright, we need to get cleaned up, and you have homework,” Barrett says, and Syd stands from the couch.
“Such a ballbuster,” she says, and he barks out a laugh.
“Who talks like that in this house?” he asks.
“Um, all of us,” Syd says, grabbing her bag. She walks over to Barrett and leans in for a side hug. “Glad you’re okay, Dad.”
Syd turns and walks down the hallway, shutting her bedroom door behind her as Barrett looks at me with wide eyes.
“Don’t make it a thing. She’ll get self-conscious,” I tell him.
“She just called me Dad!” he whisper-shouts. “She just called me Dad.”
I smile and tears spring to my eyes. I’m not embarrassed, though, since they match the ones in Barrett’s. “I heard you the first time.”
Barrett sets his fists on his hips and looks down before clearing his throat as though he’s trying to collect himself.
When he looks back at me, he nods a couple times then steps toward me, sliding one hand behind my back and the other under my knees.
He lifts me with ease and starts walking us to our room.
“I can walk, you know,” I say, but I loop my arms around his neck just the same.
“I do know that, but I need to take care of my future baby mama, which means when you have a sprained ankle, I carry you to the shower and wash your back.”
“Jesus Christ, what am I going to do with the two of you?”
“Nothing you can do. You’re stuck with us,” he answers even though I wasn’t really looking for one.
“Lucky for you, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be stuck.”
“Trust me, baby. I know exactly how lucky I am.”
Five days after our accident, all of us women gathered at the gun range at the clubhouse. Lucy is insisting on weapons training for all the old ladies, which I guess is what I am now. She told me she hated that term when we first met, and I have to say I agree.
To my surprise, Cece is more than proficient in firing a range of weapons. Charlie isn’t half bad, and Lucy has hit every target no matter the distance from where she’s standing.
“Jesus, are you guys military brats or something?” I ask when the prospect grabs Lucy’s and Cece’s paper targets and brings them back for us to look at. Each one has two perfect shots to the chest and one to the head.
“No, we grew up on a cult compound that was preparing us to kill when the Great War came,” Lucy says, and my jaw drops open.
“Lucy, you can’t just blurt that out,” Cece scolds.
“Why? It’s not like she wouldn’t have found out eventually,” Lucy shoots back.
“There’s a thing called tact,” Cece says, and Charlie laughs.
“Cece, you know your sister better than that. I don’t think that word is in her vocabulary.”
Freya and Mia laugh, and Maizie simply shakes her head, obviously used to Lucy’s word vomit.
“It’s okay. I grew up in a house with a drugged-up alcoholic mother and a father who kept her medicated and compliant and who also never gave a shit about any of us, so…” I say.
“We all have baggage. My parents told me I was going to hell when I showed up pregnant and refused to tell them who the father was,” Maizie offers.
“My parents only care about what everyone thinks of them and blame me for everything, and they still refuse to accept that their son was a complete piece of shit,” Mia says.
“Thank God for my grandmother. She knew they would cause a huge issue if they found out what really happened to him, so she told them it was an auto accident and had his ashes flown back from Arizona. There’s nothing but dirt in the urn, which is in the family tomb.
She knew they would just ignore why he really died and bring trouble for the club. ”
“I love Elaine,” Cece says, and Mia smiles at her.
“She loves you too,” Mia tells her.
“My dad probably won’t show up to my wedding,” Freya adds. “My mom is still trying to work on him, but he sees Ozzy and the club as nothing more than a bunch of criminals.” She shrugs as though she’s resigned herself to that fact.
“That must be tough. It’s supposed to be the happiest day of your life,” I say.
“It will be no matter what,” Freya replies. “All I care about is that I’m marrying the man I love. We waited a long time to get here, and nothing is going to tarnish that.”
Barrett steps out of the patio door then and walks over to us. “Hey, babe. The guy I told you about is here.”
Barrett brought the flash drive we found in Syd’s stuffed elephant to the clubhouse for safekeeping until whoever he knows can take a look at it.
Two men I don’t recognize step outside with Jude. One is dressed in a suit and looks like a polished version of Jude, and the other is wearing thick-rimmed glasses with messy hair in some sort of anime T-shirt and jeans.
“Lucy, I think your aim may have been off on that last round,” the blond man in the suit says.
“Fuck you, it was not, Liam,” she quips back with her hand on her hip.
“Don’t listen to my twat brother, Lucifer. It was perfect. He’s just jealous because you handle a gun better than he does,” Jude reassures his woman.
Liam’s head jerks toward Jude. “Take that back, you fucking liar.”
“Make me, arsehole,” Jude shoots back.
“Jesus Christ, two minutes in each other’s presence and you’re already fighting like a couple of bratty kids,” Lucy says.
Jude walks over to Lucy and wraps an arm around her waist. “Just wait until we have our second, love.”
“Let’s see if you survive my first pregnancy before you make plans to knock me up again.”
I walk over to where Barrett is standing with the other guy—who I assume is the one he wants to look at the flash drive.
“Camryn, this is Sawyer. Sawyer, Camryn.”
I hold out my hand, and Sawyer shakes it. “Barrett gave me the flash drive, but I haven’t opened it. Thought you two and Ozzy would want to go through it with me.”
“Thank you,” I reply. I’ve been waiting for this day, and I’m suddenly nervous as hell. We’re about to see what my sister was possibly killed over.
We walk back into the clubhouse, and Ozzy is waiting at a table for us. Sawyer has a seat next to him and pulls out his computer from the case, pressing several buttons before retrieving the drive from his pocket. He plugs it into his computer, and we wait a few moments before he mutters, “Fuck.”
“Fuck?” Ozzy asks. “Why fuck?”
“It has a tracker installed,” Sawyer mumbles as his fingers fly over the keyboard.
“Okay, looks like it wasn’t set to erase anything.
” His eyes lift to Barrett. “They probably know someone tried to open this and what IP address the computer uses.” His gaze falls to me.
“My guess is it’s already been traced to you. ”
Barrett wipes a hand over his face. “Fuck is right.”
“Huh,” Sawyer says as his focus returns to the computer screen.
“What the hell does huh mean?” Ozzy says, obviously getting frustrated with the small reactions from Sawyer and no explanation.
“I’m seeing some names we’ve been keeping an eye on. Bank records showing large sums of money being transferred to a William Fuller.”
My heart drops into my stomach. “What?” I ask in a choked whisper.
Sawyer looks up at me in question. “You know him?”
I press my lips together and nod. “He’s my father.”
Barrett wraps his arm around me, squeezing my shoulder.
“You didn’t know he was involved with the Russian Bratva?” Sawyer asks.
My head rears back. “Of course not. I thought the man was a real estate developer.”
Sawyer nods. “Makes sense. That’s a great way to clean dirty money.
” His fingers continue to tap away on the keys, pausing every so often to look at something for a few moments, then tap, tap, tap.
“There’s a lot here. It’s probably going to take me a day or two to go over everything and get an entire picture of what the hell your sister had.
Your father was dealing with some very bad men who would not want this information in the wrong hands,” he says.
I nod lamely, my thoughts churning round and round. My father is in bed with the Russian Bratva?
“You can use my office,” Ozzy tells Sawyer.
Ozzy and Sawyer stand from the table and walk back to the club president’s office before I turn to Barrett.
“So…my father had dealings with Russians, and you’re having problems with Russians. Are they the same ones?”
“Yeah, pup, it’s looking that way.”
“What happened to her really wasn’t an accident, was it? I mean, I know she thought her life was in danger, but if they knew she had this then they would want to get rid of her. It’s too coincidental for it to be anything else, isn’t it?”
Barrett exhales a deep breath. “It’s possible.”
“One of the things we’ll never have the answer to. Not unless we talk to my father.” I shake my head. “As if he’d actually be honest.”
“Camryn, I have a feeling we’re going to be talking to him at some point about this. We don’t usually get involved with other organizations’ shit, but if it’s the same guys who’ve been threatening us, that makes it our business. Are you going to be okay with that?”
“I’m guessing the ‘talk’ is going to involve more than a typical conversation.”
Barrett looks down at me. “It might.”
I nod and look toward the women who I’ve come to know.
I look at the way Jude is standing behind Lucy with a protective arm around her middle as Liam smiles at the two of them and clasps Jude on the shoulder.
And I think to myself, this is what family looks like.
Then my mind travels to the terror I felt when I was thrown from Barrett’s bike.
That in the blink of an eye, Syd could have been left an orphan.
She could have been ripped away from the only family that has ever truly cared about her.
“Yeah, Barrett. If he’s part of this threat against our family then he deserves what’s coming.”