Chapter Fourteen
Morgan
As soon as he stormed out of the clubhouse, I knew it was over. He had left me again. Only this time he wouldn’t be coming back.
“Morgan, this wasn’t your fault.”
I turned to the president of the Sons of Hell, a man I had looked up to all my life.
“I should have told him,” I whispered, turning back to look at the door.
“Morgan!” Henley rushed over and pulled me into her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t yours either,” Scribe insisted.
I closed my eyes as my body swayed with the weight of everything that had happened in the past twelve hours. Twelve hours and my life was completely upside down. My perfectly dull life now resembled the plot of a book or a movie.
And not a blockbuster hit, or a bestseller.
No, my life was a soap opera. With spouses coming back to life and mobster fathers who, once they found out, would also show up alongside my brother.
“Oh God,” I gasped. I looked at my mother; she opened her mouth to speak when her phone rang. “He called him!” I hissed.
My mother smiled. “It’s not him.” She lifted the phone to her ear and answered joyfully, “Freyja, it’s so good to hear from you.” My mother’s smile dropped, and she said, “What?” She was nodding. My mother was nodding her head as if Freyja could see her.
Freyja, who was with Duncan.
My father’s right-hand man.
“Thank you for calling, Freyja. Yes, we’ll be ready. I appreciate it.” My mother hung up and sighed.
“Benny?” King moved closer to my mother. The question wasn’t voiced out loud, but we all knew what it was, and I already knew the answer.
“Your father is on his way.”
“Already?” I asked. “Did King call him the second he got off the phone?”
I began to pace restlessly. My father was coming to Rosewood, and everyone knew who he was. Which meant he wouldn’t stay in the shadows. He wouldn’t keep to the privacy of my home.
“King didn’t tell him. Freyja did.”
“Fucking Lucille,” Scribe groaned.
My eyes bulged out of my head. “Lucille? Lucille Ball ratted me out to my father?” I looked at the ceiling. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I shouted.
“Freyja didn’t know what was happening; Lucille only told her that Sal needed to come to Rosewood. That you needed him.”
Staring at the ceiling, I whispered, “Thank you, Lucille.”
Because she was right; I needed my dad.
It was my dad who healed my first broken heart. Frankie Reads was my first boyfriend. We were fifteen years old, and he asked me to the school dance. Halfway through, he left me and disappeared.
Devlyn and I found him screwing Marlene Hubbard. Yup, that Marlene who was always a whore, even in high school.
“Benny, why don’t you take Morgan home? It won’t take O’Malley nearly as long as it will take King to get here.”
I spun around and looked at King. “I’m so sorry for barging into church. I wasn’t thinking, I just... I just reacted.”
“I know.”
I looked at him with a frown. “You don’t seem surprised to know who my dad is.”
King smiled. “Because I’ve always known.”
My mother stood beside me, and I heard her grumbling about asshole men and their egos.
“O’Malley came to me after you moved here. He asked me to keep an eye on you both.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, shaking my head, trying to fit something into place. “You knew? All this time you knew and never said a word?”
“There was no need to say anything.”
I heard my mother growl beside me. She’d never shown any type of anger toward my father until now.
“Let’s go, Morgan. I want to be there when your father gets to your house.”
The Sons of Hell brothers chuckled as my mother stomped outside. I followed her, only to be stopped by Gunner.
“Morgan, I didn’t know you were married.”
“I wasn’t, Gunner. He’d been dead for over a year.” I looked over at Sarah. “I’m so sorry.”
She rushed over and hugged me tightly. “You have nothing to apologize for. I know my husband’s a whore.”
“Hey!” Gunner shouted, and everyone in the room looked his way. “Not anymore,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry my past has caused you so much disruption.”
“I mean, would you really be an old lady if you didn’t come with chaos?” Henley snarked.
“I’m not an old lady,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper once I was outside. “Not anymore.”
All afternoon I had been on edge. How would I explain to my father that I was married? That I’d been pregnant? And that my husband, who died, was back from the dead?
My mom and I had just finished dinner when the door opened wide. As soon as I saw him, the tears fell, and I rushed into his open arms.
“What happened, baby?”
“Braesal O’Malley, you son of a bastard!” my mother shouted.
I felt him stiffen and I smiled. Despite being happy he was here, he’d lied to us. Multiple times.
“Benny?”
“Don’t you Benny me, you lying asshole!”
I looked up at my father. “King told us he’s known all along. That you went to him after we moved here,” I whispered, spoiling my mother’s fun of seeing what else he would admit to.
“I needed someone to watch over you both when I couldn’t. I won’t apologize for that.”
“You could have told me he knew,” she yelled, stomping her foot. My mother was the nicest, sweetest person you ever met. She didn’t get mad often, yet when she did, well, let’s just say she wasn’t the scariest person.
Devlyn and I had been terrified of her as kids, not because she yelled or she was mean. She didn’t even really ever punish us. But she had that look. The one that let you know she was disappointed in the actions you took. The choices you made.
And when someone as nice as my mother was disappointed in you, well, that shit hurt worse than any spanking ever could.
“If I told you he knew, it would have gotten around.”
My mother gasped.
I stepped out of my father’s arms, knowing he was in for it now.
“Are you calling me a gossip?” she clipped haughtily.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she gave him the look. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I heard my dad sigh.
“Benny, that’s not what I meant.”
He crossed the room and tried to pull her against him, but she turned on her heel and walked away, him following right behind her. All my life I wished they could have been together, but when I fell in love with Jude, I understood why they weren’t.
They were friends.
He was her best friend and vice versa. There was no doubt, as I watched my father grovel, that he loved my mother. It just wasn’t the right kind of love.
It wasn’t a passionate love, and my mother deserved passion.
And my father deserved someone who thought he hung the moon. Not because of what he did, but because of who he was. He was my hero. He always would be.
“Hey, kiddo.”
I turned around at the voice. The tears fell again, and I found myself wrapped up in the arms of Cormac Delaney. He was the only one I called uncle because I couldn’t understand how he had the same last name as my mom without being related.
“Uncle Mac.” I sobbed into his shirt as he rubbed my back.
“Who do we have to kill, sweetheart?”
“He’s already died once,” I said absently.
My father spun around and asked, “What?”
“Mac, are you hungry?”
“I am, Benny. Did you cook?” Uncle Mac asked, grinning at my father.
“We aren’t here to eat.”
“No, we’re here for your daughter, and to kick some punk’s ass. I can’t do that on an empty stomach.”
“I did.” My mom smiled, then pulled the leftovers out and started making two plates. My father grudgingly sat at the table and waited for my mother to serve him. When she set his plate in front of him, he grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, but you’re still on my shit list. And on your daughter’s.”
“Morgan’s? Why?” he asked, turning to face me.
Oh right, I was mad at him for keeping secrets. Only now, the wind had been knocked out of my sails because my biggest secret—the one that I had kept from everyone but my mother—was alive and in Rosewood.
At least I thought he was. I wasn’t sure where he went when he left the clubhouse. I wasn’t sure if he was even coming back.
“You didn’t tell me I had a brother.”
My father dropped his head, his chin hitting his chest, as Mac threw his head back and laughed.
“I told you, fucker!” Mac pulled out his phone and sent a text. I assumed it was to Cian and Duncan.
“How did you find out?” he asked.
“Devlyn told me.”
My father’s head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed. “How the fuck did Devlyn know?”
“Devlyn moved to Louisiana,” my mother supplied. “She’s with a man named Gator and has triplets.”
“Gator is the president of the Bourbon Kings,” I offered when my father looked at my mother as if she’d grown horns.
“Fuckin’ bikers,” he groaned.
“You should have told me.”
“I know, and I planned on it, once this shit was done. I didn’t want you in danger.” He covered my hand with his and squeezed it.
“I know him,” I said quietly.
“Gator?”
“My brother,” I corrected.
My father stared at me. I bit my lip, a nervous habit whenever I was confronted with something uncomfortable.
“How?”
I looked to my mother for help, and she shook her head. “It’s time you told him, Morgan. Everything.”
“Tell me what?” my father asked, his head twisting from me to my mother and back again as though he were watching a tennis match.
Mac sat quietly eating his dinner, but I knew he was tuned in, listening closely.
“I met someone when I was in college.”
Mac’s head snapped up, and he said, “Please tell me you didn’t fall in love with your fuckin’ brother.”
“Eww, no.” My body wracked with shivers at the thought. “I met a man named Jude Peterson. He was King’s best friend.”
“Was?” my father pressed.
“Jude died seven years ago. He was in the same club as King. He was one of the club’s enforcers, and he was in a warehouse when it exploded. His road name was Chasm.”
My father stiffened and looked at Mac, who nodded. My father turned his body to face me and held my hands. “Baby, Chasm isn’t dead.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “Jude and I fell in love. I found out I was pregnant and we got married a few days later.”
“You’re married?” my father whispered, dropping my hands and sitting back.
“Sal, let her finish,” my mother said.
“She got married without me, Benny. Were you there?” His question sounded more like an accusation.
“No.”
“Daddy, please listen. A few weeks after we got married, Jude and King were on a run when Jude went into a warehouse without King. King was on the phone with his president when the warehouse blew up. We believed Jude was inside.”
Based on the scars I’d felt covering his body, he had been inside, but somehow survived. The tears were steady now. I could never hold them back when I thought about that time.
“What happened to the baby?” Mac asked.
“A few days later, King came to check on me and found me unconscious and bleeding. I’d lost the baby.”
“Oh, Morgan.” My father wrapped me in his arms and held me. I loved my mother, and she was the best, but there was something different when you were comforted by your dad.
“After I lost the baby, I came home. Mom and King are the only ones who knew about the baby.”