Chapter 19 Saint
SAINT
“What the fuck is going—”
“Shh,” I said curtly.
I heard Ryder’s bike from off in the distance, but I didn’t think he’d really come in, engines a blazin’.
I shot him a look that told him to shut the fuck up, then I went back to watching Amberly.
There was something I was missing. Something big.
Something I needed to know. And the pit of my gut told me it was this thing Amberly still felt as if he couldn’t tell me.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on now? Or am I gonna have to cut that damn hand off to get you to talk?” Ryker asked.
I sighed. “Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.”
“Finally. And you’re fucking welcome. Now, you gonna tell me what’s up?”
I paused. “I think Amberly’s waiting for someone from the mafia right now.”
“What?”
“A guy by the name of Vlad.”
“Are you—”
I shot him another look and he drew in a deep breath through his nose.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he whispered harshly.
“Trust me, I’m just as pissed as you are right now. She’s putting everything in jeopardy. But there has to be a reason. I know there’s something she isn’t telling me, and I think it has to do with why she left in the first place.”
“You told us she was captured when she was younger.”
I nodded. “After she was kicked out of her parent’s place.
Look, it’s a long and complicated story.
But Amberly had plenty of resources if she’d just come back to school.
And she didn’t. Her parents kicked her out, and she stayed gone.
Does that sound like a scared eighteen-year-old to you?
A scared and sheltered eighteen year old? ”
He shrugged. “I went through some rough shit at eighteen years old.”
I rolled my eyes. “Never mind.”
“Look, I get it. I get what you’re saying. But this is fucking serious. Is she about to turn on us? Is she about to tell him some shit she shouldn’t be? Why is she reporting to this guy? And where the fuck did she learn how to ride a motorcycle?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m hoping to get some answers simply by looking.”
The both of us turned our attention back to Amberly. And the more she paced, the more worried I grew for her. Yes, I was upset. Yes, I was struggling with all this. Yes, I kind of wanted to pop out, throw her over my shoulder, and drag her the fuck back to the warehouse. But I needed answers.
And I had a feeling this encounter would give them to me.
“So, we just gonna hunker down and wait?” Ryker asked.
“Yep,” I said, popping the “p”.
“You know how long we have to be waiting?”
“If you’re going to keep asking questions like this, I’ll be good on my own. Just try to fend Diesel off once y—”
Loud classical music went off in the distance and paused.
Ryker furrowed his brow, and I noticed that Amberly stopped pacing.
Every single part of her perked up. She kept looking around, whipping her head from side to side.
As if it were on a desperate swivel. She recognized that music.
She knew what was coming. And as I turned the engine of my bike off, I slipped away from it.
Crouching behind the truck just in case I had to run after her.
Then, a gaudy-ass red SUV pulled up.
“Yep. Looks like the mafia all right. Way too much money, and not enough sense to use it,” Ryker murmured.
“Shh,” I said.
I put my gun on my holster as Amberly started trembling.
Even from a distance, I saw her shaking.
My heart ached for her. Even though I was pissed off with her, I still wanted to pull her close.
I still wanted to soothe her. I still wanted to tell her it’d be okay.
And as I watched some grimy, black-suited motherfucker climb out of the SUV, my blood boiled.
“Easy does it, Saint. If you want answers, you can’t kill the man yet,” Ryker murmured.
I wished to fuck on high I could’ve heard their exchange.
Their conversation. But all I could do was read Amberly’s body language.
She was frightened but determined. Cowering away, yet standing her ground.
It was the strangest dichotomy I’d ever witnessed, and I figured this big secret had to be important.
Worth giving her life over. And there were only a few things in the entire world I could conjure in my mind’s eye that were worth giving my life over.
“Nah, it couldn't be,” I murmured.
“What?” Ryker whispered.
I watched that mafia maniac touch Amberly and I tensed. I gripped my gun and pulled it out of its holster, only for Ryker’s hand to come down against my forearm. It damn near knocked my gun to the ground and I shot him a deadly look. One that told him he really needed to watch his fucking ass.
“Chill out. Take some breaths. You’re about to ruin your quest for answers, man.”
“I don't like him touching her,” I grumbled.
“Should we intervene, then? Because I got you if we do,” he said.
Then, I heard a door rip open off in the distance.
“Mommy!”
I whipped my head back around and watched a kid leap forth from the SUV.
And when I saw him, my jaw dropped open.
My eyes widened. Amberly sobbed from a distance as she wrapped her arms around the kid, burying her face into his dirty blonde hair.
I couldn't catch my breath. I watched the two of them embrace as Amberly tried picking him up.
She grunted and groaned, holding this kid next to her as he clung to her.
Tightly. Calling her the one thing I never would have suspected was part of all this.
Holy fuck, Amberly had a son.
“Saint?” Ryker asked.
“I see,” I said flatly.
“That wasn’t what I was gonna ask.”
I slowly holstered my gun. “‘I don’t know’ is the answer to your next question.”
I ran my eyes over the boy as Amberly pulled away.
And when she smoothed his hair back, even I saw the keen resemblance.
The shape of his jawline. The length of his legs.
The way his shoulders stood so broadly, even for a child.
The kid even had the same small hump at the base of his neck that I had.
A physical deformity that would only be physically covered up by muscle, should he want to cover it up as an adult.
His legs slightly bowed like mine. His hair was thick and wiry, like mine.
Even his damn lips were shaped like mine.
Holy fuck, that child looks just like me.
I stood there, unable to get my bearings as I watched Amberly hold this child.
Cradle this little boy as if it were her life’s force.
She cried. He cried. They both cried together as they spoke with one another.
And again, I wished to the heavens I knew what they were saying.
It broke my heart, watching the scene unfold.
Hearing Amberly’s desperate sobs rise above the chaos of the restaurant parking lot made me want to put a bullet between Vlad’s eyelids.
It all made sense now.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“Yep. I see why she kept that from you now,” Ryker murmured.
I elbowed him in his ribcage, wanting nothing more than for him to shut up with the sarcastic remarks. I hadn’t asked Toxin to come on this mission with me for a fucking reason. But damn, if Ryker didn’t sound just like him right now.
“How could she not have told me?” I asked.
Ryker sighed. “Dude, you said it yourself. She got kicked out. She was probably already in the hands of Vlad and the mafia by the time she figured out she was pregnant.”
I shook my head. “No. No, no, no. She told me she went back to her parents.”
“Say that again?”
“Amberly told me she went back to her parents. Went back to try and beg for them to take her back. I know for a fact now she did that because she found out she was pregnant. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“You don’t know that for sure. For all you know—”
“I know her.”
Ryker sighed. “You slept with her. There’s a difference.”
I gripped Ryker’s arm before whipping him around. I pinned him against the truck, glaring at him with a force unrecognizable to even myself. His hands fisted my leather jacket, keeping me as bay as I leered at him.
“I’ll put a bullet in your thigh if you don’t settle down,” he said in a warning tone.
“I. Know. Amberly. I know she went back to her parents because she figured out she was pregnant. And if she went back to them, she could’ve come to me to talk. She could have at least done me that courtesy.”
I shoved Ryker into the truck before I let him go.
“And what would you have done if she had? Hmm? An eighteen-year-old flunk-out of high school with no plans for college? You really telling me you would’ve taken on some random pregnant chick and a kid back then, Saint?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I guess know we’ll never know. And that’s the fucking point.”
And as Amberly’s voice hit my ears, I heard it turn to desperation again.
I whipped around, only to see Vlad reaching for that child.
I pulled my gun and aimed it at his fucking head.
I cocked it, feeling the metal settle into the palm of my hand.
But before I could shoot him, Ryker wrestled the gun away from me.
He ejected the magazine and stored it in his pocket while Vlad and Amberly went back to talking.
“Cool. Your fucking. Jets,” Ryker murmured.
My emotions were all over the place. And I didn’t know what the hell to do about any of it.