Chapter 13 #2
“King had a package sent to him.” He put his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, looking into the inky depths of the lake.
I stood a few feet away, also looking down at the water.
“It had a copy of mine and Wave’s birth certificate inside.
” He paused, but I kept quiet, guessing the worst part was yet to come. “There were photographs too.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“That is what King is trying to figure out. I mean, there is no question we’re his kids. He had that paternity test done when we were born, and he’s had another one since. So the birth certificate is a huge fucking question mark. But the pictures…”
“What about them?” I almost didn’t want to know the answer. War closed his eyes and blew out a breath. He’d seen these photographs.
I needed him to hurry the fuck up and tell me what they were because my pulse was racing, and I felt like I was about to burst out of my skin.
“Danica’s body. She’d been shot through the head.”
“Holy fuck,” I breathed out. King had kept that information close to his chest. We knew Danica was dead, and she had a lot to do with this, but shot through the head, which brought out a hell of a lot more questions.
Like, who did it? Why and what did it have to do with the Devil’s Chaos?
War told me all of this matter of factly.
Seeing his mother’s dead body didn’t affect him enough to react.
“No questions about what happened to her. Why, is a different matter?” He voiced my thoughts.
“How could he be sure it came from the Kingsmen?” I asked.
“Because King got a separate text asking for a meeting in relation to the parcel.”
I frowned at that. King had not agreed to meet the Kingsmen. In fact, as far as I was aware, he’d made no contact with them at all. Just brought Waverley here and went on the offensive with the guys who hit Connor.
“They knew we kicked Danica out years ago, and it was unlikely King would react to what they sent, right?” So what else was there that had King so spooked?
War nodded, his face screwed up in a grimace.
“What were the other pictures, Warren?”
He turned to look at me. I didn’t use his full name often these days. I could see pain in his eyes and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, that scared the shit out of me. I held my breath as I waited for him to go on.
“Wave, outside her apartment in North Carolina,” he blew out a breath. He sounded like he was in pain when he went on. “With cross hairs drawn over her face.”
I don’t know how long I’d sat at the lake after War headed back to the compound. We hadn’t talked much, War reiterated why it was so important that Wave was here. They knew how to get to her, where she was, and just how to force King’s hand.
I didn’t get why King hadn’t contacted the Kingsmen to talk about what it meant. I appreciated what War said about him not bowing down to their threats, but surely he would want to speak to them and figure it out.
That was why I wasn’t an officer involved in the serious decision making for the club. War said he hadn’t wasted any time getting to Waverley and bringing her back here. What I hadn’t known was a chapter nearer to her had been keeping an eye on her until War and I arrived.
He hadn’t stopped to discuss what the pictures and documents meant with the other officers.
All he cared about was getting her home safe.
I also understood why he didn’t want to give Waverley all the details.
He didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t doubt his reasoning behind it, but, I wondered if it was right keeping that from her.
Waverley had always been a willful pain in the ass, and I could already see she was getting anxious about being locked up here.
Connor and Rosa were the only things keeping her from kicking up a massive stink about it.
But it was only a matter of time before she defied King somehow and that could cause all kinds of problems. Especially with the Kingsmen lurking around, being brazen enough to throw a fucking bomb at the compound gates.
Sometimes, the best way to keep someone under control was to give them a bit of information, enough to scare them into compliance. I’d learned that from Ballistic, albeit for quite different reasons to this.
Case in point was his threatening that Kingsmen guy with his girlfriend and son. That knowledge had stopped him from doing something stupid, even if he knew he was going to die for it.
When I’d suggested telling Waverley, to my surprise, War shot me down. I wasn’t convinced he didn’t agree with the idea. King told him under no circumstances was Waverley to learn it was a death threat, a very real one, that had brought her back here.
I was so damn conflicted I didn’t know what the hell to think. The overall conclusion I came to was protecting Waverley at all costs. No matter what happened between us, seeing her dead wasn’t an option. I would rather die myself than allow her to be hurt.
I crouched at the water’s edge, leaning back on my heels as the sky got lighter, the black changing to a midnight blue as the orange of the rising sun hit the horizon.
I was exhausted from the events of the evening and all the revelations, but I was lost in thought about the complicated relationship between Waverley and me.
Painful memories took over, and I dropped on to my ass as my mind went back to that night, the night when everything I thought I knew shattered into a million pieces.
Wave was upset I wasn’t going to senior prom with her. She’d had it all planned out. Despite not being much of a girly girl, it was something she had wanted us to do and had even chosen the tie she was damn near forcing me to wear to match her dress.
King pulled us aside before we were due to get ready, saying he needed us on a job. I’d protested once but got shut down. Part of me suspected King was testing Warren and me to see if we were loyal to the club. Over his own daughter.
He knew what he was asking of us. And as much as War and I both hated letting her down, we didn’t have a choice.
War didn’t want to see her upset, but he wasn’t crying about the fact he was missing senior prom.
He was putting on a show, taking one of the vapid blonde bitches from school.
He hadn’t wanted to go with anyone, but he also couldn’t risk anyone asking questions about why he was going solo.
Telling her we weren’t going was hard. I hadn’t expected her to cry about it. Waverley wasn’t that kind of girl, and she hadn’t disappointed. She was pissed, that much was obvious, but she didn’t let it show, had even kissed me goodbye before she left.
I wasn’t being let off the hook. I’d understood Waverley would bide her time and get me back for it. I just hadn’t known how.
I felt fucking awful about it. Even though I hadn’t wanted to go to a stupid school dance, it meant a lot to her, and she meant a fuck of a lot to me. I wanted her to be happy. Yet, I’d watched her leave in that car with Joanna, her best friend back then and her boyfriend.
The job we were supposed to go on fell through. War wasn’t interested in coming along, said he would make it up to Waverley another way and headed to the party that was starting in the clubhouse.
I changed into the suit Waverley got me, Sans tie. I looked like a dick with that thing on, but I got on my bike and headed to the hotel where the dance was, thinking about how happy she was gonna be seeing me.
But that wasn’t what happened, and my heart ached again, thinking about what I saw when I got there. Like some kind of fucking idiot with a corsage wearing something I felt like a complete fucking tool wearing. All for her.
I’d watched her go to a car with Andrew Reinhart, one of the football players, who was a raging prick. He hated the MC and had no problem calling the club kids at the school trash, and whores, and any other vile name he could think of. And she was with him.
I’d stood on the sidewalk in the dark looking at that car, seeing their silhouettes coming together, watching him climb on top of her as the car started rocking. It took everything in me not to go over there and rip the door off the hinges and tear that fucker apart.
It was only that she had got into that car with him that stopped me. She had put herself in that vehicle with him and given him something she had promised was meant for me.
I hated her right then, hated what she was doing to us, and all logical thought left me. I got on my bike, tearing the suit jacket to shreds, and throwing it and the corsage into the gutter with my fucking heart.
I’d gone back to the party, got shit faced drunk and let one of the club whores climb all over me. Connor and Warren were too drunk to do much about it and I’d made sure they didn’t see too much, but I had seen King watching me.
I hadn’t cared. Let him think what he wanted of me. It was partly his fault anyway. If he hadn’t stopped me from going with her, she wouldn’t have done this to me.
He wasn’t stupid, he knew I was seeing his daughter, and any normal dad would have come over and asked what the fuck I was doing, but King wasn’t a normal father and over the years, I’d questioned whether he had been lying to us that night because he wanted something like that to happen. To push us apart.
No one could have predicted what Waverley did though, no one could have known how completely she had gutted me with her actions.
I wanted to hurt Waverley as much as she hurt me. I wanted to fucking destroy her. So I’d bided my time, knowing she’d be back and when she texted me to say she was headed home and asked if I was okay, I made my move.
How dare she fucking text me after what she did? Like she was going to just come back after fucking that cunt and expect me to just be waiting for her.
Nope, that was not what she saw when she got back.
She saw me laying a half-naked girl over the hood of a car in front of the compound, fucking her senseless, making her scream my name and I had watched her, watching us. Saw the tears in her eyes, the utter devastation that crossed her face as I smirked and looked through her like she wasn’t there.
I couldn’t carry on after she ran away into the dark, the sounds of her sobs filling the night air, competing with the sounds of the club girl giving me shit for stopping.
Waverley was getting what she deserved. I was angry with myself, and I stormed away from the clubhouse, headed up to the lake, where I screamed at the top of my lungs, hating her more with each passing second.
I took time alone up there, let my anger and heartache pour out of me. Wiped my tears and vowed I’d never let another woman get to me like this again.
Then I went back to the compound and got so drunk I couldn’t stand up.
Broke a damn table when I fell through it to the cheers and whoops of the other guys.
They loved me, they wanted me. The club was all that mattered.
That was the lesson I learned that night.
Warren and Connor had to get me back to my room.
They had no idea what was going on. Luckily, I hadn’t blurted out what happened. Somewhere deep down inside of me, no matter how broken I felt, how much I hated her, I still fucking loved her, and I couldn’t bring myself to bad mouth her.
I woke up to find she was missing, to a frantic Warren and Connor trying to track her down.
Then we found out she had gone to Rosa for help, and she was gone for good.
She had left to start a new life before college.
She had been begging us for years to leave with her.
Her decision to flee that night was because of what happened.
She felt guilty and wouldn’t be able to face me.
Those tears and that look in her eyes were about more than what she was seeing. She knew she had done me wrong. She knew she was getting what she deserved.
Of course, she didn’t know I had seen her. But I knew who started all of that. Her. It was all on her.
Good fucking riddance, I’d told myself. I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye and know what we did to each other that night.
It hadn’t been right to get back at her that way. I should have confronted her instead of fucking someone else, knowing she would see me. But I was a stupid kid. She was the one who cheated first, who pissed all over what we had. I wouldn’t be able to handle seeing her.
It hurt seeing Connor and Warren so lost after she was gone, and they misconstrued my behavior for feeling the same way. I didn’t bother correcting them.
They found out I fucked the whore though and even though they didn’t know Waverley saw it happen, they did figure it had something to do with her being gone and they kicked the shit out of me. I let them. It was what I deserved.
But all this time, I kept her part of it to myself. I couldn’t bring myself to let them think badly of her. They were hurting, and I didn’t want to add to that. I didn’t want them to hate her the way I did.
I still didn’t know why she did it and as the years passed, I told myself I didn’t care.
What was done was done.
And the worst part of it was, Andrew Reinhart now worked with the MC. His company was doing the construction work in the compound. I had to see that little shit on the regular and it took everything within me not to put Ballistic’s lessons to use on the smug little fucker.
All I could do was make myself scarce when he was around because if he ever attempted to speak to me, I’d punch him so goddamn hard he wouldn’t wake back up.
Yet, now, after hearing what War knew about the threat against her, I didn’t know what to do for the best. Steer clear still or hold her close and keep her safe. Should I go against King and War and tell her the truth? Or confront her about that night?
My head was a fucking mess. I needed to get it on straight. There was a war coming our way, and me getting lost in my feelings and the past would not help. I could keep her safe, but I could keep away from her while I did it. It was the only way I could get through this.
As much as I held a grudge about what happened that night, seeing her again proved one thing. I was a fucking idiot because, despite hardening myself against all women, she was still trapped inside.
She was behind the barbed wire around my heart. No matter how much time passed, she would always remain there.