Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
KING
The last collection is from a man who owes the club around fifteen thousand dollars. He always pays on time, always a pleasant enough guy. He’s a gambler and can’t seem to stop, even if it means his family suffers.
He works at a factory in the same industrial district we’ll be picking up shipments from in a few months once the trucking company gets rolling.
He’s working tonight. He always works nights.
Pulling up to the back of the building, Clink parks the delivery van, and I lean my head back against the seat, closing my eyes for just a moment’s rest.
“For what it’s worth,” Clink mutters, “I love that bitch’s cupcakes. I also think you two complement one another well.”
“You just don’t think we should be together,” I say.
He chuckles. “I don’t give a fuck who you stick your dick into or declare your undying love for, but I think it’s going to get messy, that’s all I’m saying.”
“And Ryan’s not messy?” I ask.
Clink snorts. “That’s another one I’ve warned about. Holy fuck. You guys pick the most complicated fucking bitches to fall for. You won’t catch me doing that shit. I get a woman to call my old lady, it’s gonna be easy as fucking pie, mark my goddamn words.”
I want to laugh in his face because it’s clear that he has no idea how the heart works. Sure, he knows how his dick works, but past that, he has no clue. I was the same way before I walked into that cute-as-fuck bakery.
There is a knock at my window, and I lift my head, turning to find my client.
He takes a step backward and shoves his hands into his pockets, which tells me that he doesn’t have the money.
I almost laugh as I push the door open, but you can’t show emotion, and he needs to know that this is unacceptable.
I step down onto the blacktop and place my hands on my hips, tilting my head to the side as I watch him for a moment. He shifts from foot to foot, then lets out a long sigh. I wait for his words, and I know they are coming. His words of denial, of being denied payment.
“I don’t have it,” he murmurs.
“Figured that’s what you were going to say. Do you have a reason for me that is legit?” I ask.
He flicks his gaze down to his feet, then slowly lifts it back to meet mine. “No,” he confesses.
“I appreciate your honesty, but honesty doesn’t pay the bills.”
I watch as he gulps, watching me for a moment before he turns his back to me.
I think about asking him what the fuck he’s doing when he spins back around.
He’s got tears in his eyes, and I don’t understand what the fuck is going on, but then he lunges forward, and I feel it before I realize what’s happened.
Hot pain slices through me. He cries out, snot and tears flying from his mouth and eyes. It’s a fucking shit show, and all I can focus on is the fact that he’s crying, and it seems really funny to me. But then the pain takes over as he pulls away from me.
“I’m sorry, King,” he mutters. “I didn’t have a choice.”
I fall to my knees, then flat on my face.
The world around me instantly turns blurry and then black.
Darkness consumes me, and as much as I want to believe that I’m going to make it, I realize in this moment that I probably won’t.
I can’t even scream. There’s nothing I can do to alert Clink that I need help.
My final thoughts are of Shawn.
I love her.
I don’t even know her, but I fucking love her.
SHAWN
As I close up the shop, I am filled with nothing but elated happiness.
I can’t believe this is my life. I’m going to go home and wait for my man.
My man. God, another thing that I didn’t think was even a possibility.
I have a man. I just figured I would stay single forever so I wouldn’t repeat my mother’s mistakes with men.
Carrying the chocolate cake that I didn’t sell, the second chocolate cake I made today because, yes, the first one did sell. I can’t even believe that this is real life. I sold two dozen cupcakes, every cookie I baked, and a chocolate cake.
They were all people who either came to the farmers’ market or heard from a friend who was at the farmers’ market about my desserts.
I even made an extra batch of red velvet cupcakes just so that I would have some in the case.
I didn’t sell out of them, but I am going to package them up for the guys at the clubhouse tomorrow.
But tonight, I celebrate with cake.
No… we celebrate with cake.
Climbing the staircase of my apartment complex, I take my key out and open the door, closing and locking it behind me.
I make my way toward the kitchen counter, set the box down, then head straight toward my bedroom to get ready and shower after a long day of selling and baking. Then baking and selling.
I’m exhausted, which is a feeling I am excited about. I can’t remember feeling exhausted about a hard day’s work. I’ve been emotionally exhausted, but not physically this way. I’m downright giddy.
That is, until a man’s throat clears. I freeze, then swing my head around to see who sitting in my living room. I expect to find my brother, but it’s not him. It’s a man I’ve never seen before.
I know I should scream, that I should be terrified, but the way he’s watching me, the way he’s looking at me, I’m not. I’m oddly comfortable.
“You have no fucking idea who I am, do you?” he asks.
Turning my body completely, I cross my arms over my chest and tilt my head to the side. I take him in, my gaze searching his for a long moment. I recognize his eyes, but I have no idea where from.
That’s all I have.
His eyes.
“I don’t,” I confess.
He chuckles, but it sounds odd. Like it’s not something he does very often—laugh. He stays seated, his gaze still very much focused on me as I wait for him to say whatever the hell he’s here to say so he can leave.
“Doesn’t surprise me the bitch never told you about me.”
Leaning forward a little more, I narrow my eyes and picture him with darker hair and a shorter dark beard. He looks exactly like my brother, except a couple of decades older. My breath hitches, and I stumble backward a few steps.
“Figure it out?” he asks.
“Are you my father?”
His lips twitch. “At least you ain’t stupid like that bitch that shot you out from her snatch.”
I wrinkle my nose at the description of my birth because that’s just gross. “Why did you break into my apartment?” I demand. “And what do you want?”
He places his palms on the arms of my chair and pushes up to stand. I stay where I am, my feet planted as he moves toward me. He stops a few feet away from me, tipping his chin down as he looks into my eyes.
“I’m here because you fucked up, baby girl, and I’m not about to watch you ruin your whole goddamn life.”
“What are you even talking about?” I ask.
“That guy, King? Stay the fuck away.”
My head jerks back slightly. I can’t believe he even knows I’m seeing Elvis, let alone is here warning me away from him. Then, as the seconds tick by, I decide that I’m pissed off about his being here. Not just being here, but his presence in general.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” I hiss. He jerks back slightly, his eyes widening as he stares at me. “I don’t see you for at least twenty years. You break into my place. You scare me. And then you warn me off the man I’m seeing? Why?”
There is a moment of silence as he continues to watch me, though he doesn’t look the least bit surprised by my outburst. In fact, he still kind of appears to find me or maybe the situation comical.
I want to slap the smile off his face.
“Yeah, because he’s the enemy, Shawn. And you are a goddamn princess.”
I don’t think. I react. And my reaction is to burst out laughing. It takes me a moment to catch my breath, but when I do, I have to wipe the tears from my eyes from laughing so hard. “A princess?” I ask.
“A princess,” he confirms with a nod of his chin.
“Listen,” I say.
I pause for a moment when I realize that I don’t even know his name.
In fact, I almost laugh because I know more about Elvis than I do this man standing in front of me.
I could tell you the exact shade of Elvis’s blue eyes without even looking into them.
My own father, I couldn’t even tell you what color his eyes are, let alone the shade.
“The only thing I’m the princess of is maybe trash. That’s about it.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You’re the princess of the Nomad Kings MC because I’m the fucking king.”
Leaning forward slightly, I narrow my eyes. “I don’t even know what the hell any of that means. I’m not a princess. I’m not shit. I don’t even know you. But what I do know is that I am Elvis’s woman.”
“You are the princess. I’m the president of the club, and you’re my daughter. That’s the way it fuckin’ works.”
Instead of sitting around and volleying back and forth with one another, I shut the whole thing down. Because without a doubt, we will never agree on any of this. I don’t even know who the hell he is, and now he’s trying to claim me as his daughter and tell me I’m some princess. I think not.
“You need to leave.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I don’t fucking think so.”
Not that I really expected him to listen to me, but it still pisses me off.
Then something happens.
I don’t expect it.
He whistles, and it’s so loud that it hurts my ears.
I try to cover my ears, but I’m unable to. Before I can do anything else, he wraps his fingers around my forearms to stop me. Before I realize what’s truly happening, I’m being pulled away. He releases his hands from my arms as a strange man drags me away from my place.
I fight.
With all that I have and all that I am, I fight against him.
This stranger.
But it doesn’t work.
Instead, I’m thrown into the bed of the pickup truck, and moments later, I’m driven away from my apartment.
Away from anyone who could help me. Away from Elvis.
I have no idea where we’re going. I scramble to my ass, bringing my knees up to my chest. Wrapping my arms around them, I place my chin between them and glance around the pickup bed at the men who are watching me as if I’m a caged animal at the zoo.
There are three guys in the bed of the truck with me, their eyes focused on me and only me.
I would be lying if I said they weren’t hungry gazes because they are.
They’re dressed like my father, like Elvis, wearing jeans, boots, and leather vests.
Except, instead of Elvis’s friends, these men appear to have a mixture of emotions running through them, anger and hunger at the top.
One of them reaches out for me, but I swat his hand away.
I know he could do whatever he wanted to me, and I wouldn’t be able to fight him off.
He’s about a hundred pounds heavier than me, with packed-on muscle that I definitely do not have.
But I don’t want anyone else to touch me, maybe not even ever, just Elvis.
Only him.
The men thankfully leave me alone. For now, I watch as they move to the other side of the truck bed. It doesn’t take us long to arrive at our destination. I’m not sure what to expect, but an almost exact replica of Elvis’s clubhouse comes into view.
I blink a few times, then frown as the pickup drives right past that building toward an oversized metal barn in the back of the property.
The sight of that building fills me with pure dread.
Not that I was okay with being kidnapped, but something inside of me screams not to go inside of that building.
But I don’t have a choice.
Not a single one.
Tears roll down my cheeks as pain slices through my belly as I’m dragged into the metal shop building and then tossed into a cage. An actual cage. Like an animal locked in with no way out.