Chapter 2
Two
Just found out that I’m part of the problem. But that’s okay. It feels good to be a part of something.
—Apollo’s secret thoughts
APOLLO
“Yeah?” I answered as I headed for the coat check and got my jacket from the man that’d taken it earlier, as planned.
“You ignored my calls earlier, asshole,” my best friend and fellow club brother, Knight, grumbled. “What the fuck?”
“Business as usual,” I grumbled. “What’s up? How’s Elaine?”
“She’s fine. We’re just worried about you.”
I sighed. “I’m fine. Just following someone at the moment.”
Knight didn’t find that odd, so he didn’t even address it.
Instead he asked, “Will you make it home for my birthday?”
Knight’s birthday was literally next week.
“You know I wouldn’t miss that.” I laughed.
Why?
Because Elaine made the best damn cookies ever, and she always made sure to have plenty for everyone.
“Good,” he grumbled. “Be careful.”
After I promised I would be, I hung up and pocketed my phone before glancing up at the coat check guy who’d taken my coat earlier.
He smiled at me timidly before handing it over.
I palmed him a hundred-dollar bill, then carried my coat out of the building with it slung over my forearm.
I was reaching into my coat pocket to pull out the note that the coat checker had left for me when I saw her coming outside.
She was right on the heels of Eugene, sticking to the shadows as she hurried to follow behind him.
Intrigued, I watched from my own set of shadows as she waited for his car to be brought around by the valet.
Intrigued beyond belief—because curiosity was my downfall, and I could never let something that caught my curiosity go—I headed to my own car to follow the girl.
Eugene got to the car and tossed the guy a wadded-up twenty before he dropped down into the car that was more of a statement than a quality car, and sped away.
I watched as the stunning woman—even dressed up as circumspect as she could be with black skinny jeans pasted onto every curve, and that tight as fuck long-sleeve black top with the scoop neck that revealed that badass windchime tattoo on the back of her neck—took off behind him in what was obviously a rental car.
She was swerving all over the road in it, which meant to me she’d never driven such a responsive car.
But I commended her efforts.
Had she not gotten a flashy car, she would’ve stuck out worse.
Smart and sexy as hell.
Eugene drove like a bat out of hell, but like most people who came up here, they didn’t care that it would get them nowhere when they did. DC traffic was stupid busy and there wasn’t a person alive who could get through it any faster than the next.
“What’s the plan, Stan?” I said to her as she lost him at a light.
I smiled when she turned right, then swung left and came out at the stoplight before taking a right back onto the road she’d been on.
I followed suit, staying behind her as she sped to catch back up to Eugene.
He turned left down a residential road and then pulled to a stop next to a gate where he inputted a code.
The woman didn’t follow him inside, which likely would’ve caught Eugene’s attention, and instead turned down a road where she immediately pulled off.
I took the opposite direction and swung around to the side street before pulling off myself.
I got out and shoved my phone into my pocket, sticking to the shadows as I made my way to the gate where I could now see my little cat burglar heading toward the keypad.
She stared at it with her teeth bit between her lip, and I couldn’t help myself from pulling my phone out and doing what I do best—hacking.
The gate was open seconds later, and she was staring at it like a divine miracle that’d just fallen into her lap.
She started running, keeping to the shadows, but it was quite comical because all I had to do to keep up with her was go from a slow walk to a regular walk.
I followed behind her, keeping to the shadows myself, until we got to what I knew to be Eugene’s house.
I hadn’t been there in person, but I did my research on the people that wanted something from me—and even those that didn’t.
I knew where she was headed, even though it took her a few times of looking into people’s windows before she finally settled on the one that belonged to Eugene.
That’s when she gasped and leaned forward, seeing a woman who looked a whole lot like her coming out of the house to meet Eugene in the driveway.
“Hello, baby,” the woman greeted Eugene.
“Hello, darling.” Eugene took the steps two at a time as he headed toward the older version of the woman. “I’ve missed you.”
“Oh, hell no,” the woman said as she started to stomp. “You. Fucking. Bitch!”
I moved closer so I could get a closer look at the show.
“What…” Eugene gasped. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
That’s when the woman picked her phone up and aimed it at the two people in front of her.
“Look, Daniella,” the woman whom Eugene had called darling screeched. “It’s not what it looks like!”
“I’m not Daniella!” my current obsession snapped.
“I’m Dru, and you’d know that if you came home every once in a while.
But oh, no. I’m sorry, I’m too busy. I have to visit the world.
I can’t come see my dying father because I’m in Africa!
Well, listen, asshole. This isn’t the world.
And this certainly isn’t Africa. This is Washington, DC, and just to point out, you’re dating the same man as your niece! ”
Well, this just got even more interesting.
“I don’t…” the aunt started to explain, but a fourth party entered the chat and the phone finally popped up with a person on the other end of the line. “No, I’m not!”
“Dru, I don’t have time to deal with your…” The woman, whom I assumed was Daniella, paused halfway through her dismissal. “What the hell is going on right now?”
“What’s going on is I just caught Aunt Jennifer, Eugene’s ‘baby,’ in a lip lock with Eugene. Oh, and she’s not in Africa. She’s in Washington, DC.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “This is not happening.”
I looked to Eugene, who hadn’t said much of anything just yet, but I could see him inching his way down the length of his car, likely aiming to escape.
The aunt and both nieces noticed his escape attempt, though, and they all started yelling at him at once.
He froze, eyes huge as saucers, and stood there dumbly as he tried and failed to come up with a good enough excuse for his exit.
Surprisingly, it was him explaining to the sexy little number who’d caught my eye at the restaurant.
“Listen, Dru,” Eugene said. “I can explain everything. You just have to let me do that.”
“Explain to me? What are you talking about? How about you explain to your girlfriend?” she suggested, then hung up on her sister.
She shoved her phone into her pocket and stared at her aunt for a long second before she said, “You know he’s dead, right?”
Jennifer nodded, her face solemn.
“You knew that he’d been dying, and you still didn’t go home?”
Again with the nodding.
“Okay.” She shook her head. “As long as you know that. I’m not going to make you explain this.
” She pointed at the two in front of her.
“Just leave me the hell out of it. And don’t make me attend y’all’s farce of a wedding, Eugene, when we both damn well know that you don’t care about her.
Also, just sayin’, but you may be ‘reformed’ as you’d once said, but Daniella isn’t.
This is going to get ugly, and you know it. ”
Eugene didn’t say anything, but he did glance over at Jennifer.
When neither one said anything more, Dru took that as her cue to leave.
She headed back down the length of the street and walked right past me before I fell into step a couple of yards behind her.
She stopped when she got to the gate, unsure how to get out.
I pulled out my app and let her out, despite my every instinct screaming at me to make a move.
I waited until she was well and truly out of the line of sight before I headed to my own car and went to my home away from home—a.k.a. a small studio apartment near the airport.
It was everything I wanted it to be.
Impersonal, and not a hint of memory.
Sometimes, when I was at home, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
All the memories of my son there, it made me want to scream.
Even though I hated being in DC with a passion, I hated being at home in Dallas even more.
Everything in Dallas reminded me of my son, Tavi.
The grass in the front yard—he loved when we drew patterns in it.
The old swing set outside—we’d built it together from the ground up.
Passing by his school every single day—seeing the kids out there where my son should’ve been felt like a dagger straight to the heart.
But the worst part of all was that I couldn’t be with my own found family—the Truth Tellers MC—without feeling like my heart was breaking.
I loved the guys from the club.
I would do anything for them.
But they were all moving on. Even the one that I’d related to the most—Gunner.
They all had kids. Wives. Responsibilities.
The only one left that didn’t was Jasper, and he was as touchy-feely as a cactus.
He didn’t want to be messed with, and he certainly didn’t want to hear about petty problems.
In the beginning, being a Texas State Representative had been a means to an end. Get the person that was responsible for my son’s torture and get out.
Well, I got the person responsible—and ridded the world of a violent predator—but I found myself staying.
Not because I wanted to be in politics—I’d rather have my left nut amputated—but because no one else was fixing this place, it might as well be me.
And, the bonus part was that I got to breathe here, even if it felt like I couldn’t sleep with my eyes closed.
One bad part about not having my club around me was that I never quite felt safe enough to let go.
If you let go here, you were swallowed whole.
I got into my car and was heading out into traffic back to my place when my phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Brother.” Webber’s deep drawl filled my car. “When are you coming home?”
I hesitated.
I hadn’t planned on coming home.
There were things to do here, and happiness to avoid…
“What do you need?”
There was a long pause and then, “Why aren’t you coming home, Finnian?”
Ruh-roh. He’d real-named me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“How about you make it tonight?”
“I can make it tonight if you need me to make it tonight.”
There was a pause and then, “It needs to be tonight.”
I cursed. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.”
Fuck.