Chapter Twenty-Seven
Melissa
“Mellie,” King called out.
Inhaling a deep breath, the scent of Dani’s shampoo filled my olfactory senses, calming my racing heart. She didn’t have that baby smell mother’s talk about. The pheromones released from the top of a baby’s head that not only aids in breastfeeding but calms the mother’s hormones after birth. But just having her here in my arms and smelling her shampoo was like taking a valium.
“Can you tell us what you know?”
“At the beginning of December, Zach called and asked me to take Dani on as a patient. He explained...” I stopped and looked around, biting my lip. I couldn’t share Dani’s history with these men.
“We know about the Trick Pony.” I looked over at Cash. I knew Cash more than I knew King. Cash had prospected the same time as Gunner, so they were often together when Gunner stopped by the house for dinner each night.
“I started working with Dani, and less than two weeks into her sessions, Danny left. Dante said there was a problem in New York and he had to get back. A few weeks after that, Dante showed up at my office late at night asking me to keep Danika.”
“When was that?” King asked.
“The 29 th of December. A few days before New Year’s. He said Danny was in trouble and he had to go. He explained he couldn’t take Dani with him because it wasn’t safe. That no one could know where she was.”
“How did you know to come here?” another man asked.
“I didn’t,” I scoffed. “I went to Arkansas.”
“To find Gunner?” King asked.
“To find Ellie.”
The six men still in the room all looked confused. Now they knew how I felt.
“Why would you go to Arkansas to look for Ellie?”
“Dante told me he would contact me every night to let me know he was alive. He said if forty-eight hours passed and I hadn’t heard from him, to bring Dani to Ellie Thomas. He said she was an old lady in the Silver Shadows MC. Well, of course I was very familiar with that club, or so I thought. So, I went to Little Rock.”
I knew I could clear everything up if I just gave them the entire story at once, but I was angry. I was angry with my brother. I was angry with Zach. I wasn’t angry with Travis; he hadn’t done anything wrong. But I was angry he was part of my brother’s club. He was guilty by association.
I know I’m being irrational, bitch.
“Mellie, if you knew she was part of Gunner’s club, why didn’t you come here?”
I glared at Cash. It wasn’t his fault my brother was an asshole. But still, he was also guilty by association.
“Because Gunner never told me he fucking moved!”
“Oh shit.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Goddamn asshole.”
The men around me cursed. My eyes were still on Cash. He looked haunted. His eyes were red rimmed, and his cheeks were hollow. He was as handsome as he was when I met him when he was nineteen, but I guess life had taken its toll.
“Mellie. When did Dante stop contact?”
Turning back to King, I answered, “January 24 th .”
I watched the club president as he lifted an eyebrow in a silent question. King and Gunner were close. I knew that. King had eaten dinner with us many times over the years until Gunner shipped me off to school and abandoned me. I knew how to read him. It was the same expression he gave me when Gunner asked me about school and I lied, telling him everything was great. There were a lot of things I never told Gunner.
After a long slow exhale, giving myself time to come to terms with what I needed to say, I closed my eyes and confessed, “I had no intention of bringing Dani here. Dante gave me paperwork proving I was Dani’s mom and a black AmEx card with no limit. I was going to disappear with her. Danny and Dante knew the names they had given us, and if they survived whatever shit they were involved in, I knew they would come find us. So, I sold my practice, then Dani and I left Oklahoma.”
Holding up his hand to stop the other men from asking more questions, King’s eyes bored into mine.
“Everything, Mellie.”
I bit my lip in apprehension. I knew once I told him everything, he would call the others back in the room.
“I don’t want to talk to him, King. He left me.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Do I? He dropped me off at school and I never heard from him again!” I shouted, causing Dani to jump in my arms. She had never heard me yell.
“What the hell is going on?” I looked over at the man that asked, and the name on his cut said Blade. Doing a quick scan, I registered the names of the others in the room I didn’t know. Gunner’s club brothers.
Men he trusted. Men Dante trusted.
“Why did you come here, Mellie?” I closed my eyes, and when I opened my mouth to answer, King barked, “The fucking truth.”
“I’m being followed,” I confessed quietly.
“Fuck. Jack, go get them back in here.”
“King, please.”
He stood from the table and walked around until he stood in front of me. When he crouched down, he laid a hand on my knee.
“You know I can’t keep this from him.”
“He doesn’t care about me.”
“You know that’s not true. He loves you.”
I shook my head. He was wrong. You didn’t abandon the people you loved. It was why I wouldn’t leave Dani here without me.
She was mine to love.
She was mine to protect.
“Mellie, Dani needs to go to Ellie.”
“No.”
“She doesn’t need to hear this.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Danny trusts her.”
“Danny fucking left, King. So did Dante. They both left their little girl to go do who fucking knows what.”
The church doors opened, and Zach and Travis walked in.
Zach returned to his seat, and Travis sat next to me. His arm stretched out on the back of my chair.
“She can’t stay in here, Mellie.”
“Then let Amber take her. I trust Amber.”
King looked at Jack who left the room again. He stood from his position at my feet, running his hand over my hair, and walked back around the table.
A moment later, Amber was next to me. I locked my gaze with hers. “Can you watch her?”
“Of course. Do you want me to take her up to your room?”
“Please,” I begged.
“Come on, sweetheart.” Amber lifted her tiny body onto her lap and I kissed Dani’s cheek.
“Mama will be back soon. You have fun with Amber.”
Dani looked at me, and I tried my best to give her a reassuring smile. When she looked up at Amber and smiled, I knew she would be ok. The two of them left the room just as Gunner returned.
“What the fuck is going on?” he asked.
“You will sit and keep your fucking mouth shut while Mellie tells us what is going on. As far as she is concerned, you are not related right now. Sit in your fucking chair,” King ordered when Gunner tried to sit next to me.
“King—”
“Park your ass.” King pointed to the chair between him and Jack. Gunner hesitated before finally moving away from me. The breath I held, waiting to see what Gunner would do, slowly slipped between my lips in relief at his obedience.
I knew I would have to talk with him eventually but right now, everything was just too raw. Too close to the surface. I was never very good at keeping my emotions tucked away like Haizley could. Unless I was at work. During a session, it was like I was a different person altogether.
“Mellie, please start from the beginning.”
Leaning forward and placing my hands on the table, I clasped them together, giving myself something to hold on to. Dani had been my shield, but King was right. She shouldn’t be in here for this. She would feel my fear and apprehension, and she had suffered enough.
“When I lost communication with Dante, I decided to disappear with Dani. A doctor I knew had been in contact about buying my practice. I built my practice from the ground up, and I am good at what I do. But with Dani, and the circumstances surrounding her, I wouldn’t be able to continue practicing. I couldn’t take a chance leaving her with a babysitter. I knew disappearing with her meant living under a new name. So, I contacted the doctor and made the decision to sell.”
I sat back and looked around the table. When my eyes landed on Gunner, I knew he was struggling not being able to ask me questions. The anger and confusion on his face didn’t scare me. He was my brother, and despite what I said to King, I knew deep down he loved me. He just had a fucked-up way of showing it.
“A few days before I planned to leave, I received the first note. Then two days later, a second note. Both jammed into my mailbox at the office—”
“What did they say?” Gunner asked, his voice filled with emotion.
Something about my brother—he had a nasty temper. Especially when it came to my safety. You would think that would make me feel better about him walking away from me.
It didn’t.
I knew he was trying to keep his temper in check, and I knew he was failing. It was why I didn’t want him in here. That and I wasn’t ready to talk about us.
“The first one said, ‘I love her’ and the second said ‘I miss her’ . At first, I thought maybe they were from Dante. That he couldn’t call me but wanted to ease my concerns.”
“Until...” Blade pressed.
“The last day, before we left, I had gone to the office to grab a few things I had forgotten. Dani and I were leaving the next morning, and I had left one of her favorite toys. I checked the mailbox one last time, but there was nothing there. I thought we were in the clear, even convinced myself they were a mistake. Put in the wrong mailbox. But when I stepped off the elevator, there was a note on my door that said, ‘ I know the truth ,’ and when I opened my locked office door, I saw that someone had trashed the place. Everything was in ruins. Pillows slashed open, the bookshelves flipped over. Papers from the file cabinets were thrown everywhere.”
“What did the police say?” Jingles asked.
“I didn’t call them.”
“Why?” Colt asked.
I looked over at the man sitting at the large carved table in the church at the MC clubhouse. He was handsome like the rest. Only there was something about him. Something dark behind his eyes. The tone of his question was neutral, but the tension in his body spoke of something I didn’t want to put into words. I had to keep reminding myself that Dante trusted these men.
“Because this was about Dani. And the MC doesn’t involve the police. So, I erased the camera footage and Dani and I went home, packed the car and left.”
“What about all your patient files? If someone went through them, they needed to be told,” Colt said.
I looked over at Zach, and his smirk was contagious. A small inside joke between us despite how angry I was at him. He didn’t look at me. His fingers flew over his computer.
“I don’t keep patient files in the office. Those were all for show. My files are kept on a secure server that only myself and one other person have access to.”
A few of them looked over at Zach, and he nodded.
“What day was that?” King asked, and I knew why he was asking.
“February 7 th .”
“Mellie, it doesn’t take two weeks to drive from Oklahoma to Nebraska—”
“Gunner, shut the fuck up,” Cash ordered.
“What made you turn back?” Blade asked, and I looked at him with my eyebrows raised. “You said you were planning to disappear, but you went to Little Rock. Why?”
He caught that quickly; I wondered if he had spent time running himself. My brother was part of a 1% club. I imagined they all ran from something at one point in their lives.
“When we left Oklahoma, we went west. Two days into our trip, I came out of the hotel and found a note on my windshield. We were in El Paso, Texas. And I turned around and drove to Little Rock.”
Travis reached over and grabbed my hand. I clung on to him. I needed strength to get through this, and I wasn’t sure I had any. I hadn’t felt any of these emotions while on the road. It was like now that my brain knew I was safe, that Dani was safe, it was allowing my body to feel everything I had blocked out.