Chapter Thirty-Two
Jack
“We’ll find them, Jack,” Nav assured me.
Fuck, I had family out there. I had a niece. A little girl who looked so much like Charlie.
I looked at Sammy.
“I have to go, Sammy. I have to talk to Derek.”
“Please be careful, Jack. Maybe you should take Mimic with you too,” she offered.
“No, he stays here with you and Charlie. We’ll take Gunner with us. That big bastard is scary enough to keep anybody in line.” I laughed, hoping to ease her worry.
“Ok.” She sighed.
“I love you, Sammy,” I said, kissing her forehead.
“I love you too, Jack. Come back home to us.”
“Baby, I am not afraid of my big brother,” I joked.
“I am,” she whispered.
I pulled her into my arms, holding her tight.
“He will never hurt you again.”
Releasing her, I walked over to Blade. He was sitting at the bar with Beck.
“You up for a ride?” I asked him.
“Where are we going?” Beck asked.
I smiled at her. I was happy for my brother. He had his girl, and she loved him. Things with Ryder were tense, and part of that was my fault.
“Sorry, babe, you’re staying here.”
“Come on, I wanna kick some ass,” she said with a grin.
Beck was smart. I didn’t doubt she knew where I was going.
“Just going to talk, no ass kicking this time,” I said, and she immediately pouted.
“Fine, you boys go ‘talk ,’” she said, making air quotes with her fingers.
She hopped off the stool and looked us both over before she hollered, “Gunner!”
“Yea, Beck? What do you need?” he asked, walking over to the bar.
“You need to go with these two knuckleheads. Keep them out of trouble. I don’t need my dad arresting either one of them,” she stated with a smirk and walked over to sit with Sammy and Grace.
“Fuck, if she were a man, King would have competition for his chair at the table.” I laughed.
“Thank God she’s a fucking woman!” Blade added. Though I knew he didn’t care about her challenging King.
“Where we headed?” Gunner asked.
“I need to go talk to Derek,” I replied, and then walked out the door of the clubhouse to my bike.
Blade and Gunner followed without a word. We fired up our bikes and rolled through the gates.
The motel was quiet as usual. Derek must have heard the bikes, because as soon as we pulled up, the door to his room opened.
“To what do I owe the agony of this visit?” Derek asked.
“We need to talk,” I said, walking up to the door, shoulder checking him as I walked past and sat on the bed.
“I didn’t invite you in,” he grumbled.
“We didn’t ask for an invitation.”
Derek turned toward Gunner’s voice. I watched as his head tilted up and he visibly swallowed. Derek stepped out of the doorway, allowing Gunner to walk through it, followed by Blade.
“So, what do we need to talk about?” Derek asked .
I looked at Derek. We looked so much alike. It was no wonder Sammy chose me. I wondered what my parents looked like. I would need to ask Nav to find some pictures. At the very least, my father’s mug shot would be on record.
I looked at Gunner, and then Blade.
“Christ, I don’t even know where to start,” I said, sliding my hand down my face.
“Look, let me save you the trouble,” Derek said, walking over to the table and grabbing the stack of papers. He held them out to me.
“I signed the papers. All of them. The divorce papers and the affidavit saying there is no way I could be Charlotte’s father.”
“Charlie,” I corrected, looking through the pages.
“What?”
“We call her Charlie. Her name is Charlotte Jacqueline. Sammy named her Jacqueline after me. She didn’t know my name was Charles,” I informed, staring at his signature.
I looked up, and Derek stood there quietly.
“Did you know Marsha had your baby?” I asked.
He looked down at his feet. “She told me. I had told her I didn’t want kids, so I left. I made an appointment for a vasectomy and made sure it would never happen again,” he said, shrugging his shoulder.
I glared at the man I’d just learned was my brother. He lied to Sammy about their relationship. It was all a farce. But I wasn’t here for that.
“Did you know what she did?” I asked.
“Someone showed up at work a few years later and told me what Marsha did, and said the girl was going into the system unless I claimed her. I signed over my rights and let her get adopted by a family who would raise her right.”
I snorted at that.
“And you never met her? Never checked up on her?” I asked in disbelief.
“No.”
That was it .
No explanation, just one word.
“You’re a bastard, you know that?”
“Children learn what they live,” he stated, as if that excused it.
“We ran your DNA,” I said bluntly.
“How?”
“Broke in, took your toothbrush and comb,” I said.
“Son of a bitch,” he hissed, turning away from me and slamming his hand against the wall.
I watched his movements. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath.
“Did you know?” I asked.
He looked up at the ceiling, not answering for a solid minute. Blade and Gunner stood quietly by the door. They wouldn’t interrupt or get involved, unless they had to. They were only there to have my back.
“I suspected. You look so much like her,” he said to the ceiling. “I didn’t know anything until I walked into your clubhouse. I knew Sammy cheated. I just didn’t know with who.”
I growled when he said her name. “Don’t call her that. You lost that right the first time you laid a hand on her.”
He looked over at me and nodded.
I waited.
I found if you stayed quiet long enough, people would inevitably fill the silence.
“I was six years old. One day, she had a round belly. She used to tell me my baby brother lived in there. The next day, she was gone. When she came back, she was thin again. She never mentioned you to me again. Not until the day she died.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear this or not.
“She called me. Told me he was out of control. He cheated again, and she called him out on it. They were fighting. She was hiding in the bathroom. I told her to hang tight. I was on my way. But I was too late. He shot her.”
He ran his hands through his hair and blew out a breath.
“She was barely alive when I got there. He was gone. I’d already called the police on my way over. They got there right after she passed. I told them what she told me, and they found him and picked him up.”
“How’d they get it to stick on your word, if you weren’t there?” Gunner asked.
I looked over at him, angry he got involved, but his eyes were on Derek. My brother never looked up from the floor.
“Dying confession. That actually holds a lot of weight with the courts. That, combined with the various police reports over the years and the fingerprints on the gun he left behind.”
He looked over at me. I stared at him, in a silent battle of chicken, refusing to be the first to look away.
“Before she died, she told me I had a brother. Said she gave him away so my father couldn’t hurt him. She apologized for not giving me away, too.”
“You never looked for me?” I asked.
“No.”
I stood from the bed. Folding the papers, I slid them into the inside pocket of my cut and walked to the door. Blade opened the door, and Gunner walked outside. I nodded for Blade to follow and shut the door and locked it.
I turned back to Derek and leaned against the door. I stood there, glaring at him. He watched me. Waited, with resignation on his face.
“You put your hands on my woman. You beat her so bad she landed in the hospital. She almost lost my child. After everything you witnessed, everything you experienced with that bastard, why would you do that?”
“Children learn what they live,” he repeated.
“That’s it? That’s your excuse?”
“Have you ever lost it, Jack? Ever just blacked out and lost control? You may not believe me, and I am sure she won’t either, but I loved her. I loved her so much. The first time I met her, I knew I wanted her in my life forever. When she told me she was pregnant, I lost my mind. I knew immediately she had cheated on me. Not only cheated, but got pregnant and was trying to pass it off as mine. I’m not proud of what I did. When I learned she was in the hospital, I was disgusted with myself. That was why I never looked for her when she left.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face as he paced back and forth in front of me.
“When I got the divorce papers, I had every intention of just signing them and sending them back. It wasn’t until the papers about Charlotte—”
“Charlie,” I hissed.
He let out a long, slow breath. “When I saw the papers regarding Charlie, I knew she was with the man she cheated on me with, and it fucking pissed me off. So I came up to confront you both. When I walked in and saw you, well, I wasn’t planning on letting you do a DNA test.”
“Then what was all that fucking shit you spewed?”
“I was fucking angry, Jack! My wife cheated on me with my fucking brother! It was like walking into the fucking Jerry Springer Show !” he yelled.
A fist banged on the door, and Blade called out, “Jack?”
“All good, brother,” I hollered over my shoulder. “So, you still didn’t want anything to do with me?”
“No.”
“Fuck you, Derek!”
I quickly stepped over to him and slammed my fist into his gut. He buckled over, and I brought my knee up into the side of his head. Shoving him over, he laid there on the floor.
“Get up!” I yelled.
Derek rolled over and sat up, leaning against the wall.
“Get the fuck up!” I screamed.
“No.”
I walked over and slammed my boot into his hip.
“You’re a fucking coward,” I spat. “Stay the fuck away from me and my family.”
I moved to the door, unlocking it, and placing my hand on the knob. I paused when I heard Derek’s voice.
“Jack?”
I didn’t turn around, I couldn’t, but I waited to see what he would say.
“Tell Samantha I’m sorry.”
I swallowed the pain that lodged in my throat at his rejection.
I opened the door and walked out, expecting to never see my brother again.