Chapter Fifteen
Grace
I’d stopped listening when Steele said he wasn’t my father. He said I was looking for the Yankee. What the hell did that mean? Who was the fucking Yankee?
“I’m sorry, Angel, but this is Banshee’s kill.”
I looked up in time to see Angel turn and ask, “Why?”
King glared at Steele and replied, “Ask your former president who his wife was and what the fuck happened to her.”
King knew about Steele’s wife and daughters? I’d never thought to ask him when he joined the club. I didn’t remember him, though there were ten years between us. If he’d joined at eighteen, I would have only been eight years old. By that age, my mother had stopped bringing me to the clubhouse.
Steele was silent. Everyone in the room waited for him to answer. Angel, the enforcer for the Arkansas Chapter, moved closer.
“What the fuck did you do? You said she fucking left. She took the girls and ran.”
“He fucking sold them!” Banshee yelled from the side of the room. Jingles and Poseidon from the Gods of Mayhem held him back.
“Grace, it’s time to go,” Johnny whispered.
“I’m not leaving.”
“King said—”
“King can go fuck himself. I’m not leaving,” I hissed at Johnny.
I moved behind the bar, knowing I could drop down if anything happened.
But there was no way I was walking away.
Not now. Not when the information I needed was being held by a man I thought was my father.
A man I’d hated with everything inside me.
A man I still hated.
If Banshee was right, he’d sold his wife and daughters. Steele looked over at Banshee and grinned. “She was right under your fucking nose.”
“You fucking cocksucker!” Banshee roared. Big Ben moved to help Jingles and Poseidon. They were having trouble holding Banshee back.
Angel drew his gun and held it to Steele’s head. “I should blow your fucking brains out. I knew she wouldn’t fucking run, you son of a bitch. What the fuck did you do with her?”
Steele held his arms out wide. “Fucking do it. Did you think I didn’t know you were fucking my wife?”
I covered my mouth with my hand, trying to hold back the gasp. Banshee was screaming obscenities at Steele and Angel both, as the men struggled to hold him back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement.
Lynch had slipped around the room unnoticed by the Silver Shadows and Gods of Mayhem, who were all focused on the exchange between Steele and Angel.
He’d pulled his own gun and was making his way toward King. I opened my mouth to scream at him to look out, when Indie slipped in behind Lynch, a knife in her hand.
She jumped on his back, slicing his throat from one side to the other. Lynch dropped to his knees and pulled the trigger. The shot went wide and missed King but found its mark in someone else.
Jingles dropped to the floor. Poseidon and Ben released Banshee and pulled their guns along with everyone else. Banshee took the distraction as an opportunity. He pulled his gun, rushing across the room as he shot Steele in the chest.
A member of the Arkansas Chapter, whose name I didn’t know, grabbed Demise and slit his throat. Dropping him on the ground where he had tried to maneuver himself close to Zeus.
Banshee stood over Steele, his gun pointed at him. “Any last words, asshole?”
“Wait!” I cried and ran around the bar, slipping past Johnny as he tried to grab for me.
I kneeled beside Steele. Blood poured from the gunshot wound in his chest, and I knew he didn’t have much time.
“Who is my father?” I begged.
Steele smiled a bloody grin and said cryptically, “The investigator knows.” His laugh turned into a wet cough, and I felt his blood splash onto my face.
My hands grabbed his cut, and I shook him as his eyes closed. “Tell me!”
“Grace.” King peeled my hands away from Steele and lifted me to my feet. “He’s dead, baby.”
“He knew,” I sobbed. “He knew who my father was.”
King lifted me into his arms and called out, “Clean up this fucking mess.” Then he walked out of the main room and carried me upstairs. I cried into his neck as he climbed the two flights of stairs and took me to his room.
Setting me on the bed, he went into his bathroom and came back with a warm washcloth. He gently cleaned the blood off my hands and face, then tossed the washcloth through the bathroom door.
“Lie down, baby.” He pulled the covers up over me and settled beside me, drawing me into his arms. That was when I broke down completely from the revelation that I might never know who my father was.
“I’ll never find him now. Steele was a bastard, but at least I had a father when I thought it was him. Now I have no one.”
“You have me, baby. You have Declan and Maureen. You’ve got the whole fucking club.” He held me tight while I cried until there was nothing left but an empty hole in my soul filled with pain.
For the first time in almost three years, I woke up in King’s arms. We were both fully dressed, and I breathed in his scent. The lingering smell of leather from the cut he wore daily brought tears to my eyes as I remembered the events from the day before.
Steele wasn’t my father.
He knew who my father was and took that information to the grave. Just like my mother did.
What was the big secret?
Who was he?
Who am I?
Everything I thought I knew was a lie. I was completely alone in this world. No mother, no father, no sisters. Everything gone with a single shot to the heart.
A bitter chuckle slipped from my lips, and King stirred. His arms tightened around me.
“Morning, Princess.”
I pulled away from him. “You can stop calling me that now. Turns out I’m not a princess. Just another daughter of a single mom who grew up with no father.”
“Grace.” The sound of his voice was painful. It hurt to hear the rasp of gravel he had from not talking for hours while we slept. It hurt to think that the only reason I was here, in his bed, was because the man I thought was my father was dead.
I shook my head when he reached out for me. Unable to speak over the lump in my throat and the tears that burned the back of my eyes. I rushed into the bathroom and closed the door, securing the lock.
I need a few minutes to myself. A few minutes to figure out where my life was going. For years now, my life had been about finding my father and making him pay. I’d wanted to use King to do that, but I’d fallen in love with him.
Or had I?
I stared at the bathroom door. Did I love him? Or had he become something so familiar, so comfortable, that I’d convinced myself it was love?
He was on the other side of the door, lying in the bed we shared. The bed we’d slept in all night, and he still hadn’t touched me. He’d held me for hours and never once made a move, despite knowing that Steele was dead.
And that he wasn’t my father.
His path was clear now. He could make a move, claim me. Make me his. Only, he still hadn’t done it.
If he wanted to he would.
The words kept running through my mind. He didn’t want to. I was such a fool. All this time wasted.
He’d told me he loved me. But was it real? Had we both become complacent with our places in each other’s lives? We weren’t a regular couple. We’d never dated, just spent hours together in the dark. Hours where we talked about nothing as we learned about each other.
About our pasts.
As much as we were willing to share.
We didn’t talk about the future. Because we didn’t have one.
Our lives had been thrown together because of my misplaced anger. An anger that should have been directed at my mother.
She was the one who’d kept my father from me, whoever he was. As a child, I wished it were Uncle Stephen. But if he was my father, why wouldn’t they just tell me? Why call him my uncle?
I had so many questions that had no answers. Steele had those answers. He could have told me. He called him the Yankee. I assumed he was from the north, but where?
New York?
Boston?
Minnesota?
Washington?
Half the fucking country lived in the north. “The investigator knows.” That was what he’d said. What investigator? Had Steele hired a PI? Had he looked for my mother after we moved to Louisiana?
We left Arkansas after Titan had died. I remembered Steele’s father. A tear slipped down my cheek as I realized I’d also lost grandparents I’d thought were mine.
I jumped at the knock on the door.
“Grace, we need to talk.”
I stared at myself in the mirror. I was an orphan. A child with no parents. A girl with no family. A woman with no one.
“Grace, open the door.”
I took a deep breath and unlocked the door. When I opened it, there he was, his hands on the trim above his head. So many times, I’d opened my front door and found him standing there, just as he was now.
A few years ago...
I’d just gone to bed after my shift. It was three in the morning and someone was pounding on my front door. I grabbed my phone, ready to call the sheriff, when I heard his voice.
“GRACE!”
King? I climbed out of bed and grabbed my robe. My hair was still wet from the shower I’d taken, trying to wash the smell of stale beer and whiskey off my body.
It was the same thing every night, in every town. Patrons filled with lust and regret got drunk until last call. It clung to my skin like armor, reminding me why I needed to stay away from the man that was at my front door.
I pulled it open and there he was. His hands on the trim over his head. His T-shirt pulled up, revealing an inch of skin between the hem and the waistband of his jeans.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my eyes moving slowly up his toned, muscular body.
“Hell if I know.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, dropping his hands and taking a step back. I brushed past him back into his room and sat on the bed.
“I don’t know what I am anymore,” I said honestly.
King’s phone rang, and he grabbed it from the nightstand. Looking at the screen, he sighed before answering it.
“What?”
He kept his eyes on me while I tried to look anywhere but at him. I couldn’t talk to him right now. I had to figure out my own shit before I could deal with his.
“Yeah, I’ll be down in a few minutes.” He disconnected the call and pushed the phone into his back pocket. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it into the hamper in the corner.
His back was to me as he dug out another shirt, and I took the opportunity to ogle him while he couldn’t see me. I closed my eyes when his shirt came down and covered his back.
“I’ve got church this morning. I need to deal with that shit that went down.”
I nodded but kept my eyes low. “I need to take a shower and change anyway.”
“Grace.” He crouched down in front of me and lifted my chin. “We need to talk.”
“I know.”
“Nothing has changed, Grace.” He stood up and kissed the top of my head. “I’ll come find you when church is over.”
He walked out the door, and the tears fell again. He was right. Nothing had changed, and that was the problem.
He still didn’t want me.