Chapter Fourteen
Mimic
“Wakey, wakey.”
The sound of his voice was like a spike piercing my brain. Dakota Stone was thirty-seven years old, but he talked like a teenage girl. He spoke in a higher pitch when he talked to me, almost as though he was talking to a toddler.
I wasn’t a fucking toddler; I was thirteen. If I were Jewish, I would have been considered a man. After what I had endured since he found me, I was a fucking man.
The keys rattled in his hand as he held them above his head before unlocking the cell.
“Let’s go. It’s time for some fun.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me as I stood from the cot I slept on. Dakota’s version of fun differed from mine. His idea of fun was torturing me.
When I didn’t move fast enough, he grabbed the back of my neck and pushed me in front of him. It seemed today’s torture was physical, instead of the normal mental and emotional torture he was so fond of.
Dakota led me to a room I hadn’t experienced before. This one had windows. My eyes winced at the bright sunlight that flooded the room.
“It’s training day. Gotta make a man out of you,” he whispered against my ear. I tried to control the shivers that racked my body. Dakota laughed when he felt me tremble. “Are you scared, kid? You fucking should be.”
He shoved me forward until I fell onto the mat floor. The small amount of cushioning when I hit the floor was unexpected. At least I would have a little padding when he beat the shit out of me.
“Come on, kid.” He held out his hands, palms up, and motioned for me to come forward by pulling his fingers back toward his wrists. “Come and get me. You know you want to.”
I did want to. I wanted to fucking pulverize him into the mat under his feet.
I knew I had no hope of besting him, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
The sadistic gleam in his eye called out to something inside me.
Something primal, something I hadn’t known was there, but was now rising within me.
I didn’t know my family, my mother’s or my father’s. All I knew was what Dakota had told me. I was a bastard. Like my father. And bastards were worthless.
But there was something. Something deep in my soul, something that told me he was wrong. That I was someone he feared. Someone George feared. They were trying to break me, but I was stronger than they were. I had something to live for. Someone.
Rosebud.
Dakota expected me to come at him swinging. That was his mistake. He expected me to fight fair. I might be a kid, but I’d watched enough movies my mother didn’t know about, to know you had to catch your opponent off guard if you had any hope of getting the upper hand.
I dove for his legs, wrapping my arms around his knees, and took him to the floor.
He might have been surprised by my move, but he recovered quickly and flipped me over so I was under him.
His fist came at me fast, and I turned just in time for the blow to glance off my chin rather than hit me full-on in the face.
I swung my arm and caught him on the shoulder. A small grunt let me know I was stronger than I thought. He went for my face again, and this time he landed a blow to my nose. The sound of bones snapping, followed by my cry of pain, echoed through the room.
“DAKOTA!”
Dakota jumped off me and turned around. His father stood in the doorway; an icy glare directed at his son.
“You are supposed to be teaching him how to fight. Not beating the shit out of him.”
“He’s gotta learn how not to get hit first.” Dakota sneered.
“Do I need to find someone else?”
“No,” Dakota growled, his hands fisting at his sides.
“Then do what you’re fucking told. If I need a fucking babysitter for you, I’ll send you back to the fucking desert.”
George left, and Dakota’s black eyes focused on me. “Get the fuck up.” The deceptive-looking smile on Dakota’s face wasn’t just sinister; it was pure fucking evil.
My eyes stayed closed as my body woke with a start. I lay in my bed until my heavy pants decelerated into slow, even breaths. I was so fucking tired of this shit.
I envied my brothers, who could drink a bottle of whiskey and pass out. What I wouldn’t do to get blackout drunk and maybe get a full night’s sleep for once.
My legs swung over the side of the bed, and I held my head in my hands.
Normally, I would sneak into Indie’s apartment and watch her sleep.
Just seeing her at peace let my own body relax enough to rest. I didn’t need more than a few hours of sleep.
But waking up in a cold sweat from the damn nightmares had my body coiled up.
Indie was the only thing that uncoiled the tension I’d lived with all these years.
Knowing she was here in the clubhouse wasn’t enough. I needed to see her. I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and left my room to search her out, only to find Archie standing outside her door.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“King asked me to guard her door.”
“Guard her from what? She’s in the fucking clubhouse. No one can get to her here.” Archie lowered his eyes to the floor. “What?” I growled.
“King said not to let any of the brothers into her room.” He cleared his throat and added, “Especially you.”
“Goddammit.” I turned and walked away, heading to the kitchen downstairs. Pushing the door open, I went straight to the coffeepot, leaning against the counter as I waited.
Indie had disappeared after she stormed out of church and locked herself in the room Brandy had put her in.
When she didn’t come downstairs for dinner, I tried to make her a plate to take up, but King caught me and sent Jade in my place.
Reminding me again that he had ordered me to stay away from her.
Fat fucking chance!
I took my coffee and sat at the bar. The guys wouldn’t be up for hours.
There had been times through the years I would come down in the middle of the night and find Amber sitting here in the dark.
We didn’t talk much beyond the common “couldn’t sleep?
” and “me either,” but it was comforting having someone else in the room.
For a few months, Bane had joined us occasionally. He also stayed quiet, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Thinking back to the months he spent here, I wondered if he’d known then that Amber and Dante were his kids.
This world was so fucked up. Amber and Dante weren’t much different from Rose and me. They hadn’t known who their parents were at all. Hell, they didn’t even know about each other. At least Rose and I had been raised by our mother.
Until Dakota fucking kidnapped her.
We didn’t know who our father was, though. Even now, all we had was a name. Justin Peterson. AKA Shame, a brother in the Soulless Sinners. Same as Bane. Same as Dakota.
Did they know each other? Were they friends? What kind of man was Justin Peterson?
“Mimic?”
“Hey.”
“What the fuck are you doing up?”
Nav walked behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He took a long swig, and I envied him.
“Why are you up?”
Nav shook his head. “I’ve been going through the files from the Trick Pony. If I close my eyes, I’ll have fucking nightmares. Devlin Scott was one sick son of a bitch.”
“Find anything about Indie?”
“No. At least nothing about Indigo Cambridge. The truth is, I could be reading everything there is to know about her, but without knowing her real name, there is no way to find out if she’s in the files.”
“She’s in there.”
I knew she was. Her reaction to Daniel Scott’s name was telling. She knew who he was. And the panic that flittered across her face told me she knew him very fucking well.
The lack of reaction when I woke her up said a lot. The trance she appeared to be in, combined with the way she’d just slid to her knees like it was expected. Like she’d done it a hundred times.
I wouldn’t lie and say that seeing her on her knees in front of me didn’t make my dick hard. But it quickly deflated when her eyes focused. The look on her face was unmistakable.
Humiliation.
“How do you know?” Nav asked.
“I don’t. It’s just a feeling. Her reaction to Daniel’s name. Her reaction to the pictures of the Death Dogs. She knows more than she’s saying.”
The front door opened, and Johnny walked in. My back teeth clashed together as I thought about the way he looked at Indie. How friendly they looked sitting at the bar in town.
“Hey, Johnny, Grace get home okay?”
“Every night.” He walked behind the bar and grabbed a beer. “Either of you need anything?”
“Not from you,” I snarked. Nav’s eyes widened as he looked between the two of us. Johnny rolled his eyes at me and walked back around to a stool.
“Something I need to know about?” Nav asked.
“Not as long as he stays the fuck away from Indie.”
Johnny’s hand paused halfway to his mouth. “What?”
I narrowed my eyes at the prospect and snarled, “You fucking heard me.”
“Indie is a friend.”
“Not anymore.”
His bottle clanked on the bar as he stared at me. “She doesn’t have a cut.”
“Prospect,” Nav warned, shaking his head.
“Stay the fuck away from her,” I growled.
“Johnny, hit the sack. Now,” Nav ordered.
The prospected grunted and walked down the hallway without a word. I guess he wasn’t as stupid as he looked.
“He’s right.”
“What?”
“Indie doesn’t have a cut.”
“She’s mine.”
Nav took another gulp from the bottle of whiskey and grinned. “Then make it known.” He walked back to his office, either to sleep or to keep digging. He’d taken the bottle of whiskey with him, so either option was still valid.
Nav was right. I needed to make it known that Indie was mine. To the brothers, and to her. The brothers were easy. Indie, on the other hand... I knew she was ready to run. She wanted to disappear, but I wasn’t letting her go.
She was mine.
As I finished the last drop of coffee, my sister came barreling into the room.
“Thorne!”
Cash caught her as she tripped coming around the corner. “Slow down, baby.”
Ignoring her old man, she asked, “Where’s your phone?”
“In my room. It’s four in the morning. Who would be fucking calling me?”
“Me, asshole.”
I turned on my stool as Jack walked in with Sam clinging to his arm.
His brother Derek walked in behind them as he carried a sleeping Charlie.
King had ordered Derek to stay with Jack and Sam now that the house was finished, in case the Death Dogs figured out he had helped me hide Indie and went back to the apartment.
“What’s going on?”
Sam smiled up at me. “It’s time to meet your baby sisters.”
“Oh fuck.” Sam was having the babies. Brothers filled the room as I stood in front of Sam, frozen in fear of the unknown. This wasn’t the first birth in the clubhouse. Beck and Ellie had both already had their babies.
But this was Sam. My momma. The one woman in the world who meant the most to me aside from my sister. I knew what could go wrong in childbirth. All those complications doubled when it was twins.
“Go get fucking dressed, Mimic,” Jack lashed out, pulling me away from all the scenarios in my head. I nodded without thinking and rushed to my room.
I forgot about everything. My mother, my father, Dakota. Even Indie had slipped out of my head as I worried about Sam giving birth. I couldn’t lose her.
I couldn’t lose another mother. I wouldn’t survive it.