Chapter 17 Secrets
Baffle
Squeak was still in Flagstaff feeding us information, so I had to call in a club brother to go sit with Nell. Since he had questions for her, I figured Grease might enjoy being able to sit in and watch her work.
Baffle: Something came up. Need eyes on Nell over at Morton’s where we have her new studio set up.
Grease: Be there in five. Assuming you asked me first. Knuckles and Grunt can suck my big dick! They’re going to be so jealous when they find out I got to watch the master at work.
I couldn’t hide the grin on my face if I wanted to. I’d have to show that text to Nell later. Though, knowing Grease, he’d probably tell her himself.
“What made you smile like that?”
“One of my club brothers is coming to hang out with my wife while she works. She’s an artist and they’re all big fans of what she’s working on.”
“That’s really cool to have that kind of support. Why does she need one of your club brothers to sit with her, though? Do you not trust her by herself?” I could see that my new little sister was wary of me and probably my whole lifestyle.
“Nope, not the issue. She had a run-in with a bad man recently, before we got married, and having someone sit with her is for her protection. It’s a precaution just in case the asshole is stupid enough to try some shit.”
“Can you elaborate at all? I need to know if I’m safe here.”
“You’ll be safe. I’ll put a man over here on lookout as long as you’re staying here.
If you decide to move closer and be on clubhouse property, that won’t be an issue either.
As far as my wife, her former best friend and roommate was marrying an asshole.
When they went to Vegas for their wedding, a few friends, including Nell, went along.
The asshole fiance assaulted and tried to rape her.
I stepped in and handled him and got her out of there. ”
“Wait, is that how you met?” I nodded my head. “And when was this?”
“About a week ago.”
Angel’s eyebrows shot straight into her hairline. “You met and married your wife in the same week, right after someone tried to assault her?”
“Yep. I knew from the moment I saw her that she was going to be my woman. Getting to know her since then has just reaffirmed that.”
“That’s really wild while also kinda cool and scary at the same time.”
I shrugged my shoulders. There was no justifying my actions to someone who wasn’t living my life. They’d never understand and I saw no point in trying to make them, not even for a woman who might be my sister.
We spent the next twenty or so minutes getting her travel trailer hooked up to the utilities and set up for her to sleep in. Once I followed her inside, I realized she could do a hell of a lot more than just sleep in the place. It looked like she lived in it.
“Is this where you live?” I asked her.
“It is now. I kind of had it with my mom. I was crashing with her after a I caught my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend,” she corrected herself, “cheating on me. I had been saving money to go toward buying a house, but when everything went down I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stick around to see the man I was in love with flaunt his new woman and their soon-to-be-born baby. ”
“That’s rough.”
“Tell me about it. So, I stayed with my mom until I could get over the heartbreak a bit and figure out what I wanted to do, you know?” I nodded, though I didn’t really know since Nell was the first woman I felt more than a passing interest in.
“Well, my mom was up my ass twenty-four-seven because she had her bevy of boyfriends she brought home and some of them were eyeballing me a little too closely. One of the last nights I was there, she was drunk and had to kick one of her men out because he wouldn’t stop asking her about me.
So, I guess as retribution for losing her latest meal ticket, she came and told me the whole fucked up story about my dad.
Our dad,” Angel corrected quietly at the end.
“That led me to you. So, I hired a P.I. to check and make sure I would be safe here if I came looking for answers. Then, I bought a travel trailer with my savings, hooked it up, tossed all my stuff in it, and I’m here meeting my brother for the first time. ”
“Did you know our dad? Was he a part of your life?”
“My mom said he was before he went to prison.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four. I was only two when he was arrested.”
Angel kept mentioning what happened to our dad while skirting around the fact that he was in prison because he murdered my mom. It was like a stab to the chest every time, even without her saying the fucked-up part out loud.
“You were two,” I said as my brain tried to process what that meant.
“Mom claimed their affair was much longer, like five years or so, though I don’t know if she can be believed. At first, it was just a once in a while thing when he would end up on some kind of run to Colorado. I’m assuming Mom wasn’t talking about our father doing a marathon or something.”
I chuckled. “Nah. It just means he had business somewhere, likely for the club.”
“Okay, well, apparently he had business where we lived quite a bit. At first it was every few months. Then he started coming once, sometimes twice a month about a year before I was born. According to my mom he stayed for a weekend or sometimes up to a week each time.”
“That didn’t seem weird to her at all?”
Angel huffed a sound, if I had to name it, it was disgust. “Mom felt entitled to him because he was a good looking bad boy. He was her escape from her rich upbringing. That all came to an end when she got pregnant with me, though. Her family disowned her. I don’t think she ever confided in our dad that she was engaged to be married to a very wealthy, influential man.
Apparently, he didn’t do it for her, but she had to marry well because she couldn’t be bothered to actually work for the things she wanted. ”
“Sounds like you don’t have a very high opinion of your mom.”
“Nope, and it got worse after hearing her story about our dad.” Angel sighed before carrying on.
“According to her, Sticky refused to step up in any way other than financial. In the same breath, she told me how he would help take care of me when he visited. He made sure my mom and I had a place to live that was paid for, utilities were paid, and food money and stuff I needed were always provided.”
I guess it was good to know that my dad wasn’t a complete and total piece of shit before he murdered my mother.
I had trouble understanding a years-long affair, though.
Before the incident, I would have sworn my mother hung the moon in my father’s eyes.
She was his “one” or so he’d led me to believe and now I had this shit thrown in my face that said he was an entirely different man with a whole extra family.
You would think that the murder of my mother made that sink in, but I honestly thought it was a fucking accident while he was under the influence.
I never thought there might be more to it.
Knowing he had another family out there the whole time put a taint on that assumption.
Angel pointed toward the couch on one side of her place. “You might want to sit down for the rest.”
I did so and then waited for my sister to get herself together. “Before I tell you this part, I just want you to know that I will understand if you want nothing to do with me afterward. I will respect your wishes.”
“You were two-years-old when everything went down. Pretty damn sure nothing was your fault, so let’s put that worry aside. If you’re my sister, and I have strong reason to believe you are, then I want to get to know you.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I’ll have to dig out the old family photo albums. There is a picture of my grandmother - our grandmother - holding my dad when he was about three or so. You are the spitting image of the woman. You could be her reincarnation, it is that close.”
“Oh! Was she nice?”
“Don’t know. She died before my dad ever entered school.”
“Oh.”
It was obvious by her short, soft response that Angel was disappointed in the news. She couldn’t have been too shocked if she had a P.I. look into me, though. “Let’s get the shitty stuff out of the way now, so we can do the get to know you bit.”
Angel nodded and fidgeted with her hands before she blurted. “It was my mom’s fault that your dad killed your mom.”
“Come again?”
“Gianna - my mom - bragged about it. When she told me while she was drunk, I would have chalked it up to her lying and trying to be mean and get under my skin because she hated that I was curious about my father. But I overheard her talking to one of her friends and she told them basically the same story, only she was bragging about her part in it.”
“Don’t stop now. I want to hear the whole thing.”
“Gianna was tired of your dad always going back home to you and your mom. She knew about you. She knew he was married to Stace and had a son. It was never a secret. Like I said, my mother felt entitled to her time spent with him. Eventually, after she was kicked out of her family and shunned by their wealthy friends when her fiancé dumped her, she started to resent the fact that Dad never increased the time he came around. He took care of us financially. His time spent in town was less with her because he was helping to take care of me and paying attention to her less and less. I think the shine wore off, finally. Or maybe me being there mad him see that he was doing something wrong.”
That must have been hard for her to admit because she got up and pulled a box of tissues out of an overhead cabinet and then sat back down, wiped her eyes, and blew her nose before she continued.
“I guess the guilt was eating him up because he started to drink and do drugs, which was something he never did before. Not the drugs at all and he never drank to excess. At least that was what my mom claimed.”