Twenty-Two
Give her a reason to trust me. How the fuck am I supposed to do that? Everything about our situation screams caution. Her father. My club. Our propensity to fucking fight every time we talk.
Her ability to do shit that gives me reason not to trust her.
Jenna moves through the dark, a shapely outline against the night as she returns to the clubhouse. Chaos wants answers, and I don’t blame the guy. We rode in there to disrupt the business being done on our turf. To get women out of forced service and send them home to their loved ones.
Jenna was right—we didn’t think about if any of them could be more foe than friend.
And now that oversight bites us in the ass.
“Fuck me.” I start after her, keeping a safe distance behind. I have a daughter upstairs who I already feel guilty about offloading onto Jezabel all afternoon. She doesn’t get to see me much, and when I do finally take her for a few nights, it’s as though I don’t exist.
If nothing else, Molly deserves to have her daddy put her to bed.
I flex my hands at my sides, attempting to shift the weird tingly heat that runs up my forearm to my elbows.
Why does the thought of being what Molly needs frighten me so much?
I can’t fuck it up much worse than I already have, so what do I have to lose in trying?
Everything. Just having Molly here during this friction is enough to place a courtroom squarely on Reno’s side if she took it to that.
Not that I think she would—she couldn’t afford to.
I haven’t seen a lot of my daughter over the years, but I’ve been there enough that I’m an important fixture in her life, and she mine. I couldn’t stomach losing what little we have.
Jenna enters the clubhouse a few yards ahead of me and swiftly closes the door behind her.
I climb the porch and hesitate before the obstacle, staring down at the brass handle.
Get your shit together, Fang. I’ve dealt with enemies without a second thought.
Sorted out junkies who were hellbent on breaking into our premises under the illusion they could find an easy hit.
Forced rival club members back over state lines.
Put bright-eyed and delusional young men in their place after they tried to join our ranks uninvited.
And yet none of it messed me up as much as a five-foot-something freckled firecracker telling me no.
Why not? Is it my patch that revolts her or my habits? I ain’t ever had a woman turn me down, and trust that the first time one does, it’s a woman I really shouldn’t give two fucks about. It’d be so easy to walk away from her. To make her somebody else’s problem and ask Chaos to put me on the road.
But I don’t want to.
My eyes lift to the window on my left. To the closed door and what that means.
She’s fed up with you. Yeah. Cool. I know.
But she doesn’t get to hold the power like that.
It’s not her choice to shut me out. She’s in my goddamn home, near my goddamn daughter—I’m the one who calls the shots, not her.
A firm hand won’t get you anywhere, champ.
Not when she’s already been manhandled and forced to do things against her will.
What did happen to get her lifted by the Devil’s Breed? What did she mean about trust getting her where she is now?
Who did she wrongly place trust in? Who did this to her?
You’re fucking looking way too far into this.
She’s not my sole concern; the lot of them are.
Three women and a kid that are stuck in limbo until they figure out where they belong.
Always figured my Achilles’ heel was women—just fucking got it wrong about how.
I thought it’d be the regularity with which I took them to bed that’d be my undoing.
Turns out it’s the rage and associated guilt I feel at the injustice they face simply for being born with different genetics that leaves me feeling unanchored.
The realization that the way I act fucking adds to that imbalance. That unfairness.
I’m no better.
I hesitate, separated from the people inside. Pull it together. My stomach churns thinking about where any one of the women inside could have ended up if we didn’t take them out of that house, what they would have been forced to do, what a kid would have been forced to do.
Fuck. I never used to get this messed up by the things we did, the shit I saw. I could detach from the reality of the bullshit around me without a second thought.
But now I have a daughter.
And faces to put to the name. Real people who embody what was always just a story to be told over a beer to shock and awe. And those goddamn faces haunt me.
Especially hers.
Why did we never do anything about this until now?
Why the hell have the Kings of Anarchy chosen to neglect a real and obvious issue?
Sure, this is the first time we’ve known about it happening on our turf, in our state.
But shit, tell me with a straight face that they ain’t been doing this for years; we’ve just been too blind to see what was right under our goddamn noses.
I draw a deep breath and let myself inside, figuring I’ve left it long enough for Freckles to be out of the way. Soft discussion and muted music drift from my left, Chaos’s office dark on my right. I ascend to the first floor and slip into my room to see if my daughter is already asleep.
“Hey, Daddy.” She shifts a little under the covers to face me better.
“Hey.” I kneel beside the bed. “Not asleep yet?”
“There’s different noises here,” she explains. Plain. Logical.
“They upsetting you?”
“No.” Her eyes drift closed. “When are you going to sleep, Daddy?”
“Not for a while yet.” Her dark waves sit messily over her face. I risk disturbing her and sweep the strands from across her nose and cheek away with a finger. “Don’t you worry about me, though. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Uh-hmm.”
She’s so small, lost in the vast emptiness of my bed. Her fragility spears me in the heart. This is why I pushed back against having her here until now. This right here.
“Night, baby.” I slowly rise and retreat from the room, softly closing the door behind me.
Highway leans against the doorframe for the front parlor, phone in his hand.
“All good?”
He glances up from the device. “Yeah. Just keeping an eye on this lot.” He nods toward the remaining females.
The Kid sits curled in Darko’s usual armchair, tucked in the corner, his iPad on her lap. Darla and Jenna sit opposite one another on the floor, the coffee table between them, with a rudimentary draughts board set up.
It has to fuck with their heads having nothing to do. Nowhere to go.
No reason to leave.
“You seen Chaos?”
Highway jerks his chin. “You just missed him. Caught sight of him crossing over to Vanessa’s a few minutes ago.”
“Damn it.” I drag a hand over my face. “Wish I could just fucking leave when I’d had enough.”
“Eh. Take it easy on him,” Highway jests. “You’d need to blow off steam, too, if you had to deal with Selena’s hissy-fits.”
“True.” The guy never gets a break. If it’s not us giving him a hard time, it’s his baby sister. “Thanks.” I head for the kitchen, figuring a quick cup of coffee is the best I can do when all I really want is a goddamn cigarette and a quiet moment on the back step.
Laughter spills down the hall, a weird juxtaposition to the gravity of our current situation. One of our prospects, Goblin, helps Jezabel prep tomorrow’s breakfast, baking utensils and flour scattered on every surface around them.
“I’m not interrupting anything?” I direct the question at both of them, yet stare down the kid as I walk behind the duo to get to the stools at the counter.
“Not at all,” Jezabel answers. “I roped him into cutting dough for me.”
As a prospect, he doesn’t get the privileges of her special attention until he’s patched in. We’ve had hangarounds and prospects alike try their luck in the past only to find themselves swiftly out the gate, freshly stripped of their rocker.
“Thanks for settling Molly.” I lean over the counter and snag one of the cut rolls Goblin has lined up. “Appreciate it.”
“She’s no bother,” Jezabel assures me. “Having another girl around makes a change from the overload of testosterone that flows through this place.”
“You haven’t complained before,” I tease whilst ripping off a hunk of warm dough to pop in my mouth.
“Not much point,” she ribs right back, eyeing my choice of snack. “You’ll give yourself a guts-ache eating that.”
“Naw.” The savory goodness of onion and herbs hits my taste buds. “Hasn’t yet.” I’ve snagged raw dough since I was a kid, too impatient to wait for it to cook.
“Dolly wants to put in a grocery order tomorrow.” Jezabel retrieves paper to line an oven tray, kicking the drawer shut with her heel. “Any idea how long we’ll have the extra mouths to feed?”
I feel Goblin’s eyes on me as I answer. “Nope.”
“Not even a hint.” She abandons prepping the tray to turn and look my way.
“If I knew, it’d make my life a lot easier, too. You might want to take that one to Chaos.”
Jezabel’s shoulders drop with a sigh, her frustration shared between the three of us as Goblin returns to slicing equal squares with a sharp blade.
The guy is fucking hard to look at thanks to a nasty childhood burn scar that puckers up half his face, patches of hair missing near his left ear.
Still, he’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t question anything he’s asked to do.
He’s a good kid, and I get the feeling his trial as a prospect won’t last too much longer if he keeps up the great work.
After what happened, leaving him looking the way he is, the guy deserves a break. Deserves a fucking family that’ll care for him and have his back, not alienate him when he needs them most.
“How long have we got your girl, Fang?” Jezabel plops rolls on the tray as she speaks.
“Until when Reno wants to come get her. Tuesday, at this stage.” I know that’s what she said, but I also know she can’t be relied on to keep her word.
“What is the old girl doing?”
I smirk at the subtle dig. Reno’s only four years older than Jezabel, but you’d think it more when they stand side-by-side. Jezabel has a non-negotiable skincare routine that blocks us from accessing her for an hour each morning and night. Reno has sass and a big ass. The girls aren’t the same.
“Escorting out of state,” I answer, rolling what’s left of my snack beneath my hand. “Won’t say who for, but I got a suspicion.”
“Escorting.” Jezabel shakes her head, bending at the waist to slide the first tray in the oven. “She’s got more brains than that, but she’d never admit it.”
I catch Goblin’s sneaky eye as he checks out the rise of Jezebel’s tiny satin shorts. Hungry fucker.
“Didn’t pick you as one to judge other women’s choices,” I tease.
She shrugs one shoulder. “Just sayin’, if I had half the smarts she does, I’d put them to better use than staying a slave to other people’s whims.”
“You not want to be here, Jez?”
She lifts her gaze to mine briefly. “Not what I said, Fang. I appreciate my place here, but I worry sometimes what I’ll do when I’m older and a little thicker in the girth. How will I support myself?”
“What did you want to do when you were a kid?”
Goblin also looks to her for the answer.
She pauses prepping the second tray and stares off at nothing. “Always thought I’d be a singer, maybe. Entertaining somehow.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” Goblin asks. “Entertaining?”
I lunge forward and slap the back of his head. “Have some respect.”
“Sorry.” He returns to cutting the final pieces of dough.
“I’ve never seen you sing,” I say to Jezabel. “Didn’t know you could.”
She snorts. “That’s the problem. I can’t.”
Goblin shakes his head, gaze fixed on his work.
“I’ll figure it out,” she says. “Don’t worry about me. Just make sure Reno treats your girl right.”
My easy smile disappears, brow pinching a little. “What makes you say that?”
“She’s six years old, Fang.”
“And?”
“She’s mighty independent for her age. I couldn’t cook anything or use technology like she can.”
“Kids these days are different,” I argue despite the uneasiness in my stomach.
“She told me to use club soda to clean my shirt when I got soup on it.”
“She might have overheard Reno say the same.”
“Asked if I’d like her to get the washing out of the dryer. Said she’d fold it if I wanted her to.”
“I mean, maybe Reno gets her to help out.” I shrug. Although I can’t remember doing much for Mom but sweeping the floor at that age.
“Fang,” Jezabel sighs. “Trust me. She’s too worried about things that shouldn’t be on her mind at that age. Makes me wonder what she has to do for herself at home.”
“You saying Reno leaves her unsupervised?”
Jezabel raises her floury hands. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Just voicing what doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Appreciated.” I shove the last of the dough in my mouth and swivel off the stool.
Reno ain’t the best mom around; there’s no doubting that. But I never once figured she might be neglecting our daughter. Surely I would have seen signs if that were the case? Like you didn’t this morning?
But maybe I’m not as sharp as I thought; I never picked Jenna to be the killer in her group.
Or maybe I need to take my own damn advice and get out of my head once in a while to take a look around me. Give more attention to needs and wants that aren’t my own. Get more involved with the people who matter.
Be the King I’m supposed to be.