Forty-Nine
JENNA
I settle into a rhythm over the next hundred miles, moving my feet to the highway bars every so often to rest my legs, and arching my back to flex the stiff muscles.
Wind cuts up the bottom of the oversized jacket, cold air chilling my neck and under-jaw until I can’t feel them anymore.
The illness at taking what’s not mine slowly eases until it’s replaced with the dread of where I’m going.
I swallow back the nerves, take a deep breath through the rising nausea, and remind myself why this is right.
He can’t avoid me if I’m face to face.
And there’s a chance he’ll find it harder to lie when I can read his eyes and body language.
The time passes, and the fuel tank is in the final quarter when I pull up outside the house.
Her house. Having my father live here is an insult to her memory, as though he prospered out of her death.
Fuck, I hope he’s home. I strip the helmet and hang it on the bars.
My stomach twists, heartbeat firm enough against my ribcage that there’s no way I can ignore it.
I sit astride the bike a moment longer and look around the neighborhood: at the tall trees at the far end of the street, at the worn paint on the twin homes opposite ours.
At the signs of people going about their lives, just trying to get by: cars with dents and worn tires, overgrown strip gardens neglected by people who don’t have the time, an online food delivery waiting on a neighbor’s porch.
It wasn’t easy when it was just Mom and me, but we were happy enough.
We had each other.
My chest aches, the pain of her absence registering for the first time in a long time.
I haven’t slowed down enough to acknowledge it, honor what I lost the day she died.
I’ve been full steam ahead with solving this goddamn debt issue, never giving myself adequate time to grieve. To remember. To transition.
No wonder I’m such a fucking wreck.
Drawing a deep breath, I use my hands to push off the tank and swing my leg over the bike. If Dad is home, I’m surprised he hasn’t come outside, which makes me wonder if this is just a waste of time.
I make my way up the dark and dirty concrete path to the front door.
Do I walk inside, considering this is technically my home too? It doesn’t feel right, for whatever reason.
I knock instead. And then decide to let myself in when nobody answers. The door is unlocked, which is a start. Means he must be around somewhere.
“Dad?” The title tastes more sour than usual. “You home?” I veer right into the living room and drop my shoulders.
He sits on the sofa, beer in hand and elbows to knees while he waits. “Didn’t think it’d be you.”
Explains why he didn’t come outside or answer the door, then. He expected trouble.
Just not from me.
“Well, it is.” I remove Fang’s jacket and set it over the side of the armchair to my left. “We need to talk.”
“No good’s gonna come out of it, Jenna.”
I lift my gaze to his. “I know.” I perch on the front edge of the seat and clap my hands together. “Tell me the truth,” I say. “About the debt. What’s the real story behind it?”
He holds my gaze—my own dark eyes staring right back at me—and flinches before nodding toward the road. “Who’s bike is that?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Think it does if it ain’t yours.” He sets the beer down and fusses with an abandoned cigarette perched on the edge of a glass tray.
The urge to light one myself flits into my brain, yet I quash the thought with a deep breath. “Is the debt real?”
“Of course it’s real,” he gripes.
“Is it still due?”
His focus lifts to me. “How do you mean?”
“I mean, do you still owe the money to the Devil’s Breed?”
He hesitates, barely, before saying, “It will be.” The pause is enough to massage the growing suspicion that pulls my shoulders taut.
“Just fucking explain it, would you?” My fingers knit tighter, aching in the webbing between. “Quit with the evasive short answers and just tell me the truth. I think you owe me at least that much”
“Fine,” he huffs, collapsing against the sofa and spreading his arms wide across the back. “If you think you want to hear it. Let’s do it.”
I shift Fang’s jacket to my lap for something to hold onto that doesn’t hurt as much as my nails gouging my hands.
“Your momma couldn’t pay the out-of-pocket costs, so she came to me for a solution. I gave her the money, knowing there was a good chance she’d never repay it, and her medical treatment continued.” He lifts his hands off the worn upholstery. “There’s not much more to it than that.”
“I think there’s a hell of a lot more you haven’t told me.”
“Like what?” He leans into the conversation. “We talked about this, Jenna. What else do you think I have to share?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I sass. “The reason why they always knew who I was.”
He stares at me, silent.
“Did you ever want to take Smoke down? Or was that a lie, too?”
“What reason have I given you to think that?” he contests, bitterly.
“All the bullshit you’ve told me since that doesn’t add up.”
“Like. What?” he grits out.
I tilt my head, thumbs tracing the outline of the phone in the inside breast pocket.
Fuck—the phone. The Kings of Anarchy will know exactly where I am.
“You told me to go work for the Breed to gather incriminating evidence. You said you’d take it to the authorities to dissolve the club, make the debt disappear.
You also said nobody would know who I was. But none of that was true, was it?”
He wets his lips and then worries his bottom lip with his teeth in a sneering way. “Not entirely. No.”
“Acid knows who I am. Whoever the fuck took that photo knows who I am.” I swallow. “Mary-Beth knew who I was.”
“Who’s Mary-Beth?” His staunch facade falters—he doesn’t like not knowing everything.
“Red Jimmy’s daughter.”
My father’s eyes flash with recognition before he schools his face once more. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“They had her too.”
The asshole swallows.
“She’s dead now, Dad.”
He stays silent a moment before rising from the sofa and collecting his empty bottle. “You want a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
His sudden departure to the kitchen doesn’t sit right—not when I’ve struck a nerve. This man has never backed down from a fight, and now after one unsettling word from me he’s turned tail to gather himself? I don’t think so. Is somebody else here? Does he call someone to come get me?
I slide the burner phone free underneath the jacket and lift the lapel to see the screen.
My obligatory sperm donor appears oblivious to what I do as he re-enters with a new drink. “Way I see it,” Dad announces, settling down again, “is that the ongoing debt means we’ve got a bit of an issue.”
“You have an issue, you mean.”
His glare cuts. “We have an issue. She was your family too.”
“But it was your debt, Dad. I didn’t ask for you to borrow money from the Devil’s Breed.” My heart flutters in my throat, adrenaline the only thing keeping me alert at this point. “That was Mom’s arrangement, not mine.”
“Maybe so, but you couldn’t do shit to help her without me, so the way I see it is you’re as much at fault.”
Bastard.
“What made you think running to them crowned fuckers for help was a good idea?”
I glare at him. “How did leaving me in a human trafficking system help?”
“It would have got the debt gone and both of us off the hook, but you’ve gone and fucked it all up now.”
And there it is. “How?” My thumb holds the edge of the jacket closest to me a little higher so as not to obstruct the phone. “Why is me sitting here, free, such an issue? What did you do?”
I backed him into a corner, and he knows it. The moment the realization that his daughter outsmarted him crosses my father’s face, I feel a sense of relief I haven’t in a long time.
For once, I’m on the winning side of this bullshit.
“Tell me, Dad. Why can’t I just walk away from this and leave you to pay them off?”
He looks toward the front window, jaw working side-to-side.
He was handsome in his younger days, still is. I can see why my mom was attracted to him. But all that brawn and good looks mean nothing when you allow your heart to be corrupted.
“You sold me, didn’t you?” I prompt, frustrated he’s too much of a coward to say it. “That’s how you cleared the debt. You never wanted me there to spy. Me working in their bar was part of the deal, wasn’t it?”
“It was fucking easier than dealing with Smoke for the next however many fucking years,” he gripes. “That asshole loved to lord the goddamn debt over me, and I’d had enough.”
“So you sold your only child to be trafficked to save your ego?” I fight to keep my words level.
Fight to stay upright. To keep the phone unobstructed, hoping like hell this wasn’t all for nothing.
He needs to say it. He needs to say the actual words. Yes, I sold you.
“How much did they give you for me?” I ask, hoping the details are enough to cement his guilt.
“Enough.” He huffs. “But it don’t matter if you’re no longer there, does it? Because they paid for nothing. Without you, they’ll reinstate the debt and probably add tax for the fuck around.”
My head swims. “Do you feel bad at all?” My voice is as small as I feel in the moment, nearly as insignificant.
“I learned a long time ago to take emotion out of my decisions, Jenna.” He meets my eye. “Maybe that sounds cold to you, but it’s the only way a man like me can hope to keep it all together with the things I’ve done. Been made to do.”
“You could have left the club earlier.”
He scoffs. “You think I ever truly left those assholes?” My father shakes his head, chin dipped down.
“I gave my rights back. I returned the patch and revoked any voice I had. But I ain’t gone.
” He leans forward, fisting the bottle in his hand.
“You aren’t ever gone from the one percent life.
That shit stays in your blood until the day you die. ”
The phone chirps beneath the jacket.
We both freeze. The fuck? The video memory must have reached its limit. Shit. I didn’t think of that.
Still fucking things up wherever I go.
“What was that?” His eyes narrow, gaze falling to my lap. “What you got there?”
“Nothing.” I hastily shove it back in the inside pocket and then swing the jacket around to put it on as I rise to my feet. “I need to go before that bike out there becomes an issue.”
He darts across the room, blocking the front door. “You ain’t going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck that was.”
I want to call his bluff, tell him to do his worst knowing he wouldn’t actually touch me since I’m his daughter—his flesh and blood. But he’s already proven that to be one moral boundary he has no qualm crossing.
“Did you ever love her?”
My father relaxes a pinch, but not enough to get past. “Of course, I did. Why else would I do what I did for her, Jenna? I loved your momma enough that I let it blow up my life.”
“But you never loved me, right?” His outline wavers.
I gently blink to suppress any sign of emotion that lets this fucker know how deep beneath my skin he got. He doesn’t deserve that recognition.
“I never got a chance to.” His apologetic gaze lifts from mine and drifts over my shoulder.
I stiffen, attuned to the steady inhale, exhale behind me.
My instincts were right—this asshole didn’t need a moment to regroup.
He needed a moment to strategize.
And I let him distract me with emotion.
Guess he knows just how deep he is, after all.