Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Popeye
The Silver Shadows’ clubhouse in Diamond Creek was nothing like the Soulless Sinners’ place back in New York. It was smaller. Fewer secrets. Less betrayal. There had been plenty of bloodshed in the past seven months, but now that the war was over, life could get back to normal.
As normal as it could be for a motorcycle club.
I stood in the doorway, watching. An outsider. The only man in this building who didn’t wear the Silver Shadows’ patch. The only man who had no right to be there, except for the blood connection to the woman behind the bar.
Grace.
My daughter.
Just about eight months pregnant and still moving like she owned the place. Because she did, in a way. She was the president’s old lady. That made her untouchable. Made her royalty in this world.
She laughed at something one of the brothers said, and the sound hit me square in the chest. Christina’s laugh. I’d know it anywhere, even after all these years. That same musical quality, that warmth that could light up a room.
Fuck, it hurts. Hearing her mother in her voice. Seeing her mother in the tilt of her head, the way she touches that brother’s arm when she laughs.
But the way Grace held herself... that was all her own. Christina had never stood like that, shoulders back, chin up, owning every inch of space she occupied. Christina had made herself small. Tried to disappear into the background, into Caroline’s shadow.
Grace commanded attention without even trying.
She was everything her mother could’ve been if the world hadn’t beaten her down. If I hadn’t failed to protect her.
“You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna come in?” King’s voice came from behind me, and I turned to see the president of the Nebraska Chapter leaning against the wall, arms crossed.
“Just watching,” I said.
“I can see that.” King pushed off the wall and moved to stand beside me. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” The word came out rough, scraped from my throat. “She is.”
We stood there in silence for a moment, two men who had nothing in common except the woman behind the bar. King was young, late thirties, maybe. Built like his father, Braesal O’Malley, and covered in ink, with eyes that had seen too much too soon.
He loved my daughter. I could see it in the way he watched her, the way his whole body leaned toward her even when he was talking to me. The way his eyes tracked her every movement, as if she were the only thing in the room that mattered.
The way I should have been watching her for the past thirty years.
“She tell you about her mother?” I asked.
“Some.” King’s jaw tightened. “Enough to know Christina kept a lot of secrets. Enough to know Grace is still trying to figure out who her mother really was.”
“Yeah.” I watched Grace lean against the bar, one hand resting on her swollen belly. Protective. Maternal. Christina used to touch her stomach like that when she was carrying Grace.
I thought about the journal in my pocket.
The one that held secrets I wasn’t quite ready to hear.
Secrets that kept me from reading beyond the first entry because I was terrified of what else I’d find.
What else Christina had hidden from me. What else she’d done that would shatter the memory of the woman I’d loved.
“You regret it? The years you lost?”
The question hit like a fist to the gut. “Every goddamn day.”
King nodded slowly. “Grace knows you were looking for her. Knows you didn’t just walk away. Trust me, that matters.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” King’s voice was firm. “It does. She’s been through a lot of shit, and all that time her mother’s voice was in her ear, telling her to give up.
Telling her not to trust any man. She’s angry about the lies, about what her mother kept from her...
from both of you. But she doesn’t blame you for not being there. Not anymore.”
“Maybe she should. Maybe I should’ve looked harder.”
“You never stopped looking.” King’s eyes met mine. “That’s not nothing.”
Grace looked up then, catching me watching her. Her face softened, and she smiled. Not Christina’s smile, this one was bigger, brighter, more confident. This one said I see you, and I’m not afraid.
But there was something else there, too. Something uncertain. Like she was still trying to figure out who her mother had been. Who I was. Who we all were in this tangled mess of secrets and lies.
She waved me over, and I moved through the clubhouse as if I were walking through water. Every step felt heavy. Every breath felt like work.
“Hey, old man.” Grace’s voice was warm, teasing. “You gonna stand in the corner all night, or come talk to your daughter?”
“What are you still doing back there?” I asked, settling onto the stool in front of her. “Ain’t you got your hands full enough?”
“Always.” She patted her belly. “This one’s gonna be a handful. I can already tell. But until he or she gets here, I need to stay busy.”
Something flashed in her eyes, and my heart broke for what she was still going through.
One of the club’s old ladies was a shrink and had been working with Grace to deal with what those fuckers had done to her.
She’d come a long way since the day I found her.
But I knew what she went through was something she might never fully recover from.
I looked at her stomach, at the life growing inside her. My grandchild. A piece of me and Christina, carried forward into the next generation. A small blessing that the baby was King’s and not one of the fuckers who’d hurt her.
“You scared?” I asked.
“Terrified.” Grace laughed, but there was truth in it. “But King’s gonna be a good dad. Better than—” She stopped and bit her lip.
“Better than I got to be?” I finished for her.
“I didn’t mean?—”
“It’s okay.” I reached out and covered her hand with mine. “You’re right. He will be. Because he worked hard to eliminate the threat to his family, rather than trying to hide them from it.” I dropped my eyes to the bar top. “That’s what I should have done.”
Grace turned her hand over and squeezed my fingers. “You’re here now.”
“Twenty fucking years too late.”
“Better late than never.” She looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw Christina in her face.
She was her mother’s twin, except for her eyes.
She had my eyes, and in those eyes, I saw questions.
Doubts. The weight of discovering that her mother had been someone she didn’t fully know.
“I’m still trying to understand why she did it. Why she kept us apart.”
“Me too, baby girl.” The admission tasted like ash. Like failure. “Me too.” I looked down at her hand in mine.
“Your mother,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully, “she wanted to protect you. She never wanted you in this life.”
“Yet this life is all I’ve ever known. She had the chance to keep me from it when we left Arkansas?—”
“But you were in it anyway.”
“Yeah.” Grace smiled. “I was. I am. And I’m okay with that.
This is my family now. These men, this club, they’re mine.
And I’m theirs. I wanted to run from it after what happened...
” She took a deep breath, and I squeezed her hand, wishing I could take her pain, carry it for her.
“It was the only time I really wanted to run, and it was the one time I shouldn’t.
If I’d left and then found out about the baby, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
I wouldn’t have him or her. Wouldn’t have King.
” Tears gathered in her eyes as she smiled.
One slipped out and ran over her cheek. “I wouldn’t have found you. ”
I thought about Christina’s journal. About what else was in there. The secrets, the lies, the answers—all of which I wasn’t sure I would survive.
And here was Grace, surviving the life her mother and I had thrown her into.
“She’d be proud of you,” I said.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
Grace sniffed and grabbed the towel on the bar to blow her nose. She threw it into the bin behind her and looked at me. “I’m not sure she was the woman you think she was.”
I wasn’t sure either. Not anymore. Not after everything I’d learned so far. How much more would I learn if I kept reading her journal?
Do I even want to know? Or should I just bury it, let the past stay buried, hold on to the memory of who I thought she was?
“I’m proud of you. You’re stronger than both of us ever were. You’re not running. You’re not hiding. You’re standing here in the middle of this life, owning it, making it yours.”
Grace’s eyes filled with tears, and she laughed, wiping at them with her free hand. “Damn hormones. I cry at everything now.”
“Blame the baby.”
“I do. Constantly.”
One of the brothers walked up to the bar, and Grace looked back at me.
“Go. I’m not going anywhere.” And I wasn’t.
Diamond Creek was now my home. The war was over, and I was retired.
There was nothing left for me in New York.
I had one friend left, and Snoopy had his own troubles with the woman he wanted.
The club was gone. Restructured into something different.
Something that would make George Stone roll over in his grave, and it brought a smile to my face.
Fuck you, asshole! You’re dead and I’m still here. Still fighting. Still trying to be the man you wouldn’t let me be.
Around us, the clubhouse buzzed with life. Men laughed and argued and told stories. Prospects ran errands. The jukebox played old rock songs. The smell of whiskey and leather hung in the air.
This was the life Christina had begged me to keep Grace out of.
This was the life Grace had chosen anyway.
And sitting here, being a part of my daughter’s life, watching her navigate this world with confidence and strength, I had to wonder if maybe Christina and I had been wrong.
Maybe we hadn’t protected Grace by keeping secrets.
Maybe we’d just robbed her of the chance to know where she came from. Who she came from.
Maybe we’d robbed ourselves too.
“Dad?” Grace’s voice was soft, uncertain. She’d started calling me that a few months ago, testing it out. Seeing if it fit.
“Yeah, baby girl?”
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I found you. Or you found me. However it happened, I’m glad.”
My throat closed up. I couldn’t speak. Could barely breathe.
So I just held her hand and nodded and hoped that was enough.
Hoped that maybe, after all these years, after all the mistakes and the lost time and the secrets that had kept us apart, we could build something new. Something real.
Maybe it wasn’t too late after all.
King appeared beside us and set a beer in front of me without a word. Our eyes met, and I saw the warning there. The promise. You hurt her, and I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what patch you used to wear. I will end you.
I nodded. Understood. Respected it, even.
Because that was what Grace deserved. A man who’d go to war for her. A man who’d protect her with everything he had.
The man I should’ve been.
The man I was trying to become.
I took a drink of the beer, letting the cold liquid wash away some of the tightness in my chest. Around me, the Silver Shadows moved through their routines. I was an outsider here. Might always be an outsider.
But I was Grace’s father.
And for now, that was enough.