Chapter 2
Gabe / Chains - VP POV
The moment the diner door opened, all my instincts kicked in. She wasn’t a threat, but she was impossible to ignore.
Rain dripped from her dark, honey-brown hair as she walked in, holding a sleeping boy on her hip. A girl about ten clung to her, lost in a worn-out grey sweater.
The woman looked exhausted. Not just tired, but truly worn out.
Life had taken everything from her and still demanded more.
Something clenched in my chest.
Then the entire diner went silent.
I frowned. The woman stopped near the entrance, uneasy with all the eyes on her. Honestly, I’d feel the same way; everyone in the room was staring. Sally was the first to move.
The diner owner dropped the coffee pot and walked straight toward the woman. When Sally got closer, she stopped in her tracks. Her face went pale. For a moment, she just stared, then her eyes filled with tears.
“What the hell…” Bolt muttered beside me.
I looked back at the woman. I really looked, and then it hit me. Not everything made sense, but enough did.
Same dark hair.
Same smile.
Same face shape.
Nearly thirty years had passed since Maria disappeared from Creek Wood.
I’d seen old photographs, and the woman near the door looked so much like her that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Only one thing didn’t match.
Her eyes.
Green.
Not Maria’s.
Green like Graves’.
Sally recovered first.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmured gently, looking between the woman and the two exhausted kids. “Come on. Let’s get you seated and get some food into those babies.”
Relief flashed across the woman’s face. The little boy buried his face in her shoulder. The girl stayed close.
Protective.
Watching.
Smart kid.
Sally led them toward a booth. The entire diner tracked their movement. Nobody said a damn word.
Finally, I broke the silence.
“Why the hell does she look like Maria?”
The words came out lower than I intended. Nobody answered right away. Then Rage sat forward, his eyes fixed on the woman.
“It can’t be.”
A strange feeling formed in my gut because I knew exactly what he was thinking. Everyone in the club knew the story.
Maria.
The missing baby. The child nobody ever found. The child Graves spent years searching for.
The woman glanced up then.
Just for a second.
Our eyes locked across the diner, and something hit me square in the chest.
No recognition.
Not familiarity.
Something far more threatening.
Interest.
I hated the feeling immediately. If she was who we thought, she was completely off limits.
----
Roman / Rage POV
I couldn’t look away from her. The sounds in the diner faded. Sally talking, coffee cups clinking, Bolt muttering. None of it mattered.
All I could see was her.
The woman sat in the booth, the boy curled up beside her, and the girl slid in next to her. She looked deeply tired, as if she’d carried the weight of the world for years. But that wasn’t what caught my eye.
It was her face.
I grew up hearing the story.
Not often. Dad rarely talked about it, but everyone in the club knew the story.
Maria.
The girl who’d gotten pregnant with the President’s child. The girl who’d disappeared before he could bring them home. The girl who’d taken his daughter and vanished.
I never knew Maria. I’d only seen old photographs.
Dad kept a handful of faded pictures hidden, but the woman across the diner looked so much like them that my pulse raced.
Same hair.
Same smile.
Same face.
Except for one thing.
Her eyes.
Green, not Maria’s brown.
Green.
It was the same green I saw every day in the mirror, the same green as my father’s.
The Carter eyes.
“It can’t be,” I muttered, because it seemed impossible. Twenty-eight years had passed.
Twenty-eight damn years without a single trace. People don’t just show up in your hometown after almost thirty years.
My gaze shifted to the little girl sitting close to her. She had the same honey-brown hair and green eyes.
My chest tightened.
Jesus Christ.
The resemblance was everywhere once you saw it.
I pulled my phone from my pocket. My thumb paused over Dad’s contact for a second. What the hell was I supposed to say?
Hey, old man. A woman who looks just like the girl you lost almost thirty years ago walked into Sally’s diner.
I typed anyway.
Get to Sally’s. Now.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Why?
The woman laughed softly at something the little boy said. For a second, she smiled.
My heart nearly stopped, because I’d seen that smile before in a photograph Dad thought no one knew about.
I gulped nervously and typed the only response I could think of.
Just get here.
For the first time in my life, I prayed I was wrong.
----
Rick / President - Graves POV
The text made no damn sense.
I looked at my phone for a long moment before reading it again.
Get to Sally’s. Now.
That was all. No explanation, no sarcastic comment from Roman. Just four words.
I frowned.
Across the clubhouse office, Stella glanced up from the paperwork spread across the desk.
“Everything okay?”
I looked at my wife.
My anchor.
My home.
The woman who’d stood with me through every damn storm life had thrown my way.
“I’ve gotta head to Sally’s.”
One dark eyebrow lifted. “Roman?”
“Yeah.”
The look she gave me showed she was just as confused. Roman never panicked, and he didn’t send cryptic texts unless something was really wrong.
I pushed to my feet. Before I could say anything else, Stella grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair.
“I’m coming.”
A small smile tugged at my mouth. Some things never changed.
Stella still said it the same way.
Not asking. Telling.
I never stopped her. Never wanted to.
Stella had earned the right to stand wherever the hell she wanted.
Especially beside me. She’d stood by my side so many times. She’d been there through everything.
The club wars.
The bloodshed.
The losses.
The nights I almost drowned myself in whiskey after Maria disappeared.
The years I spent searching for the daughter I couldn’t find.
Most women would’ve walked away. Hell, they probably should have.
Not Stella.
She’d held me together when I was barely hanging on. Never once telling me to let it go. Never once asking me to stop looking.
She gave me Roman, gave me love, gave me a life, and somehow still found room in her heart for the daughter I lost before I ever got to know her.
I slid my cut on while Stella zipped up her jacket.
A few minutes later, we were on the road. Cold wind rushed past as my bike sped toward Sally’s diner. I didn’t know why Roman wanted me there, but my gut twisted more with every mile.
Something was wrong. I could feel it.
The diner parking lot was packed when we arrived. I cut the engine. Stella climbed off behind me.
Together, we headed inside. The familiar bell above the door rang.
Immediately, I spotted them.
Roman.
Chains.
Bolt.
All sitting at the same table.
None of them looked at me.
Not one.
Their attention was fixed somewhere across the diner.
My stomach dropped.
Slowly, I followed their line of sight toward a booth near the far window.
A woman was seated there with two children.
A little boy curled against her side, fighting sleep. A girl sat close to her, wearing an oversized grey sweater, her green eyes watching the room carefully.
Protective.
Alert.
The woman laughed softly at something the boy said. The sound carried across the diner.
My heart stopped for a second.
No.
My gaze focused on her face.
Dark honey?brown hair.
Delicate features.
A smile I’d spent nearly three decades trying to forget.
For a moment, all I saw was Maria, twenty years old and laughing under a summer sky. The girl I loved. The girl who disappeared. The girl who took a piece of my soul with her.
Then the woman turned fully.
Her green eyes met mine from across the diner.
My eyes.
The Carter eyes.
The world seemed to shift beneath my feet. Every sound vanished. The conversations, the music, the clatter of dishes all faded away.
Gone.
Twenty-eight years.
Twenty?eight years of searching.
Twenty?eight years of dead ends.
Twenty-eight years of wondering if she was alive. If she was safe. If she’d ever known I wanted her. If she’d ever known I looked.
My chest squeezed so hard it hurt to breathe.
“Rick?”
Stella’s voice sounded distant, because all I could do was stare at the woman. I looked at the little girl who looked so much like her, at the little boy leaning against her side, at the life she’d built without ever knowing me.
No.
Not just a woman.
Not just a stranger.
Not if those eyes meant what I thought they did.
And suddenly, after twenty-eight years, I was looking at my daughter.
She knew people were staring, knew something was off. The discomfort was written all over her face.
Slowly, I forced my eyes away from her.
Stella squeezed my arm gently. When I looked at her, she gave me a small nod.
She knew. Of course she did.
She’d seen the same thing I had.
The same eyes.
The same face.
The same impossible possibility.
Then Stella smiled.
She didn’t smile at me, but at her, across the diner.
The woman blinked in surprise before giving a hesitant smile in return.
A kind smile. The kind you give strangers when you have no idea they’re looking at a piece of their own heart.
My chest tightened.
Girl.
The word appeared automatically before I shut it down.
She wasn’t a girl. She was a woman, a mother. She’d built a whole life without me, and she had no idea who I was to her.
No idea I’d searched.
No idea, I’d spent years following every lead I could find.
No idea, I’d wanted her from the second I knew she existed.
I looked at her children.
My grandchildren.
Jesus Christ.
My grandchildren.
The little boy was nearly asleep against her shoulder. The girl sat straight and watchful next to her mother.
Protective.
Just like Roman.
How was I supposed to walk over there? How could I tell her that everything she believed about being abandoned was wrong? I’d searched. I never stopped looking. Not a single day passed without wondering where she was.
How could I tell her she was my daughter without scaring her away?
Because after twenty?eight years, I’d finally found her.
I’d be damned if I lost her again.