Chapter 56 #2
The loss hurt anyway. Not the way losing my mother hurt, because I didn’t have Kaylah’s face or voice to miss.
What hurt was learning there had been another woman I might have asked questions and, in the same breath, learning I never could.
Jasper started to explain that there were painful parts of Kaylah’s history, but I stopped him. I didn’t need them today.
I needed to understand the people.
Jasper nodded and told me Kaylah had been married to a man named Remington Ward, whose road name was Steele.
When I looked at him blankly, he explained that Steele had once been president of the Silver Shadows Mother Chapter in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The Silver Shadows I knew through Jasper were the Nebraska Chapter, built later after the old club fractured.
I had never heard Steele’s name because none of that history had meant anything to me before today.
“Did you know him?”
“Yeah, baby, I did. He was my president.”
“So that’s where Ward came from,” I said.
“Legally, yeah. But he wasn’t your biological father.”
I rubbed my forehead. “There’s more?”
That finally brought the faintest smile to Jasper’s face. “Steele was still married to your mom when you were born. That’s why his name was listed.”
“Who was my father?”
“Marcus Ryker. His road name is Angel. He was a Silver Shadow too, back in Little Rock. Steele’s enforcer. He rides nomad now.”
I stared at him. “My biological father is another biker?”
“Yeah.”
“In your club?”
“Yeah.”
A shaky laugh slipped out. “Of course he is. Apparently, I could have been raised on another continent and still found my way into your clubhouse.”
Jasper’s smile lasted only a second before I asked if Angel was alive.
When he said yes, something inside me reacted before I had time to decide how I felt about it.
Alive meant there was a man somewhere who shared part of me.
A man who might have my eyes or some expression I had never known came from anyone else.
“Did he know about me?”
“He knew Kaylah was pregnant. Then she disappeared from his life before you were born.”
Anger came hard and fast. “So he knew there might be a baby and never bothered to find out?”
Jasper didn’t defend him. He simply explained that Angel had searched for Kaylah and her two daughters for two years. He found nothing and never learned whether Kaylah had given birth. The anger inside me stumbled over that.
“He looked for two years?”
“Yeah. He never knew you were out there.”
I looked down at our joined hands and thought about all the times a social worker had asked whether I had relatives. Grandparents? No. Aunts? No. Uncles? No. There had been a man somewhere who might have wanted to know me. He just hadn’t known Fiona Mitchell existed.
Then another part of Jasper’s sentence reached me. “Kaylah had daughters?”
“Two older girls—Kinsley and Kyllian. They’re your sisters.”
The word sisters settled strangely. Frank and Georgie were my brothers so completely that biology couldn’t touch that relationship, but I had never had a sister. Now two names suddenly occupied a space I hadn’t known was empty.
“Where are they?” I asked.
Jasper’s hesitation warned me. “Kyllian is alive. She’s the reason we know what we do about your mom. Kinsley is believed to have died. They haven’t found every answer about her, but Kyllian believes she’s gone.”
I didn’t know Kinsley, so what moved through me wasn’t grief. It felt more like losing a possibility. A sister I might have met. A woman whose face might have held something familiar. “And Kyllian?”
“She’s alive. She’s with another club—the Brotherhood. She’s safe.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Banshee made sure.”
I frowned. “Why would Banshee make sure she was safe?”
The name clicked immediately. I’d never met Banshee, but after almost a year of listening to Jasper talk about the men in his club, I knew exactly who he meant.
Jasper watched recognition settle in before he added, “Kaylah was his little sister. Banshee is your uncle.”
I stared at him. A man whose name had been woven through Jasper’s stories for months was suddenly part of my family, and I hadn’t had the slightest idea.
Jasper explained that Banshee had spent years searching for Kaylah. Eventually he found Kyllian, and when he did, Angel finally got the chance to ask the question he had carried since Kaylah disappeared.
“Kyllian remembered you.”
Those words were different from everything else Jasper had told me.
Carly had found records.
Isaac had arranged paperwork.
A file had once contained the name Kaitlyn Grace Ward.
Those were all facts that anyone could find, anyone could explain.
But Kyllian remembered me.
“My sister remembers me?” I asked, and the word sister felt awkward in my mouth.
“Yeah, Ma Belle. She remembers her mother havin’ another little girl. She remembers Kaylah callin’ you Kaitlyn Grace.”
Tears blurred Jasper’s face.
Until that moment, Kaitlyn Grace had felt like someone else’s name, something typed on an old page. Now it had a person attached to it. Kaylah had looked at me and chosen those words. I would never remember her saying them, but she had.
“My mother named me.”
“Yeah.”
I covered my mouth as a sob escaped. Jasper moved his chair closer and pulled me onto his lap. I stayed there for a while, trying to understand how I could grieve a woman I had never known and feel connected to a sister I had never met simply because she remembered something I couldn’t.
When I finally lifted my head, I asked what happened after Angel and Banshee learned the baby had survived. Jasper’s hand slowed against my back. “They started lookin’ for you. Banshee promised Kyllian he’d find Kaylah’s daughter.”
I stared at him. “They’re looking for me?”
“Yeah. Angel’s a nomad now because he’s been on the road chasin’ down any lead he could find.”
That was the thing that broke me.
There had been a time when I waited for someone.
After my parents died and the state couldn’t find any family, some part of me kept imagining they had simply missed somebody.
An aunt who lived far away. A grandparent no one knew about.
Someone who would eventually hear what happened, walk through a door, and say my name like they had been searching everywhere.
No one came.
Eventually I stopped waiting.
Except someone had been looking.
They were just looking for Kaitlyn Grace.
“I was right here,” I whispered, pressing my face into Jasper’s chest when the tears started again. “I wasn’t hiding. They just didn’t know Fiona existed.”
“I know, Cher.” Jasper held me tighter, his hand moving slowly over my back.
He didn’t tell me Angel was my father now or that Banshee was suddenly family in some emotional way.
He let me cry over the only thing I could understand.
Someone had looked. Somehow, that mattered more than I had ever known it would.
When I could finally breathe again, I asked whether Angel and Banshee knew Carly had found me.
Jasper told me no. He confessed that when King figured out we had disappeared, he’d chosen not to tell Angel or Banshee.
He ordered Jasper to disappear with me until King told him it was safe to come home.
“If St. James learns Kaitlyn is alive and connects that name to you, she’ll think you’re Steele’s daughter. That could make you important to whatever the fuck she’s tryin’ to rebuild.”
“Why?”
Jasper took a deep breath. “Sylvia St. James was Steele’s aunt. She’s desperate for someone with her blood to take over the Society.”
“The SUV.”
Jasper nodded. “I still don’t know who was in it. I’m not gonna tell you it was Sylvia when I can’t prove that. Somebody followed us. That’s all I know.”
Oddly, the danger felt smaller than everything else.
I looked down at Granny’s ring again. My parents were still my parents. Granny was still Granny. Frank and Georgie were still my brothers. Nothing Jasper had told me changed the family I already had. It simply added people to a beginning I hadn’t known existed.
“I don’t know what they are to me,” I admitted.
Jasper kissed my temple. “You don’t have to figure that shit out today.”
For most of my childhood, someone else had decided what happened next. Social workers, foster parents, judges. This time, nobody was putting me in a room with strangers and announcing they were family because blood said so. King hadn’t called them. Jasper hadn’t called them. Everyone was waiting.
The choice was mine.
“Do you have pictures?” I asked.
“I can get them.”
My heart kicked harder. A photograph felt manageable. A photograph couldn’t call me daughter, niece, or sister before I knew whether I could hear those words without breaking apart again. “I want to see them,” I told Jasper. “But I don’t want them told yet. I’m not ready to talk to anyone.”
“Then nobody tells them.”
I leaned against my husband and closed my eyes while the bayou moved quietly beyond the screens. Kaitlyn Grace Ward still didn’t feel like my name. Fiona did. Fiona was the daughter my parents had wanted, the girl Granny chose, Frank and Georgie’s sister, Charlie’s aunt, and Jasper’s wife.
But somehow, Kaitlyn Ward didn’t feel like a stranger anymore either.
She was the baby Kaylah had named, the little sister Kyllian remembered, the daughter Angel had learned survived, and the niece Banshee was still trying to find.
I wasn’t ready for them to know their search was over.
But I wanted to see their faces.