Chapter 31
Reeze was still warm from helping Mark shift the boxes.
The metal had bitten into his palms, sweat had run into his eyes and his muscles ached with that simple, honest kind of exhaustion that actually helped.
Physical work had always been better than standing still when his thoughts were pulling him in too many directions at once, and for a while it had been enough.
The Assholes had got their ammunition and Hale was still standing by the open tailgate, counting through the last of it with a satisfied nod while Billy slammed the other door of the van shut.
“There,” Mark said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Now no bastard can complain we’re unprepared.”
Reeze dragged his forearm across his forehead and looked towards the clubhouse. He had barely lowered his arm when he saw his mother walking towards him.
She wasn’t moving quickly, but Ingrid never needed to. People tended to move out of her way anyway, and from the way she held herself, Reeze knew before she even opened her mouth that she hadn’t come over to discuss anything.
She had already made a decision.
“This is what we’re doing,” she said when she reached him. “I’m taking Molly out to the country for a few days. It gives things time to settle down at school and lets you concentrate on the shit you’ve got going on here.”
Reeze opened his mouth, but she raised one hand before he managed to get a word out.
“And don’t think for one fucking second that I’m answering the phone if Lotta calls. That cunt can go to hell.”
“Grandma!”
Molly’s horrified voice came from a few metres away, where she was sitting with her drawing and Boris beside her.
Ingrid looked over and shrugged.
“What? It’s true.”
Reeze ran a hand over his face. Over by the bar, he could see Charlie trying not to laugh while simultaneously looking slightly shocked. Apparently she had just discovered that his own colourful vocabulary hadn’t materialised out of nowhere.
“Mum…”
“Save it.” Ingrid waved him off. “I’ve seen worse storms than this and the kid is better off with me for a few days. You know that as well as I do.”
He did.
Knowing it didn’t make it any easier.
He wanted Molly close, somewhere he could see her and know she was safe, while another part of him knew that right now safe might mean as far away from him and the club as possible.
“You call if anything happens.”
“I’ll call if I need to.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“And you’re still my son, so watch your tone.”
She gave his upper arm a firm pat, not particularly gentle but not hard either, simply with that same unquestioned authority that somehow always managed to make him feel about fifteen again.
“And stop trying to carry the whole bloody world on your back. You look exactly like your father did when he thought he could do it.”
That landed harder than the hand had.
Reeze fell silent.
There were things his mother could say that nobody else would ever have got away with, not simply because she was his mother, but because she had known him before he knew what sort of man he would become.
She had seen everything that came before Wallhalla, before the cut, before Molly and Lotta and all the years that had shaped him into the man now standing in front of her, trying to keep half a dozen disasters under control at the same time.
He had just opened his mouth to answer when the clubhouse door was thrown open hard enough to make several heads turn.
Lotta stepped outside with her arms folded and the kind of posture that always made it look as though she owned whatever place she happened to walk into.
Her hair was immaculate, her lips painted, and her gaze swept quickly across the yard before settling on Charlie, moving to Reeze and finally stopping on Molly.
Something hardened in her expression.
Reeze felt it before she even spoke. That change in the air that came when someone had already had the entire argument in their head before they arrived.
His mother noticed it too.
Ingrid looked at Lotta, then at Molly, and apparently needed no more than a couple of seconds to make another decision.
“Come on, kid. We’ll go and get your things and put the dog in the car.”
“But Grandma—”
“No.”
That tone left no room for negotiation.
Molly looked between the adults before her eyes finally settled on Reeze. He gave her a short nod and that was enough to make her get up, but before following Ingrid she hurried over and wrapped both arms around his waist.
“I’ll call.”
Reeze ran a hand through her hair.
“Good, flea.”
She released him and followed her grandmother and Boris towards the car park. Reeze watched them for a few seconds before turning back to Lotta.
Molly was out of earshot now.
“What is it?”
Lotta waited until she saw them disappear around the corner of the building before answering.
“She bit him.”
Reeze frowned.
“Who?”
“Albin.”
The name made Charlie react from where she stood a short distance away. Molly had talked about him before. The same boy and apparently the same problems that never seemed to end.
“He tore up her drawing again,” Lotta continued, “and called her a criminal’s daughter.”
Reeze felt his jaw tighten.
“So she bit him.”
Lotta gave a short laugh without the slightest trace of humour in it.
“She sank her teeth into his arm hard enough to leave marks. His parents are furious and threatening to report her.”
“Maybe they should teach their son to keep his fucking hands off her.”
“And that is exactly where we have a problem.”
Lotta stepped closer and Reeze could see the frustration working across her face.
“She solves things with violence.”
“She solves things when nobody else fucking does.”
“She’s eight, Robert.”
Something about the way Lotta used his real name silenced him.
Not because she raised her voice. Quite the opposite. Some of the anger had gone out of it, leaving behind something more tired and considerably harder to dismiss.
“Eight,” she repeated. “She shouldn’t have to fight to defend her own name.”
Reeze drew a slow breath through his nose and let his gaze move towards the place where Molly had been sitting only moments earlier.
“No,” he said eventually. “She shouldn’t.”
Lotta fell silent.
Perhaps she had expected him to argue. Perhaps she had been so prepared to fight him that it took her a moment to realise he actually agreed.
“This isn’t about you,” she said, much more quietly. “It’s about her. She’s starting to think she has to be dangerous before people will respect her.”
Reeze swallowed.
Charlie could see the change in him even from where she stood. The anger had gone from his face, along with the hard defensive wall that usually came up whenever someone got too close.
All that remained was guilt.
“She shouldn’t have to be dangerous,” he said quietly. “She should feel safe.”
“Then you have to give her a chance to feel safe, because right now she’s learning that the world is a battlefield.”
His jaw began working again, but Reeze said nothing. There was plenty he could argue with when Lotta started throwing accusations at him in anger, but not that.
Not when some part of him had already been thinking exactly the same thing.
Lotta ran a hand through her hair and glanced towards the car park before continuing.
“Dennis didn’t call me to threaten you. He called to tell me the school is getting sick of all this.”
The name made Charlie freeze.
Reeze went completely still.
“And what did you tell him?”
“That I take care of my daughter.”
There was something different beneath Lotta’s irritation now. Something Charlie hadn’t expected.
Fear. Not for Reeze and not even for Dennis. For Molly.
“She isn’t going to become like us.” It was the first time Lotta had included herself.
Not you. Not I. Us.
And that landed harder on Reeze than any accusation she had thrown at him before.
He remained silent for a moment before slowly shaking his head.
“She bit him because he destroyed her things and wouldn’t stop when she told him to. Not because of me.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No. But it doesn’t make it worse either. It’s still a pretty fucking serious problem if none of the adults do anything about him until Molly finally handles it herself.”
Lotta looked at him for a long moment.
Somewhere along the way, the anger between them had disappeared, leaving something considerably heavier behind, because both of them knew they were no longer really talking about a torn drawing or teeth marks on a boy’s arm.
They were talking about what their daughter was learning from the world around her.
“If she starts believing violence is the only language that works,” Lotta said eventually, “then we’ve both failed her.”
Reeze didn’t answer. For the first time since she arrived, Lotta didn’t seem to expect him to.
She dragged a hand through her hair again and released a long breath.
“And keep her out of police wars and club shit. She doesn’t need to become collateral damage in your fucking life.”
Then she turned and walked away. Reeze remained where he was, watching her as the sounds of the yard slowly began filtering back in around him.
Someone was talking beside the van, an engine started somewhere further away and Billy could be heard shouting something from inside the clubhouse that made several people laugh, but none of it seemed to reach him properly.
Charlie didn’t move towards him. Not yet.
She watched him and understood that it wasn’t Lotta herself he was thinking about.
It was what she had said about Molly. That she was beginning to see the world as a battlefield. That she was learning she had to be dangerous before people would leave her alone.
Eventually, Reeze dragged a hand over his face. “She’s more like me than I want her to be.”
Charlie stayed where she was. There was no answer he needed from her.
Because she understood that this was the part that frightened him. Not that Molly had got into another fight, not that the school had called and not even that Albin’s parents were threatening to report her.
It was the possibility that his eight-year-old daughter had already begun looking at the world through the same eyes he once had.
From around the corner came Ingrid’s voice.
“Come on. We’ve got an hour’s drive ahead of us and I’m not discussing sweets until we’re halfway there.”
“But Grandma!”
“Halfway, I said.”
Reeze drew a breath and started walking. The pickup was already running when he rounded the building. Boris had been settled in the back and Molly sat beside her grandmother with her seat belt fastened and an expression that made her opinion of the sweets rule perfectly clear.
“Wait.”
Molly immediately rolled down the window. “Dad!”
Reeze walked over and rested his forearms against the door. In the daylight, the damage to his face was even more obvious and he saw Molly’s gaze immediately move over the bruises, the bandage and his split lip.
She studied him for a long moment. “You look like Albin after I hit him.”
Despite everything, Reeze snorted. “A little.”
“Did you bite anyone?”
“No.”
Molly considered that for a few seconds. “Maybe you should.”
Ingrid gave her a look from the driver’s seat. “One biter in the family is enough.”
Molly ignored her completely and continued studying her father. “Is it my fault everyone’s fighting?”
The question hit him harder than anything Lotta had just said. “No.” The answer came without the slightest hesitation. Reeze straightened and held Molly’s gaze. “No, flea. None of this is your fault.”
“Mum says it all started because of you.”
He slowly ran a hand through his hair.
“It started long before you could even walk. Adults sometimes have problems children shouldn’t have to carry, and this is one of them. Okay?”
Molly considered the answer with the deep concentration only a child could give to something before finally nodding.
“Okay.”
Then she looked past him towards the clubhouse.
Charlie was still standing in the doorway and Molly watched her for a few seconds.
“Is Charlie dangerous?”
Reeze blinked.
“What?”
“She looked scared when you came in.”
He followed his daughter’s gaze. “Charlie isn’t dangerous.”
“Good.”
Molly nodded as though the matter had now been settled. “I don’t want her to run away.”
It was said so simply that it caught him somewhere he hadn’t been prepared for. Reeze swallowed and looked back at her. “I’m working on that.”
Molly seemed satisfied with the answer. She leaned through the open window and Reeze bent down far enough for her to plant a quick kiss on his cheek.
“Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone.”
“I’ll try.”
His mother sighed heavily. “That’s enough family therapy.”
She put the pickup into gear and Molly burst out laughing.
The vehicle slowly rolled away and Reeze remained standing there with his hands in the pockets of his jeans while Molly waved through the window.
He lifted one hand in return and kept it there until the pickup turned the corner and disappeared.
Even then he didn’t move.It was only when the sound of the engine finally faded that he noticed how empty the yard suddenly felt.
Not quiet, or even peaceful. Just empty.
And for once, Reeze didn’t immediately look for something to do about it.
He simply stood there and let himself feel it.