When I’d found Mom and Dad arguing after the news had hit about Donavan.
She had to know something, didn’t she? I reached for my cell, but when I put the call through, she ignored it.
Like she’d been ignoring me since I’d told her my being pregnant wasn’t a TikTok prank.
Lost, uneasy, confused, and scared, my heart was still pounding in my ears as I headed on out of the pantry, and when I walked into the main thoroughfare and saw Sin hugging another woman?
Let’s just say that was the cherry on the fucking cake.
Sin
I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck when Tiffany approached.
I’d never been so hyperaware of another woman in my entire life, but it was like something about her got to me in a way I’d have figured was insane if another brother had told me about it.
It’d been there that first night.
I’d felt her watching me from the start.
A brother had pointed her out, pointed out her candid stare, but I’d known.
I’d sensed her.
And what did men do when they were feeling on edge?
They fucked up and pulled stupid shit.
Like fingering the club snatch in front of the woman who made you aware of her without having shared two words.
Tiffany came across as strong and confident, and I knew deep down she was, but the life made her nervous.
And I got it.
I’d be a fucking moron not to. So her finding me this way?
Not ideal.
I pulled back from Mary Catherine with a soft smile, and murmured, “MaryCat, I have someone to introduce you to.”
Tiffany’s steps had been soft, soft enough for me not to hear her presence, but I was still a Marine, even if I’d long since lost my uniform.
I’d heard her.
I’d know her tread anywhere.
She sloped in at the toe on her right foot, which made her heel squeak just a tad when she walked.
Undeniably hers.
But even though I’d known it was Tiff, I’d felt her first, and I also felt her bewilderment and hurt.
I twisted around to face her and called, “Tiff? I want you to meet MaryCat.”
Tiff’s eyes were wide when she met Mary Catherine’s, and from the size of her belly, I knew she was suddenly feeling a lot more secure. The fact MaryCat had a tattoo sloping down from behind her ear, soaring under her chin, and ending on the side of her jaw in a flower caught her attention too.
Within the tattooed petals, her Old Man’s name was visible, even if it was cleverly shielded in the shading, and I watched her shoulders droop with relief.
I guessed I should be irritated at her lack of faith in me, but ironically enough, I wasn’t. I was glad. Not because I wanted her to feel vulnerable or insecure. Not because I was a dick who wanted my woman to be scared and on edge about my loyalty to her.
But because it meant she cared.
She fucking cared.
She wanted me so much that it hurt her to think of me with another, and in my world, that was important. It meant something. Not just with the sluts who wandered these halls, sharing themselves with any brother who tugged them onto their laps, but as it had been with my ex.
I knew it would take time for both of us to open up around each other. We’d been together a while, I guessed, long enough to make a baby, but whenever we’d been together, it had been our little secret.
That mattered.
It meant we’d never been around other people before. I’d never been claimed by her, and she’d never been claimed by me.
Everything was changing, so we might as well be starting fresh.
I’d told her the truth though. If someone touched me, I’d tell her, just because I knew what the bunnies were like—spiteful bitches who wanted to become Old Ladies, and when a brother wouldn’t brand them? They got bitter.
Nasty.
Twisted.
Not with the brothers who’d put them in their fucking place, but with their women.
And sometimes there were battles a man couldn’t fight for his woman. Sometimes, in this life, they had to go to war on their own, all while knowing you had their back and that you’d fucking kill anyone who dared to hurt them.
But rep, position, posturing, and all that shit was important here. Dominance mattered. Survival of the fittest played as big of a part here as it did in evolution. Darwin would get a boner every time he walked through the clubhouse’s doors.
When MaryCat tugged on my cut, I shot her a look and curved my arm over her shoulder, even as I held out a hand for Tiff.
She wandered nearer, looking confused and uncertain, but I immediately cleared shit up by saying, “MaryCat is my sister.”
Both women tensed.
MaryCat because I’d never said those words out loud before.
Tiff because this was the first time she was hearing I had a sister.
I didn’t even care that Steel was sitting in the kitchen, spooning up Cheerios from a massive bowl, and that he sprayed a mouthful out onto the counter.
Didn’t pay any attention to how Storm choked on the bite he took of his sausage biscuit.
Didn’t give a shit that Nyx braked to a halt on his way out of the gym toward the kitchen.
No, I didn’t care.
Because it was time.
Time people knew.
So I jerked my head out of my ass, aware that I’d been keeping secrets for too long, and muttered, “MaryCat, this is Tiff. She’s my Old Lady.”
“What the fuck? You’re related?” Nyx groused, his scowl ferocious, even as he tempered it some when he looked at MaryCat.
The irony being, of course, that her dad was a fucking Five Pointer. Nastier cunts than him were hard to find.
He suited our mother.
She was as much a cunt as he was.
Just like she’d pushed me into running off to find my real father, who wasn’t much better than her, she’d pushed MaryCat into finding me…when she’d inadvertently fallen for one of my brothers.
MaryCat was the reason the Five Points and the Sinners had a deal going on. Of course, no one knew why she’d come, just that she had, and because that was what women did—hung around the place—no one had thought to question where she was living or what she was doing.
Tiff’s mouth worked as she finally accepted my beckoning hand, but she managed to get out, “Is, I mean, who…I mean…” Her nose crinkled. “Hi?”
I snorted. Tiff was a smart woman, but I loved her greeting. She pinched me on the belly, and muttered, “Shut up, you. I can’t believe you’re telling me this here.”
I shrugged. “Had to tell you at some point. This was good enough.”
Steel, from across the kitchen, demanded, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell anyone else? I took a bullet to the ass for you last year.”
I snickered at the memory. “Not your business.”
“But it is now?” Nyx grumbled, as he peeked his head into the fridge and pulled out a bottled protein shake.
“It’s Tiff’s business, and I don’t want to keep shit from her.”
Steel scoffed, “Fuck’s sake. You guys are turning into fucking pussies on me. First Nyx, then goddamn Link, and now you? What the fuck?”
I didn’t bother arguing, but I didn’t have to—Nyx strode over to him and punched the fucker’s arm. Hard enough for Steel’s eyes to bug.
“Shut the fuck up, dick.”
Giulia snorted, and I twisted around to see that she’d wandered in with a big bag of what appeared to be dirty laundry. “You tell him, Nyx.”
Steel flipped her the bird in between rubbing his arm. “Giulia, two words—”
“Wuv you?” she mocked, grinning at him as she dumped the laundry down. “I swear, you fuckers are so worried these guys are turning into pussies. Why? You want to fuck them?”
Steel’s eyes bugged out harder than they had when Nyx had punched him in the shoulder.
&nbs
p; Me? Nyx? We bust a gut laughing.
MaryCat even joined in with her soft, tinkling laugh, and Tiff smirked as she relaxed deeper into me. Storm, as per usual, watched us like we were on a docusoap, but even his lips twitched.
Trust Giulia to set the atmosphere on the right track.
When she moved over to the fruit bowl on the counter and picked up an apple, she cast a look around us and asked, “There a reason we’re all standing here like something from a sitcom?”
“I was just introducing my sister to Tiffany.”
Giulia frowned. “Your sister?” Then her eyes drifted over to MaryCat, and I saw her gaze alight on the tattoo. “Huh. I don’t think we’ve met before.”
MaryCat’s smile was shy. “I don’t really come to the compound that much. Digger doesn’t like me here—”
“Can’t fucking blame him,” Giulia rumbled. “Not around these dicks. Not with a face like yours.” She whistled under her breath. “You’re beautiful.”
MaryCat lurched back in surprise. “Umm, thank you.”
Giulia shrugged. “Got eyes, don’t I? I mean, babe, you’re so fucking cute, I wish I was gay.”
Nyx snorted. “I’m glad you’re not.”
She shot him a grin. “Don’t worry, baby, I love your Terminator dick more.”
Steel rolled his eyes. “This is what I’m fucking talking about.”
“Shut up,” Nyx and I said simultaneously, the pair of us shooting him a warning glower before we grinned at each other.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Giulia chirped at MaryCat, before casting a wary look Tiffany’s way. “Everything okay with Amara, Ghost, and Tatána?”
“The girls are fine,” Tiff replied huskily. “They miss you.”
Giulia’s nose crinkled at that. “Girls? They’re not girls.”
“What else should I call them?” Tiff countered wryly.
Giulia dipped her chin. “I get that. I’ll be over there in a bit. I just needed to get my head back on straight after our run.”
Nyx wandered over to her, hauling her into his side as he dipped his chin and pressed a kiss to her head. He didn’t say anything, but then, he didn’t have to.
Tiff and MaryCat wouldn’t understand, but we did.
The first kill—and that fucker Lancaster wasn’t a kill, that was self-defense—was always a tough one to deal with, and that was only right.
Didn’t matter if the cunt deserved to die, it was still hard on the soul, because by ridding the world of that evil, you were taking some of that evil into you. Corrupting yourself to make the world a better place.
I squeezed Tiff’s waist, both overjoyed and weirded out by the fact our kid was in her belly, and looking forward to feeling her up when she was as big as MaryCat.
“Well, when you can. Amara really missed you.”
Giulia shook her head. “She has a weird fucking way of showing it.”
Tiff shrugged. “Makes sense. You’re their safety net.”
“How so?”
Steel grunted. “You know how when animals are born they, like, imprint on their mothers?” He dropped his spoon in the bowl of cereal, making milk splatter on the table.
Storm snorted. “You’re the mother hen.”
Giulia’s nose wrinkled, but Nyx was the one who chuckled. “Of all the fucking answers you two could come up with, you bring up fucking poultry?”
“Better chickens than fucking snakes!” Steel growled back.
“He has a point,” Storm said with a laugh.
“Do snakes even imprint?” MaryCat mused, curious to the last, and somehow, that was the most ridiculous question I’d heard all fucking year, and I couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
When the others joined in, Tiffany was the last to follow. She eyed us all like we were fucking Martians before, her lips twitching, she caught the laughter bug and let it swallow her whole.
It was good to see her lighten up, to loosen up among my brothers, my family. This was all alien to her as well, so it would take time.
But time was all we had.
Me and her?
We were it for one another.
She didn’t have to recognize it for me to know it.
A man didn’t wait nearly thirty-eight fucking years to have his heart cleaved to another only to give up easily.
Yeah, this was a strange environment for her, yeah, her family situation was fucked up, but we’d get through it.
Together.
Because that was the only constant that mattered.
Her. Me. United as one.
And baby made three.
Sin
The feel of her arms around my waist on the back of my hog was a sensation that wasn’t going to stop giving me a boner for a long time to come.
And riding a bike with a boner wasn’t ideal, that was for fucking sure.
Still, I’d deal with it, because it felt epic as fuck to have her with me.
To have her at my back, at my side.
“Sin?”
Her hollered screech reached my ears, as did the way she tensed her fingers around my waist. I pulled over, indicating the second I could, and when I came to a halt, she murmured, “Can we ride past my old place?”
The request surprised me, but I did as bid, taking us the long way around West Orange to reach her house.
The subdivision where her place was located epitomized the word ‘swank.’ I didn’t like it. I preferred shit to be more real than a place where the roads were lined with fucking palm trees.
This was goddamn NJ, not LA. The sheer ecologically unfriendliness of the place was a testament to corporate America not giving a shit about the land we lived in, but hey, not my monkey, not my circus.
As we pulled up to the manned gate, an older guy approached in a security uniform. He eyed the bike, then me, then his gaze softened on Tiff and, without a word, he raised the gate for us to enter.
Each house on the six-dozen strong estate was a mansion and belonged on an old-school episode of Cribs. Massive gates and long drives were pretty much all you could see except for the roofs that peeped through the filigree lacework rails.
The streets were beautifully lined, not a pothole in sight, and I was sure that a bird wouldn’t dare to fucking shit on the sidewalk, not without fear of being shot.
It was inauthentic and extravagant, but that was nothing compared to her place.
When we approached, she tugged at my waist again when we were around twenty feet from the gates, telling me, I figured, to stop here.
“I’m surprised the security guy let us in,” I murmured.
“I was kind to Leonard when his wife was sick,” was all she said, before she fell silent as she looked at a house that had once been hers but now wasn’t.
By comparison, my place was a shithole, but she seemed happy there.
Not once had she even suggested she spend the night at Lily’s. Neither of us had said anything to indicate otherwise, but yeah, she’d moved in with me. After this palace, while it wasn’t my thing, it had to be a come down.
Unease settled heavily on me, and then I stopped it in its tracks.
There was no point in second-guessing her reasoning for anything. She wanted me. And she kept on showing me that.
“You okay, angel?” I rasped when we just sat there, idling. I didn’t mind, but her arms around me were tight, and her face was burrowed into my shoulder.
“I-I miss him.”
It was a whisper.
A hurt, pain-filled whisper.
“I wish I could bring him back for you, sweetheart,” I replied softly, reaching down and covering one of her hands with mine.
“He wasn’t perfect. No one is. But I-I just can’t…” She sucked in a breath.
“You can’t what?”
“I don’t know what’s happening.”
My brow puckered. “In what sense?”
“Who’s Grizzly?”
I tensed. “Who the fuck told you about him?�
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“Rex. When he asked me if I was some kind of—Christ, I don’t even know. A gangster’s moll or something.”
The tension in me surged to a fever pitch. “He spoke to you without me there?”
She clung to me when I tried to turn around to face her, but she kept her nose burrowed in my cut. “Don’t. Please.”
“He had no right to talk to you without me there,” I growled. “And sure as fuck not about Grizzly.”
“Who is he?”
“Why did Rex think you were a gangster’s fucking moll?” I snapped, unable to moderate my tone, even though she was upset.
I’d smash the fucker’s face in.
“Because Donavan Lancaster went to school with Benito Fieri, who, according to Rex, is mafia.” She sucked in a breath. “Turned out my father attended college at the same time with them.”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No. Never. He never talked about the past.”
“Ever?” My brows rose in surprise.
“No. Never,” she snapped. “Do you not believe me either?”
“No, of course not! I’m just surprised.”
“Yeah, well, if I thought about it myself, then I’d be surprised too, but that wasn’t how he worked.”
“How did he work?”
“He focused on the present. On the future. He believed in goals,” she mumbled, her tone telling me she was in the past. With her father. Not here with me. “The irony being that he’d have a daughter who had no idea what to do with herself.”
“You knew. You just weren’t ready to make the decision,” I told her firmly.
“Maybe.” She laughed softly. “Maybe not. Every step I made took me away from what I thought I wanted, and now I’m here.” A hum escaped her. “Funny how things turned out better than I ever expected.”
Despite myself, that hit me square in the fucking feels. “What kind of goals?” I mumbled, not only because I wanted her to keep talking, it was only now that I recognized we hadn’t mentioned her father once since I’d returned home—how goddamn selfish of me was that? What a fucking prize I was—but also because I had no desire to talk about fucking Grizzly.
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 81