Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset

by Serena Akeroyd

  “I care about your life,” she rasped, and she finally moved out of the corner. When she did, I saw why it was hard to see her.

  She was dressed in black.

  Her hat, her coat, her shoes. Even when the coat shifted aside, she wore black pants and a shirt.

  Fuck, she looked like a cat burglar.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered, too in pain to be dealing with this, with her and her childish goddamn ways right now.

  “We have to get you out of here.”

  “What? Why?” I shook my head, but as I did, the concussion made itself known to me yet again.

  I’d been woken up every hour on the hour, so that meant Mom had come in sometime between the first and last nurse making sure there were no complications from my situation.

  This was beyond weird, though, so maybe her watching and sneaking in wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility.

  “I can’t leave. I’m sick,” I rasped, and I fucking felt it. My body was still aching, and I felt raw deep inside, but my head? Pounding. It hurt like nothing else. In fact, it hurt more now than it did when I’d woken up with Sin at my side.

  He hadn’t come back to the hospital, but he’d called, and it had been so good to hear his voice, even better to hear him whisper, “He’ll never hurt you again.”

  “You’ll be in worse danger if you don’t come with me.”

  I frowned at my mother, who was on some kind of parallel universe. “What’s going on with you, Mom? I don’t get you.”

  “The second I found out just how involved your father was with the Lancasters and Fieris, I knew this would happen,” she murmured, her hands coming to the side of the bed. Her weight depressed the mattress, tilting my body and making every joint ache.

  Trying not to lose my patience, I muttered, “Knew what would happen?”

  “He said he’d broken ties with them. Said he’d never go to them again, but I should have known he would when the business went through a downturn.” She swallowed. “He never could deal with losing everything. His parents did during the eighties. He never got over it.”

  My eyes widened at that. “He never told me.”

  “He never spoke of it. Only when he was drunk.”

  “Drunk?” I repeated in disbelief. I’d never seen him drunk, not once in my life.

  “It happened rarely. Usually on our anniversary.” She gulped. “We don’t have time for this, Tiffany. We need to go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. My life is here.”

  “You can do better than that biker,” she snapped, her hand curling about my arm like she was going to drag me off the bed or something.

  “He’s not just a biker. I love him,” I snarled, jerking my arm from hers, instantly whimpering as my head pounded with the flurry of activity. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  I could hear the frantic note in her voice, and because it confused me, I sucked down a breath and, begging for patience, demanded, “Mom, you need to start at the beginning. If you explain, maybe I’ll come with you.”

  “You have to come with me,” she fretted, her nails turning to claws as she dug them into my forearm.

  “Explain what’s going on,” I repeated sternly, trying to think what Daddy did when she was like this. He got all stern with her, talked to her like a teacher would to a naughty student.

  “Y-You’ll hate me,” she whimpered.

  “I’m not happy with you right now,” I retorted. “What with not going to Daddy’s funeral and behaving so disgracefully at Lily’s—”

  “That’s nothing compared to what I’ve done in the past.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

  “I-I don’t come from a good place,” she whispered, and she sounded so broken that it made me wonder if she was on drugs or something. I’d never heard her so irate, so all over the place before, not even after she’d found Daddy.

  The thought had me wincing with guilt. Sure, she was being weird, but she’d been the one to find Daddy. To find him with his head exploded from a bullet. So, I sucked in a breath. “It’s okay,” I soothed. “I’ll understand.”

  “You can’t. I don’t.” She gulped. “My father was a loan shark. He used to work for some bad people. One day, he was robbed. All the money was taken. His backers came for him, and they took me as payment for him not being killed.” Even as my mouth dropped open, she rasped, “I was sixteen, terrified, and when I met Benito, I was relieved. He was beautiful. Older than me, sure, but he was gorgeous. And he treated me so well. I was stupid. I never thought—”

  “You never thought what?”

  “I was his mistress. He kept me at his side for years until I got pregnant.” She swallowed. “With you. That was when he changed. He never came around, he never slept with me again. He broke my heart more than when my father gave me to him as payment.”

  Speechless, I could do nothing other than stare at her, mouth wide open, because…this wasn’t true. She was a Southern fucking belle!

  She hadn’t finished though, and she whispered, “He was at school with Donavan and Richard. Richard’s family had lost everything just a few years earlier, and Benito, being the clever bastard he is, always knew which strings to pull. He agreed to back Richard’s business, if he married me and took on my child.”

  I gulped. “Daddy…?”

  “Your father in spirit. Your father of the heart. But not your biological father,” she whispered, and I heard her tears. “God, how we both wished you were. It broke us both. We loved you so much, but—”

  “But what?”

  She released a shaky breath. “I was upset when Benito told me what he’d planned, but when I met Richard, it was love at first sight.”

  More like Stockholm syndrome.

  The thought hurt, so I shoved it away for another time.

  Another place.

  Fuck, another life.

  “We both fell for each other. It was like something from a movie.” Her voice had turned dreamy, and because I didn’t want to break her train of thought, I stayed silent, just absorbed every damning word she had to say. “We grew closer all the time, even though,” she whispered shyly, “the age gap between us was significant. I was terrified you’d push us apart, but you never did. He was fascinated with me being pregnant, and I only found out why a few years after you were born.”

  “Why?”

  “He had mumps as a boy. It left him sterile. So he was grateful to have you, but he was scared.”

  “Why?” I inquired, anxiety lashing at me.

  “Benito isn’t someone who forgets what’s his.” She shuddered. “Funny how love can turn to hate.”

  “You hate…him now?” My biological father.

  My real father.

  What the fuck?

  How was Daddy not mine?

  “I never loved him. I was sixteen and terrified. He treated me kindly, but I was too young, and my age never stopped him. He was my jailor, but he was beautiful, and I was stupid,” she scoffed. “Benito would never have left you alone if we hadn’t done what we did.”

  Warily, I pressed, “What did you do?”

  “When I was due to give birth, we traveled to Mexico. Richard said it was for business, but he arranged for the clinic where you were born to say you were stillborn.” She laughed. “It seems insane now, but we were so desperate. We knew what he’d do, we knew he’d take you from us when you were old enough, and Richard loved you so much, and I loved him so much—I’ve never known a man to love a child before he even met her.” A muffled sob escaped her. “It worked too. We stayed in Mexico long enough for it to seem natural that I grew pregnant again, and you helped by being so small as a baby. When Benito visited us when we came home, I knew why.

  “He wanted to check we weren’t lying to him. But you were tiny. If he’d been a woman, he’d have known, but men are all the same. Newborns aren’t of interest to them. He was mo
re interested in my breasts.” She gulped. “God, I hate that man.” A shudder whispered through her like she couldn’t contain her revulsion for the man who’d impregnated her. A man she’d once thought she loved. “It was why we sent you to St. Lawrence Academy. Donavan was always in Benito’s pocket, and Richard said that hiding you under his nose would keep you safe because it would be hiding you in plain sight. Benito would never think we’d be so brazen—"

  I processed that, badly, registered how she was saying my friendship with Lily was founded on a lie, how my entire existence, from my heritage to my age, was one massive falsehood, but I also recorded how her hands had loosened about my arm, and could only think to ask, “Why do you think I’m in danger?”

  “Why else would those bikers be talking about the Fieris?” she snapped. “He must have learned the truth in the aftermath of Richard’s death.” She sucked in a breath. “If we don’t get you out of here, if we don’t get you away, Benito will find out. He always finds out,” she rasped, and I could hear the terror in her voice and knew it wasn’t feigned. Knew it was real and true, and that she believed every word she was uttering.

  In turn, that terrified me.

  Was she right?

  Did I need to be scared?

  Sin had never mentioned anything about the Fieris to me, and the only person who had was Rex.

  “Pass me my phone,” I demanded.

  “No time!” she snapped. “We have to get out of here. Now! I lost Richard to him when Benito decided it was time to call in his debts, but I won’t lose you too!”

  The door opened just as her voice turned high and loud, and when I saw the biker in the doorway, my heart almost burst out of my chest when I thought it was Sin. Only, it wasn’t. It was Link, whose nose was bloodied and quite clearly broken. As desire for Sin whispered through me, Link stared at us both in confusion before he turned on the light, which instantly made my eyes feel like a thousand needles were stabbing them.

  “What are you doing here?” Mom snarled at him.

  “I’m guarding your daughter tonight, Laura,” was his calm response.

  “Badly if I got in—” she snapped, and God help me, but she wasn’t wrong.

  Ignoring her, he cut me a look, and maybe he saw how stressed out I was, how fucking confused, because he reassured me, “I saw her come in and allowed it, Tiffany. You’re safe. Is everything okay?”

  Mom backed away from the bed and huddled in the corner of the room like a frightened child. I gaped at her, then at him, but the pain was overwhelming. I shielded my eyes with my hand, then whispered, “Could you close the door, Link?”

  Warily, he eyed us both but did as we asked. “What is it?”

  “The man…today, what did he want? Do you know yet?”

  He nodded. “Club business.”

  The password for secrecy.

  I grunted under my breath. “I need to know!”

  “Not my place to tell you.”

  I ground my teeth together, then rolling onto my side, ignoring the pain spearing my head in two, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, my fingers scraping over the shattered screen as I hit the Siri button, and demanded, “Call Sin.”

  The second the call connected, he rasped, “Angel?” He sounded gruff, sleepy, a little different than how he usually sounded, but it was such a relief to hear from him that I sank back into the pillows, needing him to ground me. To balance the equilibrium my mother had just turned on its head.

  “Sin?” I whispered, voice raw with emotion. “We have a situation.”

  And if that wasn’t an understatement, I didn’t know what was.

  Epilogue

  Tiffany

  “Angel?”

  My brow puckered as pain slammed through my head. Fuck, that was bad. Worse than when I’d been drugged, worse than any hangover I’d had in the past. Moving from the hospital to back home had been a nightmare, even if I was glad to get away from all the beeps and the machines.

  Wincing, I reached up, rubbed my temple, then whispered, “Sin?”

  “Lily just called. She wants to come see you.”

  “Tell her to come visit.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “Please?”

  He dipped down, pressed a kiss to my forehead, then murmured, “She says to come visit, Lily.”

  I peered out from between my fingers, watching as he cut the call soon after. “Where’s Mom?”

  That had him rolling his eyes, even as he reached over to the nightstand for a glass of water. As he passed it to me, he gathered some pills from there too. “Barricaded in her room at Lily’s.”

  After I took a sip, then swallowed down the meds, I sighed. “I’m surprised you managed to make her stay.”

  “We Sinners can be persuasive.”

  My eyes widened at that, which, of course, made the extra light make me feel like each individual ray had turned into a knife that was spearing me in the eyeballs. As the pain ricocheted inside me, I managed to get out, “Does that mean you locked her in?”

  He snorted. “Do you really want to know?”

  Christ.

  I cleared my throat. “She’s safe, though, right?”

  “Yes, of course. You both are.” He grunted. “I let you down, angel, but it won’t happen again.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “No, but we could have predicted it. I’m Enforcer now, and I’ll make fucking sure no one touches you again.” He blew out a breath. “He didn’t come for you.”

  I tensed at that. “He didn’t?”

  “No. He came for Lily.”

  That didn’t make me feel a whole helluva lot better.

  “Did you think she was under threat?”

  “Link said he knew that Donavan Lancaster had arranged for Lily to marry Gianni Fieri, but he thought she was safe because he’s still in jail.”

  “Shortsighted,” I rasped.

  “The whole MC was. Sometimes, we forget—”

  “Forget, what?”

  “That not everyone is afraid of us.” He rubbed his jaw. “I’m sorry, angel.”

  “You keep saying that, but it’s not your fault. It’s Donavan Lancaster’s for thinking he can marry Lily off like she’s a commodity. It’s not your fault my father got involved with the mafia, and that—” I bit my lip, unable to think about my biological father or deal with the clusterfuck there. “Who was he? Specifically?”

  “You sure you want to know?”

  I didn’t. But, also, I did. “Yeah.”

  “Your half-brother.”

  My stomach roiled at that, but I nodded as I swallowed it back.

  All this time, I’d thought I was a cut above the rest, but crime was in my blood on both sides.

  Mom’s father was a loan shark, and my biological father? Only God knew what he’d done in his time.

  I pressed a hand to my mouth as I closed my eyes. It had been two days since I’d learned the truth from Mom, and I still couldn’t handle it.

  “I miss my daddy,” I whispered, feeling like a five-year-old, but it was true.

  We’d always been close. Always.

  “Whether or not you know the truth, he was always your father, angel,” Sin murmured, somehow digging to the heart of the matter without even trying. “Miss him, and grieve him, but don’t worry about things that don’t matter. And Fieri? Doesn’t matter.”

  My throat felt tight. “You can’t say that.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “What if he finds out—”

  “He won’t. The kid was here for Lily. Not you.” He reached down and cupped my chin. “Sweetheart, your mom overreacted. If she hadn’t eavesdropped on a conversation she should never have been listening in on, you wouldn’t know. There’s no point in worrying about this shit.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I can, and I know how I’m going to stop this in its tracks.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, even as, carefully, I started sitting up. The meds weren’t doing much yet, but lying down
felt wrong for this conversation. It made me groan a few times, but I felt jubilant when I was upright.

  “What are you talking about?” I inquired gruffly, pain making my voice deeper.

  “I’m talking about this.” A box appeared out of nowhere. He placed it on my lap. “You can read into this as many ways as you want. Me doing this to protect you. Me doing this out of guilt. Me doing this because I’m ashamed. Me—”

  I scowled at him. “If this is your idea of a proposal,” I butted in, “then you’re shit at it.”

  His lips curved into a wide grin, but he surprised me by jabbing his finger at me. “That. That is why I want to marry you.”

  “What is?”

  “Tiffany. The way she is. Who you are. What you are. That’s why I want to make you mine every way I can.” He pulled open the box, revealing a pink diamond that made me gasp. The clarity was incredible, and the size?

  Jesus.

  Sin wasn’t lying when he said he could support me.

  Not that it mattered. I didn’t need supporting. I just needed him.

  “Yes,” I told him simply.

  His lips twisted. “You didn’t give me the chance to ask you.”

  “You already asked. I want to be yours. Every way I can be.”

  Nostrils flaring at that, he rumbled, “Don’t talk dirty when you’re out of action.”

  I snickered, then winced when my head pounded with it. “I always talk dirty.”

  “Nah, you actually don’t.” He winked at me. “We have time to give you lessons in it.”

  Sticking out my tongue at him, I grumbled, “Meanie.”

  “Hardly.” His grin revealed how happy he was, but what confirmed it? When he slid the ring down my finger, raised my hand to his mouth, and kissed it. “I do feel guilty. I am ashamed. I will always protect you. But I can do that without this ring. I want you tied to me this way so that the entire fucking world knows you’re mine. No question. No doubt. Do you hear me?”

  His words sent a thrill through me, and trust me, I was in no state to be thrilled.

  My body hurt. My head hurt. Deep inside, I hurt.

  My belly was empty, where once life had bloomed. My heart was raw from losing not only the baby, who’d barely had the chance to be alive, but from my dad, and from learning the truth of my lineage.