HIS BRANDED BRIDE: Steel Devils MC

by Sophia Gray

  I laughed at the thought of how much I’d had to drink. I had no clue how much it was, but I knew how fucking great I felt at the moment, soaring up the stairs with my eyes closed and a stupid smile on my face.

  When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my side on the bed. I heard my door close as Mick was headed back downstairs after dropping me off. Axel leaned against the wall facing the bed.

  “You ready to talk now?” he asked.

  “Talk about what?” I asked in return, smiling.

  “Stop playing stupid. Just because you’re drunk doesn’t mean you don’t know what I’m talking about.” He crossed his arms and looked down at me with a blend of anger and disappointment on his face.

  I remembered what I’d said in the hallway, and I laughed. “I guess I admitted a little too much tonight, huh?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean, brother. Talking about Lilah.”

  “There’s no shame in it, brother, but you shouldn’t be getting sloshed downstairs just because you don’t know what to do about the way you feel about her. What sense does that make?”

  “That’s not why I got trashed,” I told him.

  The bed felt good. My head rested on the pillow, and it was persuading me to stop talking and got to sleep. I took a couple of deep breaths with my eyes closed, fighting off the sleep that kept trying to pull me under.

  “I mean, it was one reason, sure, but it wasn’t the only reason,” I added after a long pause.

  “Okay, hit me. What was the rest of it?” my brother asked.

  Axel was my oldest brother. He’d pretty much raised me, along with the MC. They were the only family I ever really knew. It was embarrassing to be this damn drunk in front of him, to be so inebriated that I was having trouble maintaining a steady train of thought. I was really starting to get mad at myself for it.

  “Stay with me, Saw,” he said. “You can sleep after you tell me what’s going on.”

  “You’re right,” I said, pushing myself up. “Hang on a second.” I got up from the bed and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I shook my head a little, trying to literally shake off the buzz. I splashed water on my face a few more times before walking back into the other room. I felt a little better. I was still drunk, but at least I was awake and could focus through it a little better. I sat back down on the bed.

  “Better?” Axel asked.

  “Yeah, a little bit,” I told him.

  “So, the main reason I found you hammered, drooling on the bar tonight?” he reminded me.

  “It’s a long story, man,” I said, stalling.

  “Try me.” He wasn’t having it. I had to tell him.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. You know about the break-in at her place and the attempted break-ins at the tattoo shop, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been caught up to speed on why she’s here. Cut to the chase, Saw,” he said forcefully.

  “I found out her ex-husband is behind it all. He staged the break-in at her house, and he sent a guy to vandalize the tattoo shop.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s trying to cover up the fact that he’s run off with her kid. He’s taking him to Belize with him, and I think he’s supposed to be meeting up with a woman there.” I realized that other than the trip, I hadn’t gotten any other information about the emails from Buck. “I don’t know his relationship with the woman. I’m guessing he’s running off with her.”

  “Or he’s getting mixed up with a cartel,” my brother said.

  I chuckled. It seemed unlikely from everything else I knew, but I figured it could have been a thing for him.

  “Have you told her any of this?” Axel asked.

  I shook my head slowly. “Nope. I knew he was behind it all. The guy who tried to break into the tattoo parlor had told me as much, but I didn’t find out the rest until today, while she was at work.”

  “You need to tell her.”

  “But how?”

  “When she gets back, tell her like you told me. What are you going to do about it? Do you have a plan in place to get her son back and stop her ex from leaving the country with him?”

  “I don’t. I’ve been trying to figure all that out today. I told everybody I went to the shop to work this afternoon, but really, I rode around on my bike for a while trying to come up with a plan that will get us her son and stop him. I’ve got nothing.”

  Axel sighed. “Talk to her when she gets home, get some sleep, and first thing tomorrow we need to get together to make plans. I’ll be sure to be here for it.” He pushed himself off the wall like he was about to walk out of my room.

  “I almost sent someone to his suite tonight,” I continued, stopping him. “I decided not to. He’s got a pretty elaborate plan set up, it seems, so I didn’t want to tip him off that we’re onto him or anything. I didn’t want to put her son in any danger.”

  “What was your guy going to do?”

  “I was sending him to check the place out, to see if he was there, and to see if he could find any sign of where he went.” I laughed. “At the very least, I was going to have him ransack the place to see how Troy likes it when someone tears up his shit.”

  Axel shook his head.

  “Be thankful you didn’t waste your time. No one was there,” a voice said at my door.

  We both snapped our heads around to see who had spoken. Lilah stood with the door open. I hadn’t even heard her come in. While we watched, she walked in and let the door close behind her. I picked my jaw up off the floor. I wondered how much she’d heard.

  She walked in and crossed the room with an air of confidence. She knew she had taken us by surprise. I had no idea what she knew, which put me at a distinct disadvantage. It was possible I had just spilled the beans to her without even meaning to.

  “I’m going to leave you two to talk,” Axel said, flashing a quick smile at Lilah as he started to walk away.

  “Lilah, have you met my brother, Axel?” I asked her, keeping him from leaving right away and buying myself a little time before I had to face her. “Real brother, not just MC brother,” I added.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Axel said. “You need to straighten him out. If you need any help, let me know.” He winked and left the room, closing the door slowly behind him.

  Lilah turned and looked at me. Even in anger, her face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Of course, there was a threatening element to it when she was angry, but she was still gorgeous. I wanted to look away, but her eyes held me in place. I knew that once she found the words to speak, I was going to be in big trouble.

  “How much did you hear?” I asked finally, trying to brace myself for her response.

  “Enough,” she said, her voice cold and hard.

  Her response gave me chills. I knew what she meant, but at the same time, I didn’t know exactly what she’d heard. Had she heard everything? What did she miss?

  Why the hell did I have to get drunk? I had put myself in a bad position to try to handle the situation by having too much to drink too quickly. The good news was that I was sobering up pretty quickly now that she was standing right in front of me.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.

  I shook my head and lowered it into my hands. I wasn’t sober enough to deal with the anger in her tone and her eyes. It was completely understandable. I should have been more open with her as soon as I knew something.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said.

  “No, let me explain,” I said, lifting my head up from my hands. Whether I had the words or not, it was time to talk. Hell, for all I knew, she already knew everything anyway, depending on how long she’d been standing in the doorway before she said anything.

  “Please do,” she said, crossing her arms.

  I stood up from the bed, still a little shaky and weak on my feet. I had to present some level of confidence to her. It wasn’t a good time to be sloppy. I h
ad started the evening off worrying that she wasn’t going to come back, and I was finishing it off by giving her a reason not to.

  Chapter Seventeen[LC5]

  Lilah

  “Look, I should have said something sooner, but I wanted to make sure I had accurate information,” Cole told me, barely able to hold himself up. He reeked of alcohol, and I could smell it even from where I stood, a few steps away from him.

  “How much have you had to drink tonight?” I asked him.

  “Just a few.”

  “Yeah. Maybe we should forget the whole thing,” I said, not trying to hide my disgust.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing from him. I thought I had prepared myself for that kind of disappointment from him, but I wasn’t prepared to find him sloppy drunk on top of the realization that he’d been withholding information from me. I was tempted to walk out, but I didn’t. Something kept me there. Perhaps it was the way I was beginning to feel about him. Maybe I felt sorry for him – for what he’d put himself through. Largely, though, I needed answers.

  “No, I need to explain myself to you now,” he said, forcing himself to stand up a little straighter, as if that was going to make him seem soberer than he was.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” I suggested to him, but he wasn’t having it.

  “No, I’m good,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Fine. Start explaining. How did you learn what you know about Troy?”

  “The other night when I had to go to the tattoo parlor because the guys caught the person trying to break in. The guy they caught told me he was working for Troy. Troy staged the break-in at your house, too,” he told me.

  “I knew it. The bastard. He’s trying to take Micah from me.” Which, I knew, was exactly what Cole had just said to his brother while I was standing at the door.

  “Yeah, but we found out where he’s staying in the meantime, before they leave the country,” he added.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I had a guy hack into his computer today to figure out where he was. He’s at a cabin not too far from here. That’s how we found the emails – he’s been talking to some lady in Belize.”

  “Are you serious? You found this out today, and you decided for whatever reason to keep it from me? You could have called, texted, stopped by the library, or anything, but you decided you wanted to go for a ride to clear your head and help you decide when you were going to let me know and how you were going to go about stopping him?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you. I was waiting for the right time to break it to you.”

  “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

  “I didn’t want you to run off again. I wanted to be able to help you,” he insisted.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, you’re just trying to control me. Ever since we slept together the first time, you’ve been trying to control my actions – when I come and go, everything.”

  “I’m trying to protect you. I’m not your ex. Stop trying to paint me that way,” he said, stepping closer to me and putting his arms around me again.

  Before I realized what I was doing, my hand smacked his face. His head turned from the force of it. I didn’t regret it. He’d earned it. Several times over.

  “Don’t touch me,” I growled out. “Hand me my keys,” I demanded. He opened the drawer to his nightstand and lifted the false bottom in it – yeah, I felt like an idiot, realizing I had overlooked it.

  “Here,” he said calmly, handing me the keys to my car and house.

  “Thank you.” I took them and pointed a finger at his face. “Stay away from me. You hear me? Stay away from me.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get my son,” I said, turning to walk away. “Don’t follow me.” I paused at the door.

  I had forgotten all about that damn cabin. I had never been allowed to visit it. It was just for Troy. It was his special sanctuary in the woods. I hated him for it. Now he was hiding out there with our son while he prepared to take him out of the country. That shit wasn’t going to happen.

  I hopped in my car and peeled out as I left the parking lot, heading for the cabin, going to take my son back. Once Micah was safely in my hands, I was going to make sure Troy never got his hands on him again. Sure, I’d called him to pick Micah up from school because I couldn’t, but I hadn’t known that he had set up the break-in at my house.

  It made my blood boil to think about it. This was one of those moments when I was glad I didn’t have a gun. I would have wound up in prison if I owned a firearm, and leaving my son fatherless was something I would have regretted for the rest of my life.

  The cabin was only a few miles out of town, but it was in a whole different world. Off the main road, I took a long, dirt driveway deep into the woods to a small clearing. I hated that driveway. I hated almost everything about the cabin except for the isolated feel of it. It wasn’t far from everything, but it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere.

  I pulled up out front and parked right by the front door. I didn’t see Troy’s car anywhere, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t parked in the woods behind the cabin, out of sight, hidden from prying eyes. There was a light on inside, so it was likely that someone was there.

  I got out of the car and walked to the door. I paused and listened to the night. I listened for any sign that someone was inside. All I heard, though, was the night all around me. I heard the crickets, the frogs from the nearby pond, and the breeze blowing through the trees, but there were no sounds from inside the cabin.

  I tried the front door. It was unlocked. I figured he must not have been too worried about people stumbling upon him at random. I pushed it open and stepped inside. I expected to hear something – Troy in the kitchen, Micah laughing at something or asking him a question. But there was still nothing. My stomach felt cold. Something wasn’t right. I was chilled to the bone, but it was the kind of chill that came from inside.

  I stayed silent as I crept through the cabin. I walked through the living room, with the single light that was on. The kitchen was dark, but I could see from the living room that it was empty. I walked through the bathroom and the two bedrooms. No one was there, but there were clothes laid out on both beds, so it looked like they could have been back at any time.

  I went and sat in the living room on the couch in front of the stone fireplace. I listened to the blissful silence. Anyone or anything approaching the cabin would have been announced.

  Like the motorcycle coming up the drive.

  “What the hell, Cole?” I asked the empty living room.

  The engine died down in the front yard, probably next to my car. A moment later, the door opened. He wasn’t quiet at all, and he had no business trying to drive in his state.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?” I snapped when Cole stumbled in. “What the hell are you doing driving right now anyway? You should be back at the clubhouse trying to sleep this off.”

  “I couldn’t let you do this by yourself,” he told me, taking a step towards me.

  “You stay back. Stay back. I want you out of my life. I don’t have room for someone who’s going to try to control me and manipulate my behavior the way you’ve been trying. It’s like you’re working with Troy on this to keep me from finding him.”

  “What?! You can’t really believe that, Lilah,” he argued. “I would never conspire against you.”

  “But that’s how it’s working out. That’s exactly how it’s working out.”

  “No,” he said, taking a few more clumsy steps toward me. “Not at all.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” I told him, holding a hand out.

  “Don’t do this to me, Lilah,” he pleaded. “I can’t leave you alone, baby. I care about you too much. I’m starting to have feelings for you.” He kept walking towards me… until his chest pressed against my outstretched hand.

  I relaxed my arm and let him come closer to me. He took me in his arms. The sm
ell of whiskey enveloped me. He didn’t reek of it now, and it had dulled to an enticing aroma.

  “I want you in my life. I’m afraid if I let go, you’ll leave,” he continued.

  “You should have thought about that before,” I told him. “After I told you about my ex, you should have realized that I didn’t want another controlling man in my life.”

  A low rumble roared gently through the woods.

  “Was that thunder?” I asked him. I hadn’t noticed a cloud in the sky all day. Then again, I wasn’t the type to pay attention to the forecast. I didn’t know what the weather was doing until it did it.