I felt the other men’s confusion. My nostrils flared in irritation at being cornered like that, but fuck, I got it, and if it meant being undermined by the other members, then I’d just have to prove to them that I was still as much of a cunt as ever.
“You’re sharing her?” Rodeo asked, his eyes wide.
I dipped my chin. “She’s ours. So, watch your fucking words.”
“She’s a traitor!” Locke spat from his position in the middle of the crowd. Apparently the dick felt passionate enough to leap to his feet.
“She’s also the mother of my daughter, Locke, so like I said, watch your fucking words.”
More whispers fell at that.
“Her girl, Amaryllis, is yours?”
“You see any other new kids hovering around the place?” I snapped, leaning forward in my seat as irritation hit me. When I saw the mixture of anger and confusion on my brothers’ faces, my mouth tightened. I hated having to answer to anyone, but that was the problem with being a leader sometimes.
Sure, I could tell them what to do. Bomber had done that, and he’d done it pretty well, but he hadn’t been popular. They’d been loyal to him through fear.
I wasn’t as bad as Bomber, but they knew to be scared of me. They knew that the MC would have sunk into shit if it weren’t for Flame, Dagger, Axe, and me.
After the shit had gone down with Lucie, the cartel had pulled the plug on working with us. I wasn’t even sure how they’d found out about the situation, considering what Lucie had stolen had been retrieved, but ties had been cut and we’d had to find another source of income to feed the many mouths in our club. As I hated drugs, I hadn’t been too unhappy with the change, but coming up with new sidelines had made the months after Lucie’s departure even tougher.
It had been Flame’s idea to go into hits for hire, and we’d made a tidy profit ever since. Everyone from the Bratva to the Families used us for their dirty work when they wanted to kill someone and they couldn’t have ties to the murder. They all had their own men, of course, but sometimes, they needed anonymity to the nth degree.
On top of that, it had been my idea to start transporting cigarettes, and that earned us a shit ton of money that had kept us flush for a good, long while.
Still, the money didn’t match what we’d earned with the drugs, and with a war on my doorstep, that was why I was interested in Lucie’s idea. Not only to increase our own firepower, but to top up our dwindling bank accounts. Our last shipment had gone to fuck when the Knights had shot at us. I’d told Bomber not to go on that fucking run, but he’d ignored me. As usual. He’d only ever listened when his back was to the wall.
Idiot.
Take this situation with Lucie’s business proposition? He’d never have thrown that to the MC. He’d have made his decision and the rest of us would have to abide by it. I refused to be that kind of Prez. But neither was I going to take their shit lying down.
I was the leader of this lunatic bunch of outlaws, and just because I was flexible, didn’t mean they could try to top me from the bottom.
Fuckers.
“Look,” I stated as I got to my feet. “You don’t have to understand it to accept it. My kid, my old lady. You treat her like she’s fucking glass and we’re okay. If I hear of you badmouthing her, talking shit to her face, or even BS about you not looking out for her when I set her up with guards, I’ll slice your throats myself.”
A bubble of sound roared through the crowd, but I just folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the conference table.
“How do you know she isn’t going to screw us over again?”
“Do you have a death wish, Locke?” Flame rasped, his eyes shifting from the flame dancing on his lighter to peer into the crowd.
“N-No, of course not,” Locke stuttered, pussying out. Not that I could blame him. If I was a mean fucker, Flame was the worst. Shit, he and Satan would make good buds.
“Well, then shut your fucking mouth. Lucie is mine. I’ll let Wolfe slice your throat open, but not before I piss in your mouth and shove your cock in it.” His mouth curved into an evil smile that made his eyes dance. “Lucie ain’t no traitor. She was set up. We know that, and it ain’t for you to know how.”
“That’s not how this works, brother,” Rodeo pointed out, and I didn’t want to slam my fist into his nose because he at least spoke politely.
Yeah, I appreciated politeness. Sue me.
“Ain’t it? You want to know the truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?” Flame sneered. “Far as I was aware, you were my brothers and you had my back. Didn’t realize you were all bacon.” He made an oinking sound that, from anyone else, would have triggered laughs.
Flame?
Everyone looked close to pissing themselves.
Rodeo cleared his throat but raised his hands in surrender.
A wise decision.
I cut another look around the room before I declared, “You don’t have to like her to be polite to her, you don’t have to talk to her to protect her if you’re on security detail. You got me?”
There was a chorus of ‘Ayes’ that had me dipping my chin, reassured that the message had been rammed home. Lucie was ours, under our protection, and that we’d kill to keep her safe.
There wasn’t much else I could ask for.
“Any other business before we get started?” Axe called out, his calm voice a stark contrast to the fear writhing around the atmosphere like a bomb that was waiting to blast.
When no one spoke up, I nodded and said, “Okay, one of the reasons Lucie came back is because Kid is dead.”
Curses fell at that—Ryan had been popular.
“How’d he die?”
I narrowed my eyes at Ink, a brother who ran the club’s ink parlor over in Jonsson, the next town over. “Lucie didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re fucking asking.”
At my snarl, he flinched. “No, man, I just wondered how—”
“Brain tumor.” The voice came from the back of the room and I grunted, pissed that she’d barged in before she was supposed to, and doubly pissed that she’d heard the brothers’ rejection of her.
Fuck.
I should have known.
She was incapable of obeying.
I sensed the brothers’ outrage at her presence, but she didn’t seem to care as she strode toward the table like a model walking down a catwalk.
Her eyes were trained on me, her head held high as she moved like sin on heels. When she reached my side, she turned around, and declared, “Kid had Glioblastoma. It’s the most lethal type.” She sucked down a shaky breath. “He went through three surgeries and three rounds of radiation, but nothing worked. When they were going to try something else, he decided against it. He died two months later.”
It was amazing how such a torturous time, one loaded with pain, suffering, misery, and grief, could be condensed into one chilly paragraph.
“You bring his ashes back?” Wheels asked. He ran our garage in Rutherford, and was pretty much a shoo-in for Road Captain.
“Of course.” She cleared her throat. “He’d have wanted the full works.”
“That’s what he’ll get.” I gently cupped her shoulder. “Kid, as always, was resilient. To the point where he was able to fabricate Ben Franklins… Anyone in the class know what a ghost gun is?”
Slugger, a brother I wanted as Sergeant-at-Arms if he’d stop thinking with his dick and start using his brain, called out, “Weapons with no licenses, no purchasing orders, and no need for registration.” He whistled. “Kid was making that shit? Bastard always did ace shop class.”
I snorted at that, because fuck, how had I forgotten that? “Yeah, I remember that now.”
“He figured out a way to build .45 semi-automatics,” Lucie stated.
At her words, the silence in the room was deafening. Especially considering the quantity of brothers in church.
“They’re listening, baby girl,” I told her as I turned a
way. “The show is yours.” And with that, I returned to my seat at the head of the conference table and let her do what she had to—sell the future of Hell’s Rebels to the hellions themselves.
❖
Lucie
A week later
“Baby, come here.”
Amaryllis’s mouth turned into a pout as she kept her attention fixed on her book.
Sighing, I tried again. “Amaryllis?”
When she ignored me for the second time, I switched between wanting to scream at her and wanting to shake her. Bad, I know, but hell, what was it about kids that tested your limits?
Granted, my limits were lower than most people’s, and I had a tendency to act on things most wouldn’t. But usually where Amaryllis was concerned, I was very patient. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was a super good mother, or if it was down to the fact that normally, at least nine out of ten times, she was well behaved.
After blowing out a breath, I stated, “I need you to put the book down, Amaryllis.”
“I’m at a good part,” she mumbled.
“I’ll bet, but I still need you to come sit with me, darlin’.”
With a huff that was pure drama, and one I couldn’t exactly reprimand her over because she’d seen me do it a thousand times in front of Ryan, she carefully inserted the leather bookmark Ryan had crafted for her, then placed the book down on the stand. Just so. Then, she climbed off the bed we were sharing and stepped toward me on the sofa I was sitting on.
I could have gone to her, but hell, getting her away from the book was a war in itself. I considered this a big win.
We were in one of the spare rooms and I hated it, and I wanted to go and search for a new place for us as a family but I’d been swept up in details since the MC hadn’t ixnayed my proposal. Didn’t mean I wasn’t still chomping at the bit to get us away from the clubhouse.
Something Amaryllis wasn’t facilitating.
I had a feeling she liked it here, which didn’t exactly surprise me—as a kid, I’d liked it here too—but was a concern, nonetheless, because I didn’t want her raised solely around this environment.
A lot of lifers just brought their kids around on Sundays when we had the family get-togethers. That was pretty much it. Only the single parents relied heavily on the club, or those who were in need of childcare.
To my mind, the whole point of being a parent was to do better for your kids than you had. I hadn’t been raised with love from my father, and I’d been raised in a house that was loaded with sluts and chauvinists. Did I want my daughter around that? Nope. But it seemed like she’d been bitten by the bug.
Or should I say, three bugs had bitten her.
“Baby, I need you to lighten up on Daddy Wolfe.”
As predicted, Amaryllis’s stubborn side—something she totally didn’t inherit from me—reared to the surface. She folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her bottom lip.
When no words were forthcoming, I knew this shit was going to be more difficult to resolve than I’d anticipated.
Reaching over to twirl the end of her braid around my fingers, I murmured, “Please, baby?”
“He was mean to you. You cried.”
Shit. Had I? I didn’t remember that. Although, I’d turned into a watering pot since Ryan’s death, so maybe it wasn’t too much of a surprise.
“When?” I hedged.
“That first night. When you slept.”
Christ. “I was probably having a bad dream.”
“You said his name. You were asking him not to let you go. He let you go anyway.”
Wincing, I admitted, “Honey, that was a long time ago.”
“Not long ago enough if it gives you bad dreams.”
I couldn’t exactly argue with her logic.
“When you love someone, sometimes, you make them cry.”
“I love you and you don’t make me cry.”
“How about when I tell you off for doing something I told you not to? I’ve seen your eyes sparkle, sweetheart.”
Her mouth pursed into a rosebud. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Those last few months, Daddy Ryan was mean, wasn’t he?” I managed to get the words out, even though they felt like a betrayal in and of themselves. “He made me cry, baby. Didn’t stop me from loving him. If anything, I loved him harder.” It wasn’t a lie, but it didn’t take into account how those days, when the tumor seemed to change his entire personality, I’d loved the old Ryan even more. Appreciated him more than I ever thought possible.
“Daddy was sick.” Her eyes widened. “Is Daddy Wolfe?”
“No!” I quickly assured her, immediately regretting talking about Ryan. But shit, I was at a loss. We’d been here nearly three weeks now and she hadn’t spoken to Wolfe once.
He didn’t say anything, but I saw that it killed him when she ignored him, and fuck, I wanted what I’d never had—Amaryllis to be surrounded in her daddy’s love. She had more daddies than she probably knew what to do with, but if Ryan had taught me anything, it was to be mindful where those you loved were concerned.
The MC lifestyle wasn’t for everyone. It was hard and it was dangerous. One day, you were riding high with a big wedge in your pocket from a run, with the prospect of a party at the clubhouse with no other intention of getting your dick wet, and poisoning your liver for the night. The next? You could be in the morgue or in jail.
As Prez, Wolfe wouldn’t take as many risks as some of the other members, but my dad had been Prez and he’d been killed too.
There was always beef with other clubs, and the pigs were always sniffing around the place looking to take us down.
I didn’t want her to have any regrets, even as I wondered if I’d done the right thing bringing my daughter back to the fold when, in retrospect, it seemed like the worst thing I could have done.
But I needed to be here. My fucking soul needed to be here, with those men.
I hadn’t done well after Ryan. I’d started drinking too much, eating too much, sleeping too much. I’d been a shitty mother, and I didn’t want that for Amaryllis. When the idea had come to me to return home, it was the only thing that had lit a fire under my ass in weeks.
Suddenly, I had direction. I had a goal.
Being a good mom should have been goal enough, but under the crushing grief? I’d crumpled, and I’d be ashamed about that for the rest of my life because I’d let her down.
She might not like me for it at this moment, but I was trying to do right by her even as we spoke.
Letting my thumb stroke her chubby cheek, I murmured, “Daddy Wolfe was confused when he first saw me, I know, and he was mean because of that. Don’t you get mad sometimes?” I cleared my throat. “You not talking to him… isn’t that you being mean to him?” Her eyes flared wide in outrage, but I quickly murmured, “I’ll always need you to defend me, baby. Always. And I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart, but sometimes, I need to defend you too. Daddy Wolfe wants to show you how much he loves you. I’d be such a bad mommy if I didn’t try to make you see that.”
For a second, she squirmed in front of me. I knew she wanted to argue, knew it like I knew every angle of her young face, but I hadn’t demanded, I’d entreated, and where a clever little monkey like Ama was concerned, that meant everything.
She huffed. “I don’t like it when people are mean to you.”
“I know, baby. I feel the exact same way.”
“You didn’t smack him.”
My eyes flared wide. “Huh?”
“When he was mean, you didn’t hit him.” Shit. Ryan always said this would bite me in the ass.
God, I was a bad mother even when I was trying to be a good one.
“I don’t hit everyone,” I attempted to reason.
“No, but when they’re bad to you, you do. That’s ‘cause you’re strong.”
I winced. Shit. This was where the outside world clashed with
the MC way of living. Here, might was right. If you didn’t defend yourself with your fists, then that could mean the difference between a broken arm and bruised knuckles.
Even without being at the clubhouse, I’d brought the MC culture to her door just by being me.
I scrubbed my hand over my face as shame and regret filled me.
“Momma?”
Her tiny voice scared the fuck out of me. It was scared and concerned and just… everything I didn’t want her to feel.
I stared deep into her eyes and whispered, “I love you, baby girl. You know that, don’t you?”
She blinked. “I do, Momma.”
“I was raised a certain way, Amaryllis. I wasn’t told not to do stuff, I was raised to think that if I did bad stuff and got told off, that was good because it was the only way my daddy paid attention to me.”
“But that’s silly.”
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t entirely fucked my daughter up. “I know, but it wasn’t silly to me then. He never talked to me, was never really that nice to me, and I just… I wanted him to love me.”
“But being bad, didn’t that just make him angry?”
“If he was angry, then at least he felt something instead of just… nothing. I don’t think my daddy loved me, but there were five boys in my life who did.”
“My daddies?” she questioned solemnly.
“Yes. But daddies are boys, aren’t they? And here, boys are always fighting.”
“So you learned to fight too?”
“Exactly. You’re so smart, baby.” I sucked down some air before I continued, “But you, my little love, don’t need to do things like that. I love you, and your daddies love you if you’ll give them the chance.”
That had her sucking on her bottom lip.
“I fight because that was how I was raised. But you? You don’t have to fight. You can be you, and that’s just perfect. You don’t have to be like me. And, honey, I’m going to try to stop being like this, because it’s setting a bad example for you.”
Her brow puckered. “No. You keep us both safe,” she defended. “That’s what mommies do.”
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