Ever,
I know this seems a weird request, but I have no doubt you will honor it for me. What I’m asking of you won’t require much on your part, and hopefully, you’ll understand one day. My time here is up, but I have a feeling there’s more to come.
I need you to hang on to everything for one year and one day after my death. You’ll understand on that day why I asked it of you. My account has plenty of funds to pay for the taxes and upkeep on everything until then. If you can’t honor that wish, I will understand.
Thank you for believing, for coming to find me, and for releasing me from the prison fate had organized for me. You will never know how much it meant to me the day you stepped through my door and introduced me to your brother.
All my heart,
Ava
PS – Keep the faith, it all works out in the end!
I just sat there stunned as Brian handed the letter over and allowed me to see the writing for myself. “This is…”
“A strange request?” He waved off my concerns. “We get them all the time. As you can see, she wasn’t worried about it being followed to the letter, and there’s no one to contest it, so if you choose to sell it all off tomorrow, that’s up to you.” I was appalled that the man would seriously sit there and tell me to go against a dead person’s last wishes. Wishes that they drew up with him, or at least his firm.
“Is there something I need to do so that you can be on your way?” I finally asked as I put the papers back down and picked my son up to my shoulder so I could burp him. He was pretty good about getting the gas out on his own at that point, but I still enjoyed snuggling him close and had kept to the routine. Sooner or later, I’d have to start letting him grow beyond that. Secretly though, I think he enjoyed snuggling up to his momma just as much as I loved having him there.
Once all the paperwork was signed, I was given my copies and told to expect everything I would need to access all of Ava’s accounts, her home, and property within the week. I honestly didn’t know how to feel about inheriting all of her stuff. I hoped she had a serious plan to somehow come collect it all in a year. The thought made me laugh.
“Archer, you might want to start saving up early, baby. Momma is certifiable and she’s going to need you to find her a good home to go to when she’s old because the girls hate me.” He giggled and cooed at me, as if I was telling him something funny. I wished I were because while I was teasing, there was a bit of truth to the statement. Archer might not hate me because he’d never known his dad and didn’t feel as though I was keeping him from seeing his father. The girls though, that was a different story altogether, and quite frankly, I was tired of taking all the hits for it. I was also tired of everyone allowing Deck to be a coward. He had a family, and he needed to face us. If he didn’t want us in his life after that, fine. I’d respect that, but he was going to be the one to tell me not to come back. I glanced down at the paperwork proclaiming me to be the new owner of Ava’s home and thought that it might just come in handy if Deck decided he didn’t want us anymore, because there was no way I could continue to live in our house without him. Besides, another idea suddenly overwhelmed me.
MiMi, one of the women of the S.H.E. MC had remained behind when everyone else left over the past two weeks. Christina had run up to Canada with Pike so that they could see Jay and Merc. Angel Girl had gone home to Georgia, and the visiting members of other chapters had also found their way back home with the promise to come back and celebrate once Deck was well again.
I called MiMi up and asked her to meet me at the clubhouse. “You know I don’t have any pull with them. If they won’t let you see Deck, I can’t help you,” she told me when I asked her to come.
“I know that. I need your help with something else though.”
“Okay, I’m in.”
“You don’t want to know what it is?”
“Nope. Besides, I want to run something by you, so this is perfect.”
Chapter 27
Detox Hell
Deck
Durbin was shaking his head at me again and I didn’t miss a single bit of the disappointment in his eyes either when I once again refused to allow Ever to see me.
“I’m going to ask you something and I want you to answer it honestly. You don’t even have to tell me what you decide, this is strictly for you.” I nodded my head for him to continue, not liking where I thought this might be going. “How are you going to feel the day she stops begging to see you?”
“What?” What the fuck did he mean by that? The day Ever stopped begging to see me… I couldn’t even grasp that concept.
“You heard me. A woman, even as in love with her man as she seems to be with you, has limits. You’re testing her right now and she’s eventually going to break.”
“Ever is a strong woman. I’m sure she knows, deep down, that I need time.”
“Have you stopped to consider what she needs?” He asked me and for some reason it made me angry.
“What she needs?” I asked, and there was venom in each word. “She wasn’t the one held hostage, drugged, abused, and…” Shit! I couldn’t say the last part. I only had vague nightmares of it actually happening, and I wasn’t sure if that was all it was or if they were memories trying to surface. “She was tucked up here, all cozy like, while those things were happening to me. If anyone should have some goddamn understanding in this situation, I’d think it should be her.”
“Really? That’s interesting because I would think that it should be the both of you. The fact that she leaves here every day, devastated, disappointed, and heartbroken means she’s been understanding. The fact that you’ve sent her away without even being able to see you, the fact that you’ve been given a cell phone for a means of communication and haven’t used it to reach out to her means you’re the asshole here, not her.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?”
“As a damn drug addict in a room full of blow!” He shouted at me. “You don’t think she suffered while you were gone?” I just glared at Durbin as his bald head turned a slight shade of pink. “I’m guessing your little MC brothers are protecting you from what she went through. Well, I won’t. Nope. I’m not giving you excuses to pity yourself because no one is giving her that option. She hasn’t curled up in a dark room and refused to look life in the face again. That’s all you.”
If I had a gun in that moment, I would have shot the fucker between the eyes.
“Let me tell you what happened while you were away. Your wife, the one you left behind with twin daughters and a baby in her belly, had to explain to those daughters that their daddy was working and couldn’t come home. While she was worried about you and losing her mind over what you might be going through, she was being questioned by those sweet girls. Every. Single. Day.”
I didn’t say a word, just pictured Amber and Ashton asking Ever over and over where I was, and my heart ached with the sound of it.
“She was pregnant too, so her emotions were in overdrive while that was happening. Then, she had to go to doctor appointments without you. She refused to learn the sex of your baby without you. She waited, hoping every day, all the way up until the birth of your son that you would make it back in time to find out with her.” I swallowed at the lump in my throat, trying to get it to go down, but Durbin pressed on. “Your wife received pictures from Sasha while you were away.”
“What?” I asked, panic settling in my bones.
“Yeah, the boys didn’t tell you?” He asked in that assholish manner Durbin had when he had a fucking point to make. “She received pictures of you and Sasha in bed together. Those first shots were easy for her to blow off though. They could see that you were beaten, possibly drugged out of your mind, and from what they told me, she didn’t let it rattle her. Make no mistake, asshole, your wife was rattled seeing those pictures. How could she not be? Even if her brain allowed her to take the woman out of the equation, she wouldn’t be able to unsee the way you were obviously suffering.�
�� He turned then and opened an envelope, searched through it, and then tossed a couple 8x10 images on the bed beside me. “That’s what she saw, the first-time pictures showed up.
I wanted to fucking cry, kill someone, hell I wanted to punch myself in the fucking face for ever ending up in a situation where Ever had to see something like that.
“It didn’t stop there though. Three more times she was sent pictures of you with another woman. In some of them, it was obvious you were still being treated poorly. After I cleaned you up and Sasha got a hold of you again though…” he shook his head as he slid the rest of the images out and handed them over to me.
I shuffled through them, looking at them as if I were Ever. As if I were the woman worried her husband might come home in a casket. Then I realized that she probably had at least a moment or more where she debated whether I’d choose to stay away and she’d have to live with the fact that I was out there, still alive, and had simply fallen for someone else. On first look, there was one image that stood out. I was sleeping in a bed and my hand was stretched out, cradling another woman’s pregnant belly. That one. That one image had to have broken my wife in some way. I knew that as surely as I knew I needed to breathe air to live.
“It doesn’t end there, with those pictures though, Deck. Her suffering?” He questioned and waited until I glanced up, eyes barely able to focus on the man because of the tears swimming in them. I didn’t care if he saw them or not though. Durbin had seen me at my absolute worst. He could have my emotions too. “She gave birth to your son without you there.” He cued up a video that was shot from the door of the birthing suite. Whoever had taken the video, she hadn’t known they were there. She was begging Lucy, the doctor, nurses, anyone who would listen to please make it stop that she couldn’t do it without me. My heart fucking shattered listening to her, begging for them to stop her labor.
“I get it!” I shouted at Durbin as I swatted the phone away from my face.
“Not yet, you don’t. Because your wife? She wasn’t done suffering.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Your son spent his first two weeks without a name, did you know that?”
“What the hell?”
Durbin nodded his head at me. “Yeah, poor girl, refused to name him until you were here to agree to whatever she had picked out. I guess you guys hadn’t agreed on names yet before you were nabbed. When her family finally convinced her to name him, she did, and just a month and a half later, your wife had to bury her mother, the one person she leaned on the most. Your girls understood loss then and started asking her all the time if they had to put you in the ground too or if you were really coming back.”
“Lucy?” I questioned. “Lucy’s gone?” Durbin nodded. “No one said anything to me.”
“You’re not exactly taking a whole lot of visitors, now are ya? Your woman, the one you keep turning away because you think you need to suffer alone with what happened to you? You’re still putting her through this shit. In her world, you’re still out there, lost, and she’s still concerned you’re never coming back to her.” He stood and pointed to the door, but that wasn’t enough, so Durbin moved to it, opened the damn thing and there stood an angry, red-faced Kane staring at me. It was obvious he was listening to everything. “You know why he’s here, standing outside your door?” He asked and all I could do was shake my head. “Because someone in this fucking club of yours is a rat and the same woman you keep tossing away, the same one you keep forsaking in favor of your own misery, she set up a goddamn security watch for you with people SHE trusted. They’re here to make sure no one comes in and tries to steal you away or off you in retaliation for the club taking Sasha and killing her little brother.”
I knew the club had Sasha hidden away somewhere. They were waiting to make her pay until she could deliver the baby. It made my stomach roll to think that the reason they had to wait was because that kid might be mine. “You need to pull your fuckin’ head out of your ass, and soon!” Kane seethed the words through his teeth, but before I could respond, Durbin had shut the door again.
“Your brothers love you, but right now, they respect your woman more,” he told me and then he threw some fresh clothes at me. “Get yourself cleaned up, and do yourself and your family a favor, when she comes back today… If she comes back today,” he amended, and that alteration broke something loose inside of me. “Be prepared to face your cowardice and let her in.
Chapter 28
The Test
Ever
I turned to go down the hall where Deck’s infirmary room was, but when I saw Kane standing outside of his door, looking for all the world like he might actually kill my husband, I back peddled. Kane offered a tight smile for me and then mouthed, “Later”. That was enough to know that some intense shit must be going down and I wouldn’t be welcome again. Instead, I turned on my heel, and noted that the clubhouse seemed pretty damned empty. “Are you sure you want to do this with me?” I asked MiMi one last time.
She laughed. “Are you kidding me? I’m the queen of dumb and dangerous decision making.”
I left it at that and the two of us moved as quickly as we possibly could to the entrance to the pit. It was an old, in-ground swimming pool at one time that had been converted to a wet work spot for the club, in case they needed one. They had occasion to use it a few times since I had become aware of it. I knew that was where they were housing the woman and I also knew they had video surveillance down there. I didn’t bother hiding what we were doing. They would all figure it out eventually. I still didn’t know what the hell was going on that we’d been allowed to get that far without someone stopping us, but as luck would have it, we were able to get in, grab the bitch, and haul her ass to the van we had arrived in without a single soul stopping us.
“Where do you think you’re taking me? They won’t like that you’ve taken me!” She was shrieking.
“I need you to understand that I have zero qualms about knocking a pregnant bitch out. Shut the fuck up, or I’ll make it happen,” MiMi threatened her. I had to hold back my laughter, because damn, even I believed she’d do it. The woman had an insane poker face.
Once I found out I was technically the new owner of Ava’s property, I went to investigate her house a bit better. She had mentioned before that her father dabbled in some shadier things, and I hoped that meant that he had a space somewhere in the house that would accommodate those endeavors and be of use to me too. I hadn’t been wrong. The attic, which was technically a third-floor space, had reinforced bars on the windows, but those windows were also shuttered so that no one could see into them even if they were outside on a ladder. The attic door locked from the outside with the aid of several locks, and there was the bonus that Ava had no neighbors within close enough proximity to hear someone screaming.
We were getting Sasha out of the van when a motorcycle came blazing into the driveway of Ava’s house. “What the hell do the two of you think you’re doing?” Christina questioned.
“I thought you were in Canada?” MiMi asked.
“I was. We brought Merc back this morning. Everyone is at the hospital checking in on him.” I glanced at MiMi. That explained why it was so easy to get the bitch out of the clubhouse unseen. “Now, you want to tell me what the two of you are up to?”
“The bitch is about to pop and have this baby. The guys are just going to freak out, pull someone in to help her deliver, and possibly lose her to some fucked up plot her family had to get her back and then Deck will never be safe again. This way, we can interrogate the bitch, deliver the baby, find out if it’s Deck’s. Then, we can figure out where to go from there.”
“I have an idea where the baby is concerned,” MiMi mentioned. I turned to her and waited. “Dane and I are looking to adopt another baby,” she explained quickly. “We would be more than happy to take it.”
“Wait, I appreciate what you’re saying, but if that’s Deck’s baby, we will be keeping it.”
&n
bsp; “Really?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t we?”
“Honestly? I don’t know of too many women who would welcome a child made by a man that they were married to or involved with. Then there’s the fact that I can’t see too many men who would want to have a child made from rape be a constant reminder.”
I smiled. “I was that child once. My father’s issues were not quite as out there as Deck’s, but my Momma Luce took me in and loved me fiercely. My dad was a bit more like what you imagine. We had our issues, but he grew to realize and regret his mistake in treating me as if I were at fault for what happened to him. I didn’t get a choice in my parentage. I simply had to play the hand that was dealt me. That child shouldn’t suffer because his mother is a psychopath.”
“You’re right, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“MiMi, it’s fine. It makes me happy that you would step up and take the baby.”
“You whores are crazy as fuck if you think any of you is getting my baby!” Sasha screamed at us. We’d all sort of ignored her presence up until then.
“Let’s get her in the house,” I told the other women and that’s exactly what we did.
“The men from the club will realize I’m gone before long, if they haven’t already, and then they’ll come for me.”
I laughed. “First of all, they have no clue where we are considering I just inherited this place, and no one knows yet. Secondly, you seem to be working under some delusion that you’re important to them.”
“I am. I happen to be the only bargaining chip they have to keep the peace with my family.”
I laughed again and this time MiMi and Christina joined in. “Honey, I hate to tell ya, but the only thing you’re useful for right now is that you’ve been an incubator for that baby you’re carrying. Nothing else matters. You could stop breathing right now, and we’d just deliver the baby and throw your body in a pit somewhere.” MiMi informed her.
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