by Zoey Parker
“I got nothing, man. I’m sorry.”
Slick seemed a little taken aback. “Oh, it’s all good, boss. You ain’t gotta apologize. I was just tryin’ to be helpful, that’s all.”
“Thanks, Slick.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. I felt a headache coming on, deep behind my eyeballs. “Is Jay back?”
“Nah, he’s still down at the warehouse helping Duncan and Spark unload the long-haul shit.”
“Maybe I’ll go down there and give them a hand.”
“I think they’re just about done. But hey, maybe the fresh air will do you some good. Can’t have you getting sick, Ben.”
I waved a hand as he shrugged and left the room. He was right. I needed to get out of this cramped, musty office. A long ride on the bike might help shake some of these sticky thoughts from my head.
I grabbed my keys and strode out of the office, tugging the door shut behind me. The barroom was mostly empty, though a few men sat drinking alone in the corners. Pushing through the main entrance, I stepped out into the warm night.
The courtyard separating the clubhouse from the street was scrubby and empty. I headed for the gate, but when I was halfway across the yard, I saw a figure move through it. It was a big motherfucker, tall and broad-shouldered. I couldn’t make out his face, but the dim glow from the streetlight in the far corner was enough to reflect off his hair. I saw it was flowing and white.
My eyes started to widen as realization and the man’s voice struck me at the same time. “Ben Killmore, you son of a bitch,” he growled as he took two quick steps towards me and unloaded a powerful fist into my gut.
I doubled over as pain erupted where he’d hit me. He swung another punch across my jaw and I reeled to the side, falling onto one knee in the dirt. My whole face was burning, but I managed to scramble to pull out the knife I kept in my boot. I sprang backwards and held it in front of me. Blood dripped down my chin.
“I know you aren’t stupid enough to come hit me on my own front porch, James,” I said in a low voice. “All I have to do is raise my voice and my boys will have your ass strung up in the tree out back before you fucking know what hit you.”
“I got every right to beat your ass bloody,” he replied.
“What the fuck gives you that right?”
“You know damn well what it is.”
I didn’t have a fucking clue what he was talking about. I was still stunned at the sudden attack. Who in their right mind stepped into the turf of one of the city’s most feared MCs and started swinging at their president? Only a drunk or a lunatic would be that ballsy. James was neither, as far as I knew. His gaze was level and his fists were held up at the ready. He really was intent on doing me some harm.
“You’re losing it, old man.”
“You’re going to lose your fucking balls if you don’t own up to what you did.”
My stomach turned. He must have found out about the raid.
But even as the thought crossed my mind, I realized that made no sense. If he’d discovered we were the ones who jacked his cash stash, he would’ve come with an army. Looking through the gates, I saw his bike was the only one parked out front. Why the hell would he come storming in solo?
It had to be something else. But what?
“You’re gonna need to explain yourself very carefully, James,” I said in a cold voice, “and very quickly, too, or else I’ll slice you from balls to brains.”
He straightened up. “You touched my baby girl,” he whispered. “You fucking used her. Like one of your whores.”
“Now I’m sure you’ve lost it. I’ve never even met your daughter.”
“Think again, motherfucker.” He reached into his wallet, withdrew something, and held it up in the slanted beam of light. I squinted and looked close. When I realized what it was, I felt my whole body shrivel and grow cold.
It was a picture of Carmen.
There was no doubt it was the same girl. Those eyes, that skin, that hair—she was unforgettable. She’d been a constant figure in my dreams over the last four months since I’d first laid claim to her. I’d texted her again and again, called her, but she’d never answered. Now I knew why.
She was the daughter of my sworn enemy.
“You used her,” he said. “And now she’s carrying your bastard.”
His words hit me hard. If the realization that Carmen was James’s daughter had knocked me sideways, then the accusation that she was pregnant with my child was the knockout punch. My legs felt weak. I fell to my knees in the dirt, eyes unfocused, trying to process what he’d just said. The knife dropped from my suddenly slack fingers. “My…what?”
“You heard me, Killmore. She’s pregnant. It’s yours.”
It couldn’t be true. No chance. This kind of thing just didn’t happen to me. I’d been reckless plenty of times before, but it had always turned out fine.
This girl, though. This girl was different. Of course things would be different. Of course this would be the one occasion when I couldn’t just walk away from the whole mess. Or could I?
“Okay, James. Let’s say it is mine. That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
“I’m here to tell you that if you don’t marry her, I’m going to crush you and your club. I’ll stake every one of your brothers’ heads out in my front yard as a warning to all the rest of the world that there are some lines that cannot be crossed.”
I was speechless. “Marry her? Are you fucking insane?”
He reached down and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, hauling me to my feet. I grabbed his wrists and peeled them off of me, but our strength was equally matched. We stood there, arms flexed and eyes narrowed in mutual hatred. I wanted to skin the son of a bitch, and I knew without question that he would do the same to me, given the chance.
So why the fuck was he here, demanding that I marry his daughter?
“I won’t have my family name sullied,” he spat. “You’re the lowest scum I know. You’re a thief, a womanizer, a goddamn walking cunt if I’ve ever seen one. But the only thing worse than my daughter being married to you would be for her not to be married at all. I won’t have a whore for a daughter and a bastard for a grandson. Which is why I want you to listen to this threat very carefully, Ben. And make no mistake, it is a threat. If you don’t do as I say, if you don’t marry Carmen, I will make it my life’s work to bleed you dry. Do you hear me? Do you see how serious I am?”
His eyes were the same grey as Carmen’s. But whereas on her they were rich with life and spark, his were flat. Cold. Deadly. He meant every word he was saying. And he could do it, too. He might destroy his own club in the process, but he was capable of following through on his word. At best, it would be a long, violent war of attrition. At worst, he would eradicate the Dark Knights from the face of the earth. And the whole city might burn in the process.
At the same time, how could I say yes to such an unreasonable proposal? I’d just been with Dina and her son. I’d just sworn that I couldn’t do to another woman what Olaf had done to his family. This life was mine and mine alone. It didn’t matter that Carmen had stirred up shit inside me I’d never known or wanted to know was there. I wasn’t enough of a selfish bastard to drag her into my darkness.
I heard voices behind me raising in alarm. “Prez! Ben, what the fuck? Get away from him, you cocksucker!” Footsteps slammed into the turf as Slick and a few others came racing across the yard.
James shook me. “Answer me. Give me your word, right now, you worthless piece of shit.”
My men surrounded us. Two of them pulled out guns and pointed them at James’s head. They were good men, my brothers. They didn’t deserve to fight a bloody, nonsensical war because of something I did. I owed them that much.
“Okay,” I choked. “Okay, you bastard. Let go of me. I’ll do it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carmen
Two Weeks Later
“I can’t do it,” I whispered. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Carmen,” Lori whispered. She carefully reached up a hand and brushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen from the complex bun wound around the back of my head. Smoothing the veil into place, she kept repeating that. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”
I didn’t want to cry. It felt like that was all I’d been doing for the last two weeks, the last few months, even the last few years. Every day seemed worse than the last. But this had to be the bottom. Rock bottom. The tear trickled down my face, carving a tiny little path through my makeup.
Lori grabbed a tissue and dabbed it away. I didn’t move. I sat still and stared at the ground, not really seeing anything. “Maybe things will work out,” she offered hopefully.
I looked up at her. “How could things possibly work out?”
She looked back, her eyes soft and sympathetic, trying to find the right combination of words to soothe my fears and make me feel like maybe, just maybe, the last few good things in my life weren’t totally crumbling to pieces around me. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally. “But they might.”
I turned my eyes to the bouquet in my hand. It was filled with while lilies. Their petals were smooth and creamy. I extended a finger and stroked one, but as soon as I touched it, the petal detached itself from the flower and fell fluttering to the ground. What a perfect metaphor for the way today was going.
“He is handsome,” she said. “At least there’s that.”
It was true; Ben was handsome. He was every bit as rugged and dark as I remembered him being, even though I’d only seen glimpses of him in the two weeks that had gone by since my father had come home and informed me that I would be marrying him as soon as it was possible to arrange the ceremony.
I didn’t believe him at first. No father could be so casually cruel.
“Daddy, you’re not serious.”
No reply. Just that stare.
“No, Daddy, wait. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Still nothing.
“Don’t I have a choice in this? It’s my life you’re ruining!”
“You made your choice when you let that animal empty his seed into you.”
What could I possibly say to that? What kind of father said something like that to his only daughter? There was nothing that could have prepared me for that kind of conversation. I was out of my depth by miles.
I wondered where the father I used to know had gone. Before my mother died, he was the best dad a girl could ask for. I remembered laughing when he sat me in front of him on his motorcycle and let me use two hands to twist the throttle. I remembered all those little memories of him and me, the ones every daughter shares with her father: painting his nails, forcing him to indulge in my tea time fantasies, him tossing me in the air. Those were the bread and butter.
We had our own special moments, too. The motorcycle, the day he taught me how to flick out a switchblade knife, the time he kept me out of school for a week for no other reason than to ride down to Mexico and play in the surf. Just the three of us—my father, my mother, and me—all alone on a white sand beach, splashing in the water without a care in the world.
But a few months before my mother’s murder, something had changed. I remembered the day perfectly.
I was fifteen years old. It was a half-day at school, and I’d finished my homework quickly so I could lay out in the backyard and tan. I was stretched out on a towel, basking in the sun and on the verge of drifting off to sleep, when I heard a huge crash from inside. I sat upright and whipped off my sunglasses. I couldn’t see anything from where I was sitting, so I got up and walked over to the window that looked in on the living room. Pressing my face against it, I saw the coffee table had been upended. The glass vase that usually sat in the center, the one my mother loved to fill with fresh cut flowers from our garden, was now shattered into a million pieces spread out across the floor. My mother was cowering in one corner as my father loomed over her. Their voices were muffled through the window, and I could only make out a few things they were saying.
“Tell me who it was!” he roared.
“Nothing happened, James,” she begged. “Nothing, I swear.”
“Tell me!”
“James, you have to believe me.”
He raised a hand high in the air as if he were about to hit her. I found my voice then and screamed. They looked at me simultaneously, saw me standing on the other side of the glass, tears running down my face. I’d never so much as seen them argue before. My dad was always the picture of calm reserve. Always in control, always smooth. But when he looked at me, I saw his face wrinkled in purple rage. My mother’s eyes were round and teary. She mouthed, “Please go away,” but I couldn’t seem to make my feet work.
The second Daddy saw me, though, his hand fell to his side and the anger drained from his features. He became the Daddy I knew again, the calm one, the normal one. The one who loved us. Without another word, he bent over and started to pick up the pieces of broken glass.
I ran to Lori’s. I cried as I explained the scene to her, and she calmed me down until I fell asleep in her bed, curled up with a teddy bear between my arms. She woke me up a little while later and told me my dad was outside.
I was so tentative walking out front where he was waiting on the back of his bike. I didn’t know what father would be there: the one who had raised me, or the one who’d screamed at my mother and looked at her with so much hate. He smiled sadly as I walked up. “Climb on, Carmen. Let’s go home.”
I was scared to touch him at first. But I climbed on like he asked and we wheeled quietly down the road, back to the house. Once we were inside and I’d showered and changed into pajamas, he tucked me into bed. It had been a long time since he’d done that. I was fifteen, after all. Not his little girl anymore, but almost a woman. In this moment, though, I needed my daddy to comfort me.
The lights in my bedroom were dark. “I’m sorry that happened today,” he whispered from where he sat next to me. “I lost my temper. I just want you to know I love you and your mother very much and I’d never do anything to hurt either of you.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” I squeaked. I felt too tired to hold onto my fear or my suspicion. Besides, he seemed so normal. Like everything in the world was right again.
“Goodnight, princess.” He kissed me on the forehead and left the room.
For the few months between that incident and the day I was pulled out of class by an urgently whispering school secretary, I almost forgot about the fight and the broken vase. But when the secretary put a gentle hand on my lower back and guided me to the front foyer of the school, I saw Daddy standing there and I knew things weren’t right at all. They weren’t fixed. They were more broken than ever.
“Carmen,” Lori whispered. I looked up. I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting without moving while I reminisced. My leg had gone numb, circulation cut off by the edge of the chair I sat in. I stared at Lori dumbly. She jerked her head towards the door.
My father stood in the doorway, as massive and snowy as ever. He wore a trim navy suit and a white shirt, pressed crisply until it was completely free of wrinkles. “Lori, could you give me a moment with my daughter,” he said. It wasn’t really a question.
Lori murmured something and quickly left the room through another door. I swallowed. He walked slowly across the room to sit in the chair Lori had just vacated.
When his smell hit me—that familiar, fatherly smell, the clean scent of shaving cream and cologne and just a hint of oily steel that set him apart from almost every other man I knew—I felt the tears well up again.
“I can’t go through with this, Daddy. You can’t make me.”
It was hard to explain why I was so afraid. Hadn’t my night with Ben been otherworldly? I’d played it back so many times in my head, while falling asleep, or relived it in my dreams. Every time he’d texted or called me, I’d wanted so badly just to pick up the phone and hear his sexy rumble again.
But there was no one. Nothing to stop that hand from hurtling down from far above and striking me bluntly across the cheek. Nothing to stem the flow of blood from my split lip. It was just me and him. Not the Daddy I remembered, but the one I feared.