by Stacey Lynn
“Fine,” I muttered, and then another thought occurred to me. “We ever figure out how they seem to know everything that happens around here before we do?”
Sporelli’s knowledge of life in Jasper Bay had eaten at me for weeks. They knew where Faith was before we could find her, and they’d been in town—and responsible for—when Olivia had been shot a couple months back. They’d actually been the ones to do the shooting, although the target had been her ex-boyfriend.
“I’m on it,” said Xbox, our resident computer hacker. The guy was thin and sleek, and I swore when he wasn’t on his bike he didn’t do anything except fuck with computers. He had at least a dozen in his room at the club and never allowed anyone else in there. “Pretty sure someone in town is feeding them information.”
“A plant?” My eyes narrowed and my hands balled into fists. Based on a quick glance around the table, I wasn’t the only one who tensed with fury at the idea of someone from our town—one we bled to keep safe—narcing on us.
“Figure it out faster,” Daemon sneered at Xbox. Then he slammed the gavel down on the wood table, effectively putting an end to our meeting.
As we walked into the club, Daemon smacked a hand on my shoulder. “You need to hit the ring?”
He grinned. Letting him try to beat the shit out of me held a certain appeal. Maybe he’d knock some damn sense back into me.
“Nah, I’m all right.”
Daemon shoved me. Hard. I turned around and scowled at him over my shoulder. It lacked heat, though, and Daemon knew it. We’d been friends far too long for him to fall for my shit.
“Tough shit. Maybe I need it.”
“Yeah?” I asked, wicked grin on my face. “Regretting the decision to get hitched already?”
Daemon growled and swung at me. We were in the middle of the clubhouse but he didn’t give a shit. Men turned and cheered as we squared off.
“Yeah? You looked real good playing the daddy role today.”
He wiped the smirk off my face with one damn sentence. Everything stopped. I didn’t even see Daemon’s fist heading at my chin until pain blared through my jaw and I dropped to the ground.
Daddy? I wasn’t a fucking dad. Didn’t ever want to be one, either. Cold tendrils wrapped around my heart and squeezed until I was able to shake off the sting of Daemon’s punch. But he’d already done what I needed him to do: knock sense back into me.
My parents died when Scratch and I were little, and after Scratch died, I had vowed to never get close to anyone besides the brothers in my club again—and even they were kept at a distance.
There was no point in trying—or wanting—to have anything do with Jules or Sophie again. I didn’t have anything to give them. Nothing to give a woman besides a good, hard and fast fuck that left her legs shaking for days.
And I certainly didn’t have shit to give a little girl who needed a dad to help raise her. That man would never be me, and I was fooling myself for thinking otherwise.
By the time Daemon wrapped his arm around my shoulder and yanked me into the ring so we could finish sparring, the cold tendrils and had turned my veins to ice.
I needed to stay far away from Sophie and Jules.
It was the best thing for everyone.
Two weeks went by and Sophie and I were starting to feel settled in our new home. She’d quit having nightmares at night, which told me she had adjusted to not only our new apartment, but also her new daycare. She cried the first few times I dropped her off into the hands of Shelly, a sweet lady old enough to be my grandma. Shelly didn’t seem to mind Sophie’s tears as she scooped her up and got her settled at one of the art stations in the brightly lit and decorated room for two- and three-year-olds.
Sophie had yelled for Jaden. Wanted her “Uncah” the first week I dropped her off, and I gritted my teeth every time she clung to me, wrapping her feet around my back and her hands around my neck.
It took everything inside me not to snap. Because fuck him.
I didn’t know what game he was playing—or what game he’d started playing but had just as quickly decided wasn’t worth the waste of his time.
In two weeks, we hadn’t heard from him. No sudden showing up, wanting to see Sophie, or take her to the garage. And when we stopped by to see Faith or Olivia, Jaden was somehow always missing.
And everyone seemed to notice. Shifty eyes were cast in my direction from club members I didn’t know well—even if they all had seemed to sweep Sophie into the fold, treating her as if she belonged to all of them.
But the distance toward me was palpable. It came from everyone besides Daemon and Ryker. And Pappy.
God, he smelled bad. The man was old, skinny, looked as if he could keel over and bite the dust at any minute and no one talked to him—no one but me and Faith, and we always had. The man didn’t understand anything about personal hygiene, but he had wisdom growing out of his ears. When I talked to him, it always made me sad that no one seemed to take him seriously. I didn’t know much about him except that he’d been old when the club began way back when Daemon’s parents were young and single. But Pappy told incredible stories of growing up in the South, and he’d seen a ton of crap during then. He’d served in the military, and the stories he told from the times he’d been activated made me teary-eyed, even if the stories were thirty plus years old.
So when Sophie and I went to the club, I would huddle in the corner with Pappy and try my hardest to listen to his stories, all while keeping one eye trained on Sophie and pretending my other eye wasn’t focused on the doorway, hoping for Jaden to walk through.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
He was everywhere and nowhere.
Our last conversation, the salacious look in his eye as he questioned me about getting my nipples pierced, reverberated through my head all day and most of the night.
I woke up with nipples tingling, a pressure between my thighs, and nothing I did relieved it. Nothing was as good as the night Jaden had propped me against the wall over his shoulders and taken me.
I doubted anything would feel as good as that ever again.
And I hated Jaden for giving that to me, teasing me, weaseling his way into my life and Sophie’s heart, only to vanish just as quickly as he came.
“Hey.”
I closed my eyes, rubbed my fingers against my temple, before I focused on Callie.
I could easily tell them apart now. Two weeks of working in the salon, every day, and the three sisters no longer looked the same.
“Sorry, Callie.”
Her smile was wide and genuine, just like always. Callie’s smile was the widest out of the three of them, and always quickest to appear.
“You okay? You look like you were lost inside your head.” Her eyes lost their sparkle and I knew what she was thinking: Again.
“Yeah, I’m okay, just upset about losing that substitute job this week.”
Which was a lie, but Callie didn’t seem to notice. I hadn’t gotten a substitute job that I’d heard about from the gossip at Bella Salon. One of the elementary teachers said their fourth grade English teacher was going on a six-week maternity leave.
I’d called the school immediately, and been turned down.
I’d been pissed, mostly because I knew there was a cloud over me that came in the form of a Nordic Lords Viking skull and crossbones logo. Yet I’d been relieved, too.
I was starting to like the salon. The girls were fabulous. The pay was decent, enough for Sophie and me to live on. They loved Sophie. Sophie loved them. And no one cared if I took off early or brought Sophie in on nights the salon was open late.
It was perfect for me.
But I hated all the lying I was doing lately—lying to myself and to Sophie. Every lie that fell easily off my tongue ate a larger whole in my gut. I told myself it was necessary: Sophie didn’t need her heartbroken any more than Jaden had already managed to do, so I made my excuses of him being busy when she didn’t see him. Ignored the way she talked a
bout him as if the four hours they spent together at the garage were the most important four hours she’d ever had in her entire life. Maybe it was. More than once she’d mentioned how Jaden looked just like “picture daddy.”
My heart had shattered into a thousand jagged pieces when she put the two together.
I wanted to take each jagged, broken piece and shove it into Jaden’s chest so he would grasp the magnitude of the shit he’d pulled on her.
I was saved from having to explain myself further when the bell rang, and Callie’s next client walked in. I was even more thankful when the phone rang and I got out of my own head.
“Bella Salon, this is Jules, how can I help you?” I greeted the caller in the perkiest voice I could muster.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I was met with silence. But it wasn’t just silence; a thick, steady breathing came through the phone.
My grip tightened on the phone and I frowned. “Hello?”
“Oh, Jules, this is too easy.”
The prickles on my neck traveled down my spine and arms. Every hair on my body stood on end. The low, calm laugh rumbled through the phone until I thought I was going to vomit.
Then the phone disconnected.
Rob.
Damn it. My whole body shuddered and I dropped the phone. My knees went shaky and weak and I fell back into the counter behind me.
“Jules? You okay?”
I looked up, saw Cammie watching me with narrowed eyes. Concerned eyes. God.
Oxygen left my lungs in a heavy breath. I couldn’t suck it back in. My lungs stopped working, my vision blurred, and I shook my head.
“I need Sophie,” I said, and collapsed to my knees.
I heard the chaos around me, but I was lost inside myself as I tried gasping for breath.
Because it was Rob. And he not only found my new cell phone, but he knew exactly where I was and where I worked. And how in the hell could he have eyes on me when he was all the way in Phoenix?
“Oh God,” I muttered, and dropped my head into my hands. I willed myself to get moving, and with shaking hands I found my cell phone. It took three tries for me to unlock my phone before Cassie sidled up next to me and pressed a warm washcloth to my forehead. “Callie went to get Sophie. We’ll bring her here.”
I shook my head. That wouldn’t work. If Rob had eyes on me, he could have eyes on Sophie.
“I have to go.” I stood up, frantically dug through my purse for my keys when Cassie squeezed my arms. “I have to call Daemon.”
I needed the men. They’d know how to find Rob.
Cassie squeezed my arm. “Okay, I’ll do that.”
I heard her on the phone muttering something, and by the time she hung up I had my keys in my hand and my breath breathing at marathon speed, but I could walk. Hopefully I could drive.
“Liv?”
Cassie bit her tongue. “Um, no. Daemon answered.”
I nodded. “Better, then. I’m sorry, but I need to go.”
“Jules,” she said, gripping my wrist. “Callie’s on her way to get Sophie. Take a minute and sit down. Relax. You want to be calm when they get back here and wait for Daemon and whoever else comes with them. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
I shook my head. The words wouldn’t come, because I hadn’t told anyone about Rob besides my parents.
Rob sounded different. He sounded pleased. His greasy, slick voice had chuckled with pleasure. He hadn’t been tightly wound and threatening, like the times I’d picked up before when he’d called.
Today… his voice had been smooth. Confident.
Full of victory.
“Oh God.” The floor fell from beneath my feet. I stared at Cassie, her eyes wide with fear. It in no way matched the terror rolling through me. “He’s got her.”
“Jaden! Fuckin’ bike! Now!”
I snapped my head up from under the hood of the ’78 Camaro I was working on. She was a work of art: all original interior with new, slick black paint job. The engine was still shit, but another week and my brothers in the club and I would have it back to running perfectly.
“Finn!” he shouted, and waved his hands toward every other club member who was in the parking lot, hanging out by the boxing ring. Six men snapped their heads toward their Prez. We all moved instantly. “Let’s go!”
Daemon’s loud insistence had me moving without thinking. When a brother—especially the President—yelled like that, you did what you were told.
“What is it?” I asked as we climbed on our bikes.
“Jules and Sophie.”
He speared me with a glance, told me in completely unspoken words as we peeled out of the garage what a dumbass I’d been being for the last two weeks.
It was his fuckin’ fault—throwing the daddy word at my feet to get a rise out of me.
The only thing that had swelled that day was the black eye I’d given him in the ring.
But the pounding I’d taken in return hadn’t stopped that word from taking up residence in my head: Dad. Daddy. Father. Responsible.
That wasn’t me. It had been Scratch. And Sophie would always be his. Even if he never saw her, she wasn’t mine. Would never be. Just like Jules would never belong to me.
They’d both always be Scratch’s. He had them first.
He’d been the one to deserve them. I was just walking away before any more damage was done.
It was the smart thing.
Why I still felt like shit for it, I had no idea.
We rolled through town, the deafening rumble of ten bikes catching everyone’s attention.
Everyone’s attention except for the blonde on the sidewalk, who was running, arms flailing, as she waved us down in the middle of the damn street.
Daemon stopped, the rest of us taking our cue.
“It’s Jules,” the blonde panted. She didn’t seem to notice that her waist-long hair was tangled around her neck and shoulders and down her arms. “She’s freaking out. Said something about how he’s got her.”
“He?” Daemon asked.
Fuck!
“Where is she?” I growled.
The blonde pointed down the street. “At the salon, waiting for you guys. But my sister Callie just got to the daycare and…”
Her voice trailed off. Fuck. Sophie.
He has her. Rob. That douche of an ex-boyfriend? How in the fuck had he shown up in town without anyone noticing?
I didn’t wait for instruction. I revved my engine and pulled out and around Daemon and the blonde, breathing a sigh of relief as I heard the bikes behind me doing the same thing.
“Where is she?” I demanded, pushing open the door to the salon. I hadn’t taken off my sunglasses and everyone stared at me.
A blonde—a mirror image… fuck, two of them?—looked at me with wide eyes and I snapped. “Where the fuck is Jules?”
Her mouth dropped open but she slowly pointed. “In the back, my sister’s getting her some water.”
I nodded, kept moving as I heard the door behind me open and the stomp of familiar booted feet enter behind me.
“Holy crap,” the girl muttered. Scared or in awe, I had no idea. We could be a lot to handle.
But I didn’t stop moving until I pushed through the back door and saw Jules sitting at the table.
Her back straightened and she jumped to her feet as soon as she saw me.
She looked white, white as the walls behind her, and her eyes darted to someone on the other side of the room.
Her back was to me, but damn… I took in the long blond hair and then she turned. Fuck. Three of them? I’d just met three beautiful, identical-looking triplets in the span of minutes. Typically, my dick would be thinking for me at the endless possibilities in that type of scenario.
Instead, I focused back on Jules.
“Rob?” I growled.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “He’s got her. I know it. He called and laughed, said something about it being easy and I just… I don�
��t know what happened.”
“My sister Callie went to the daycare to get Sophie and bring her to the salon. Jules said something about calling Liv, but when I did, Daemon answered.”
Which explained his rage.
“We just saw Callie, Jules.” I took a step toward her, stopped when I saw her shoulders tighten as I got close. God, I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. I looked to the blonde, who gasped and instantly covered her mouth. “Sophie’s gone.”
The most pained sound I could ever experience filled the room as Jules’s knees buckled. I rushed forward and grabbed her right before she hit the floor.
My knees sank to the floor beneath her weight as she collapsed into me, and I pulled her into my lap, shifting so my back was against the wall.
Her hands curled into fists and she beat me. She cried out in such a way that I felt the walls rattle from the sheer intensity of her anguished moans filling the air.
The blonde across me from sniffed. “Sophie?”
I met her questioning eyes as my hands went to the back of Jules’s head. I couldn’t help it. Her fists had given up using me as a punching bag and were now wrapped around my back. I pulled her head to my chest, feeling every sob, every pained groan escape her lips. My shirt was drenched with her tears, but I tightened my grip on her.
“We’ll find her.”
It was a fucking promise.
That asshole—whoever had taken Sophie—would bleed.
Chief Garrison sat across the table from Jules and me. She hadn’t moved from my lap since I’d picked her up, and I had no idea how long ago that was. I wasn’t in a hurry to get her off my lap, either.
She felt right.
Her eyes stared at the chief blankly as he wrote on a small notepad.
“Anything else you can tell us, Miss McAllister?”
“Jules,” she said. Her voice was raw, barely audible.
My hand tightened its grip on her waist. I could feel her patience wearing thin with the overweight cop asking her questions over and over.
That, and she’d already told him four times to call her Jules.