Satan’s Devils MC -Colorado Box Set: Books 4-6

by Mellett, Manda

  “Yes,” I insist. “She’s five months pregnant with your husband’s baby. It’s a boy. Your little girl will have a brother.” She won’t. I won’t let my kid anywhere near hers. But hell, I’ll lay it on as thick as I need to. “What about her, Clare? What about the innocent woman he used and discarded? What about her?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Melissa

  So intent on questioning the woman sitting on a chair, the men haven’t noticed me. I’ve got a wall of leather to hide behind as the men crowd around the woman. While I can’t see, I can hear every word. Skull’s married? With a child? I stuff my hand in my mouth to stop a gasp escaping, while every syllable causes a sharp pain as though knives are piercing my heart.

  An undercover cop? I was shacked up with a man who presumably wanted to bring the club down. That was the only reason he’d joined it. Everything he’d ever said to me, and to them, must have been a lie.

  I can’t hold back any longer, and I scream out three words, “What about me?”

  The men blocking my view of her, part. No one makes any attempt to prevent me stepping forward, my hands huddled across my stomach as though protecting my baby bump. No one lifts a finger as I walk straight up to the woman in the chair.

  “What about me?” I scream again, spittle landing on her face.

  She makes the connection easily, her eyes flicking to my face then my stomach. A myriad of expressions appear on her features, anger, disbelief, sadness. It’s hard to predict what she’s going to say.

  Finally, she settles on denial. “I don’t believe you. The baby can’t be his.”

  “You don’t believe me?” I scoff. “Well, in about four and a half months I’ll have proof. Do you know what it’s like, Clare, to be in love with a man you then find out doesn’t exist? To mourn the death of a man who’s still alive? To be carrying the baby who came into being through falsehood and deceit? Can you even begin to imagine it?”

  She focuses on my eyes, as though trying to find something she can use to disbelieve me, but I know my expression is telegraphing pain and hurt.

  “If what you’re saying is true, you’re right, I can’t begin to imagine it,” she says at last. “But if what you say is the truth…” She swallows. “I don’t know,” her voice drops to a whisper. “It was his job… Maybe he had to…”

  “Job?” I rasp back, interrupting. “I was part of his job?”

  But it’s the explanation I’ve been wanting, even though never dreaming I was nothing more than someone he was using. Of course he walked away without a backward glance, I never meant anything to him. I look at her, ignoring her tear-streaked face, and analyse what I’m seeing. She’s pretty with high cheekbones, generous lips and her body? Well, she’s slim and has certainly regained her pre-pregnancy weight. Unlike me, who, I suspect, will never lose it. Why would he want me, when he had her?

  “This hurts me too.”

  Four words, but spoken with such anguish, through my own distress I suddenly spare some measure of compassion for her. I’m the living, breathing evidence of her husband’s betrayal. Could she forgive him? I can’t, and if I was in her shoes, couldn’t.

  “He’s married. I feel sorry for you, but he was mine first.” Her mouth twists as she thinks of the practicalities. “Of course, if it’s a question of support we can discuss…”

  “No fuckin’ thing to discuss,” Pyro roars, then comes to stand behind me, his palms gently resting on my upper arms. “You don’t need to be here, Mel.”

  But I do. I can’t take my eyes off the woman Skull clearly prefers to me. He married her, put a ring on her finger, fathered a child with her. No wonder he didn’t want one with me.

  I glance down to where my hands still protectively rest over my stomach. “This is his fault, he forgot to use a condom.” Suddenly it’s important she understands. “I’d have never gone with him, would have turned him down when he wanted to date me if I’d known he had a wife and child. I’m not that woman.” Pyro’s hands tighten slightly as if confirming he knows that. “I would never go with a cheating man.”

  “Don doesn’t cheat.” But she has the grace to look sheepish, and her cheeks are glowing red.

  I suspect it’s dawning on her that she’s been played too. Did he promise he’d be faithful? Did he tell her there’d be no one else?

  “I don’t believe you,” she suddenly spits out. “Don’s faithful to me. He promised he would be… I don’t know why you’re saying all this, but it has to be lies.”

  Whatever justification or defence she was going to offer goes unsaid as she’s interrupted by a noise at the door. Bodies part again, this time to let Skull through. Ignoring everyone else, he runs straight to the woman on the chair.

  “Clare, oh my God, Clare. What have they done to you?” He’s examining her, running his hands over her as if to see whether she’s been hurt.

  “Red, Crash? A word?”

  I ignore whoever it is that’s called the prez and VP away. My eyes instead focus on the man I haven’t seen for almost four months. I can’t look away. It’s strange, there are little differences about him. His voice seems deeper, older somehow, and his bearing is different. It had been hard to believe he was even the age that he’d told me, now he seems to have grown into his years. There’s a new confidence about him. Even though he’s surrounded and in the proverbial lion’s den, he’s self-confident and poised as if it’s the other men who should be the ones unsure.

  “Let her go,” he states in a voice full of authority. “She’s not part of this. She knows nothing.”

  “Oh, I think we’ll be extending our hospitality to Clare a little longer.” Pyro steps away from me.

  Red reappears. He doesn’t bother to lower his voice. “Skull, here, brought company. Cops. They’re outside the gates. His insurance policy to make sure he, and she, walk out unscathed.”

  Pyro gives a bellow of fury. He stomps across the room and smashes his fist into a wall. I suspect he’s wishing it was Skull’s face instead. He turns, nursing his hand.

  “You brought the fuckin’ heat?”

  Skull jerks his head in a back and upward motion. “They’re waiting out front to make sure both of us walk out unhurt.” His voice deepens further, he becomes a man more used to giving orders than taking them. “You lay one hand on me, you go to prison for assaulting a cop. I don’t walk out of here? They’ll take you all down.”

  Pyro’s voice is full of fury. “You were undercover all this time?”

  Skull doesn’t bother to nod.

  “You were trying to dig up dirt on us?”

  Again Skull stays quiet and says nothing in response to Pyro’s question. But I know Pyro’s right. There’s only one reason a cop would go undercover and infiltrate a club. To bring them down.

  Did he find anything? Should I be worried Pyro’s going to be arrested? Has Pyro done anything wrong? But four months have passed. Surely, if anything was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Did he leave as he hadn’t found anything?

  Red steps forward and demands, “You working for the cops or the feds?”

  Again, Skull stares back impassively.

  “Why did you disappear?” I cry out. The tone of my voice gets Red looking at Pyro with narrowed eyes. It’s like he’s warning him.

  This time, Skull does answer. He shrugs and, giving me a look with none of the heated emotion I used to see on his face, replies coldly and succinctly, “Job done.”

  I stare in disbelief at the man I thought I had loved, feeling only hatred for him now. It’s my turn to speak, and no one’s going to stop me.

  I can’t stop my voice shaking, or sounding more like a wail. “What about me, Skull? How could you do that to me?”

  His lips narrow, but he utters a lame and inadequate apology, “Sorry, Mel.”

  “You wanted a woman to fuck while you got your information, so you picked on me.”

  Clare gasps as I put it so bluntly.

  “It wasn’t
like that.” Skull looks at his wife and puts his hand on her shoulder.

  “If it wasn’t like that, if you loved me, then you would have told me about your wife, left her and stayed with me.” Not that I’d want him under those circumstances, but it would have showed he cared. Wouldn’t have left me feeling so used.

  He looks up and gives it to me straight. “Look, I couldn’t, Mel. I’m sorry. I love my wife, and could never leave her.”

  “If you love your wife, why did you betray her with me?” The wheels are turning rapidly inside my brain. What if he had been single? Would it have turned out differently? Would he have told me who he was and have taken me with him?

  I’m an honest person, my civilian life more aligned with his real career than his biker persona. If Skull had talked to me, I might not have liked the fact he’d been living a lie, but I wouldn’t have been upset to know I was dating a lawman. That he’d run with a one-percenter club was one of the reasons I’d been reluctant to get into a relationship with him in the first place.

  But then, after I’d met the club, met Demon, Violet, all the women and men… My eyes flit to Pyro as I wonder, could I really have played an active role in bringing the club down? Seeing all the people I’d come to love and respect hauled off to jail.

  But all that assumes Skull had any feelings for me. I have to accept, he has none now, and had none then. Skull had used me. I still don’t understand the reason.

  “Why, Skull? Why did you drag me into whatever you were doing? Why?” I scramble for an answer. “Did you find me so irresistible you had to have me?” He couldn’t have. Else how would he have walked away without a backward glance? Another look at his wife shows me he had better at home. She’s far more the type of person suitable to be seen on his arm.

  But he clams up and I get no answer.

  I try again, my voice rising. “Do you have any idea of what it was like? I expected you to come home and you didn’t. I thought you were dead. Have you any idea of the distress you caused? Have you? You made me love you. Made me expect you were my future. I didn’t even want a relationship, yet you dragged me into it. Were you acting all the time? Was it all an act when we made love? Why, Skull? Why did you just leave?”

  Another shrug from the man in front of me. But this time he follows it up with words. “I’m sorry, Mel. I regret the upset that I caused you, but there was no other way than to make a clean break.” There’s a slight softening of his eyes, but it’s gone in a flash, so fast I think I must have imagined it. “My job had ended so I returned to my wife.”

  He can’t even say he was ever attracted to me. Nothing of our time together had been true.

  If Pyro hadn’t stepped up behind me, I might have fallen to the ground at that point. I’m shaking like a leaf blown by the wind and I need his touch to steady me.

  “Mel,” Pyro says, his voice thick with worry, “you don’t need to talk to this piece of shit anymore. Go upstairs, we’ll handle it.”

  Finding strength from somewhere, I shrug him off me. If I don’t get answers now, Skull will just walk away, and I’ll never get them.

  “Tell me, Skull, Kris, Don or whatever your name is. You said you loved me. Went out of your way to make me believe it. Claimed me in front of the club. You still haven’t told me why? There were sweet butts to fuck…”

  “You needed an old lady, didn’t you, Skull?” Perhaps Red, not involved, is better placed to put things into perspective. “From what I know of Mel, I can see she’s ideal material.”

  My eyes go to Red, then back to Skull. I can hardly breathe. My chest feels like there’s a weight on it crushing my ribs. “You needed an old lady? You picked me as you thought I would do? You never actually wanted me? You toyed with my emotions as though they were nothing. When you went that morning, Skull, when you never came back, you fucking destroyed me.” My voice, shaking, ends on a cry.

  He shifts awkwardly. “It was never my intention to hurt you, Mel. I know the way we work doesn’t look good to a civilian, but the club had to believe I was dead. I actually totalled my bike in one of the ravines, thought it would be found by now…”

  “Fuckin’ coward. You didn’t tell us you were leavin’ as you’d have had a beatdown,” Pyro snaps.

  I see spots swimming in front of my eyes and realise while his wife knows, it hasn’t been mentioned to him as yet. “I’m pregnant.” I move my hands, showing the small baby bump to him. “Pregnant. Almost twenty weeks, and it’s yours.”

  That gets him.

  Gets him good.

  He staggers back as if someone’s hit him. Next thing he knows, someone has. Pyro’s fist in his stomach has winded him.

  “I think your friends in that car would allow me that one,” Pyro growls. “When they hear what you fuckin’ did.”

  Gasping, Skull or whoever he is, slowly straightens. “For getting her pregnant I’ll give you that, for doing my job? Nah.”

  Clare’s been silent while I’ve been questioning Skull. I now risk a glance at her, her sharp inhale when her husband was punched had been audible. She looks worried, as if expecting more violence to follow, or, could it be, that’s she’s becoming disgusted with her pig of a man?

  The Devils can’t fight this battle. The cops waiting outside mean their hands are tied, or, at least, for now. But I can.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, advancing menacingly. “What is your real name?”

  He snaps his mouth shut.

  “Mel?” asks Pyro.

  “He’s going to fucking go down,” I swear at my man. “So, I need his real name to take him.”

  “Donavan Jordan,” Twister speaks for him. “That’s the name we found in his house.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” the man we now know is Don snarls at me. “I was doing a job. I didn’t do a crime. You don’t have a leg to stand on. Look, we’ll sort out something about support for the kid. If it’s really mine, I’m not going to deny my responsibility. We’ll need to talk about custody arrangements.”

  “You won’t be giving her a penny of your filthy money, and you won’t be having anything to do with the kid,” Pyro growls.

  “He won’t be seeing him from behind bars,” I threaten.

  “Whatcha saying, Mel?” Red asks.

  “He raped me. He misrepresented himself. If I’d known who he was, what he was doing, I’d never have given my consent. I didn’t give my body to a cop, I gave it to the biker he was pretending to be.”

  Red’s eyes gleam, as he turns to Jordan. “You were sanctioned to fuck for information?”

  Skull’s eyes widen. “What?” For the first time, his voice isn’t steady.

  But Red’s standing there with an eyebrow raised in challenge. When Skull doesn’t say more, he continues, “Your superiors know? Or is this something you did on your own? Did you want an old lady to get information, use her in some way to strengthen your acceptance into the club? Or did you just want a handy fuckin’ companion?”

  “Don?” his wife asks, almost hesitantly, as though she too wants clarification but is afraid of the answer.

  Suddenly he rounds on her. “Why, Clare? Why did you have to go back to the house? We’d have gotten away, been set up somewhere new. But you had to get that damn toy.”

  “Don’t put this on me,” she spits back. “We’re talking about this… woman here who says she’s carrying your baby. Is that true, Don? Is it really yours?”

  “Get out of here, Mel,” Pyro warns again. But I shake my head. I need to be here. I need this confrontation. I need to be able to make sense of what he’s done. So much worse than him being dead.

  It had all been a lie from the very first moment I set eyes on him. It was never me he wanted. He just picked me like an item he had on a list at a grocery store.

  “Your cut’s club property.” Red approaches him. “I want it back.”

  But the man I knew as Skull shakes his head. “It’s evidence.”

  “You’re building a fuckin�
�� case against us?” Pyro’s face is bright red.

  There’s a commotion in the room above. Shouts of “Put your hands up!” and another yell of, “Jordan, time’s up.”

  Skull jerks his head upward as if acknowledging the faceless voice. Then looks at Clare apologetically and belatedly answers her question with a demand to me, “I want a DNA test, Mel.”

  I think of all the things he’d said, that was the worst.

  I’m not the only one to think it.

  “You don’t trust her? You have the fuckin’ balls to question the woman you raped and impregnated?”

  “It wasn’t rape. She consented.”

  “I don’t fuckin’ think so,” puts in Red. Like Pyro, his face seems to be glowing, his freckles more pronounced. “We’re going to see you in court, fucker.”

  “Bikers taking a cop to court?” he scoffs. He turns to look at one of his colleagues, who’s bravely descended the stairs. “I’ve said all I’m going to, now I’m taking my wife and we’re both going to walk out of this compound. You’re going to do nothing to stop me.”

  “Not the last you’re going to hear about this,” Red warns him.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Clare’s taken her cue to stand. But she doesn’t walk to her man’s side, the man I had thought was mine. No, she stands just off to his left as if uncertain quite what to do.

  Skull/Kris Cox/Donavan Jordan beckons her to him, but her eyes widen, and her head moves side to side. I have to feel sympathy for her. How many times has her husband gone away for months or years at a time? Has she been able to contact him at all? Surely, she must worry? His life is at risk if his role was ever discovered. Now she’ll have to live with the thought he may be being unfaithful too. How can she live with that knowledge?

  That Skull could act like a biker and so successfully the Devils never suspected, again shows he’s not the man I thought I knew everything about.

  Had Clare ever suspected that he’d been unfaithful while he was doing his job? That he might have to be to keep up appearances? Surely, he could have come up with an excuse of why he didn’t want to go with a girl?