It takes a moment for his wording to sink in. “Left the baby?”
“She wheeled up the stroller. Didn’t look at the kid, didn’t say goodbye. Just exchanged a couple of words with a woman, then walked off leaving the baby and didn’t look back. Something’s off, Prez.”
There’s probably nothing strange. If I didn’t have so much respect for Dan, I’d have dismissed it as someone babysitting while Violet can look around the stores. But I do. Despite my earlier thought out of sheer frustration, Dan has proved he can think on his feet. If he reads there’s something wrong with the situation, there probably is. Or there could be an innocent reason.
“Prospect, tell me what you saw. The woman she left him with, she look like a friend?”
“Nah. That’s what’s got me, Prez. I considered friend, relative, sitter. What I’m seeing doesn’t match up. That’s why I’m following her now. Wills is trailing Violet. The bitch with the baby, well, she’s heading straight out of the mall. I’d place money this is no babysitting gig. They exchanged maybe two words. I’d say she’s passed the baby on to a stranger. You may think this is fanciful, Prez, but the way Violet walked off?”
Another pause while I chomp at the bit waiting for what I doubt I want to hear. In that he doesn’t disappoint. “She doesn’t expect to see her baby again.”
Jesus! My hand thumps down on the desk. I knew something was wrong. Fuck knows if I inherited Hell’s sixth sense or something. I hadn’t expected this, though. Violet’s given her baby away? There must be some explanation.
Thoughts run through my head fast.
She’s living with her parents. How can she return to them without the baby in tow? She had a suitcase. Was she not planning on coming back to Pueblo?
Is Dan right? Does a stranger have her baby? Whatever problems she has, surely the girl I knew would never give up her child. Not in suspicious circumstances like she has, pass her baby over in a mall and walk off? Thank fuck I had Dan on her, who knows what might have happened to little Theo if I hadn’t.
Dan might be wrong.
“Prospect, are you certain this isn’t right?”
“Sure as I can be, Prez. There was something about her expression when she left the kid. She’d walked past me, her eyes… Her eyes looked dead.”
My gut tells me he’s right to be concerned. “Prospect. Can you stop the woman? Question her.”
“Kid got a dad?”
“Not that I know of,” I admit.
“Okay. I’ll do it now. Call you in a minute.”
He breaks the connection. I sit staring at the phone, willing him to ring back and tell me he was mistaken; there’s nothing wrong at all. I rap my fingers against the desk, then do it again. The waiting is driving me crazy, all concentration to resume my attack on the mountain of paperwork gone.
The phone rings.
“She’s given the kid up for a private adoption.”
“What the fuck? You gotta stop her.” This is not right. Private adoption? What checks has Violet made? Bad things can happen to kids palmed off onto a stranger. Anyone can pretend to be someone else nowadays. Adoption can mean a kid disappears, and not always with the right people.
“I told her I was the kid’s father. Woman didn’t want to draw attention or make a fuss. She wasn’t happy, but walked off and left him with me. She’s gone.”
The woman walked off? Believed Dan’s crazy story without evidence? Hell, he’s done right getting the kid away from her. Dan will deserve his fucking patch for pulling this off. Now my concern is getting Theo safe. “What transport have you got, Prospect?”
“Wills and I came in the truck.”
I think fast. “You bring the kid back to the compound. Any news on Violet?”
“Wills is following her. She’s heading for the parking lot. You want him to bring her back, too?”
I do, and tell him so. She’s got a fuckload of questions to answer.
“I’ll call him. Wills can drive her back in her car and we’ll get his bike later.” Dan’s voice is cold. “What kind of woman fuckin’ gives a baby up, Prez?”
I have no fucking idea. One thing I do know, unless it turns out there’s a fucking good reason, she’s not getting him back. I grow cold at the thought of how easily Dan got him away from the person taking him. If it had been legit, the woman would have put up a fight.
I end the call. Canon City’s about forty-five minutes from here. In three-quarters of an hour I’ll have a woman, who I’m fast starting to despise, in the compound, along with an innocent kid who it seems she intended to dump. All my promises to Nathan have flown out the window. What did either of us know about Violet? She was sixteen when Nathan died; in the years since she must have hardened and become a bitch. I recall the way she all but ignored her child when I’d met her a couple of days back; I shouldn’t have dismissed those warnings. It’s clear now: she wasn’t simply pleased he was asleep, she’d wanted nothing to do with him.
Thoughts tumble through my head. My mom was raped. My brother stepped up, married her, and brought me up as his own. No suggestion of abandoning me to an unknown fate. Violet? Christ, she dumps her kid, seeming not to care what the fuck will become of him. She hadn’t looked back.
Calm, Demon. Calm. Mo’s situation is probably very different. Violet’s got no man to support her. Maybe the kid’s dad died and she can’t cope. Much as I don’t know the woman Violet’s grown into, I don’t know her circumstances, or what could have driven her to do something so drastic. Or perhaps she’s just taking an easy way out.
Her kid is Nathan’s nephew. My promise to look after his sister must extend to her child.
That day when I met her? I should have acted on what I felt wasn’t right. At least I’ve got a chance to step up now. She can’t look after him? Then there’s a right way of going about it, and what Violet’s done today is definitely wrong.
Forty minutes now. I’ve got to make plans for the baby when he arrives. Someone will have to watch over him. The sweet butts? Hell, no. They wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a kid. Mo? Nah, not fair. She and Hellfire have paid their dues and are now getting their life back on track. They don’t need to have a little one in tow.
I open my office door and bellow, “Pal?”
“Prez?”
When he’s close enough for me to use a more normal voice, I ask, “Jayden around?”
“Yeah, she’s with Jeannie in the kitchen. Whadya need, Prez?”
“She helped with the kids in Tucson, didn’t she? Wants to work with kids?”
Pal looks surprised at the topic, but responds, “Yeah, she’s planning on being a nanny.”
“She know babies?” I ask hopefully.
“Prez,” Pal smirks, “you know what the Tucson chapter’s like. Can’t move for falling over the little rugrats. Yeah, Jay’s great with babies.”
Thank fuck. “Got a job for you and her, Pal.” I fill him in, my voice loud with anger.
Childcare arrangements have been a snap to set up. Now my biggest problem is what to do about her. The bitch who appears to have left her child. Her five-month-old, helpless baby, unable to fend for himself.
My gut clenches at the thought of what could have happened to him had I not put Dan on her. He’d have disappeared, taken off by God knows who and fuck knows where while she’d have gone off in the other direction with her suitcase in hand, and no one would have been any the wiser.
“Calm down, Demon.” My father uses a parental tone he’s perfected over the years. It never fails to get my attention, and doesn’t do so now.
Having told Pal, and not too discreetly, word has gone around the clubhouse, sort of like Chinese whispers. Brothers might accuse women of gossiping, but in truth they’re as bad as, if not worse than, any of the bitches. The words ‘woman’ and ‘abandoned baby’, and that both being brought back are as much as any of them know. If I was in a better mood, I’d probably be amused at the two-and-two’s they were putting together.
/> Hell, though. He knows Violet. After I’ve given him more details, he exchanges them for advice. “Son, don’t leap before you know what’s going on. Even if she did leave the baby, there could be reasons. Post-partum depression, like I suggested. Don’t jump down her throat until you know what you’re dealing with.”
“Fuckin’ depression doesn’t make you abandon a kid, Hell.” I glare, my eyes half on him, and half on the clock where the minutes are ticking by far too fast.
“You think that? You don’t know the half of it, boy,” he yells, a bit like he’d done when I was a boy.
“Well?” I challenge. “Even a depressed woman would want her kid cared for. Dropped him off at a hospital or something. Not in the middle of a shopping mall with someone it appeared she didn’t even know.”
Hell looks like I’ve gone crazy. “And if she just couldn’t cope? It might have been planned for good reason. Babies can drive you up the wall. Screaming for nothing and no way to pacify them. It could have been to give her a temporary break, just a few hours of peace.”
“She had a suitcase with her,” I remind him, grimly. “She had no intention of going back.”
Hell stares at me; he’s not backing down. “All I’m asking is that you give her a chance to explain. Don’t immediately leap to the conclusion that she’s a bad mother.”
His reasonable tone is annoying me. Sure, I’ve painted her black as hell, but I can’t get my head around anyone leaving their kid like that. “You didn’t see her that day, Hell. I did. She didn’t want the kid; that was obvious.” As I go back over that morning, it’s becoming clearer to me by the minute.
He sighs. “So what are you intending to do, Demon?”
This is the bit I haven’t quite worked out. I’m left with ten minutes now. “Make damn sure she can’t hurt that kid again. Jay and Pal will be looking after him for now. See what’s happened to the father. Whoever he is, I doubt he’d be very happy his son was abandoned. Who knows, he could have been taken by a pedo.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, son. You don’t know that the father even knows he’s a dad.”
“’Bout time he found out then, and took over.”
All I know is I’m determined, unless Violet comes up with a good fucking explanation for her behaviour, she’s not going to have responsibility for him again. In my world you step up, not down.
It’s Hell’s turn to bang his fist on the desk. With twenty years of practice, he’s got the art down better than I. Papers leap and shift, I jump.
“Give her a fuckin’ chance, Demon. Listen.” He shakes his head. “You’ve been brought up to make decisions for the club. Sure, you stepped into that chair before it was time, but one thing you need to learn right now—you’re the fuckin’ prez. You decide what needs to be done. But this club ain’t one man. That’s why we vote. No one man has all the answers, and no good prez jumps into a course of action without knowing the facts first.”
“Facts are clear though, aren’t they? That kid’s at risk.”
“And if there isn’t a father in the picture? You intending on putting him in the system?”
“Kid’s got grandparents, hasn’t he?”
“Facts, Demon. Not suppositions. Facts. The things you don’t have at the moment.”
He’s got a point. “Mo didn’t give me up. Neither did you.”
Hell sighs deeply, then rubs at his temples. “I had an inkling that might be at the bottom of the way you’re reacting. Mo had me. I wanted Mo. Wanted you, too, from the moment I knew about you growing inside her. You were loved, Demon, from the fuckin’ start. But if Mo had been on her own?”
Yeah. I look down at my hands. My mom would have tried to get an abortion if Hell hadn’t been in the picture, and I wouldn’t have been here at all. At seventeen, with no job, parents who would have disowned her, she wouldn’t have had much choice.
“Sometimes it’s too much for a woman alone. Maybe a helping hand is what she needs. Not fire and brimstone.”
My mouth quirks slightly. “Or Hellfire and Demon.”
He closes his eyes briefly and nods. “I’ve got your back. Which is why I’m pushing you now. Thing is, I happen to agree with you. But I’m just saying you need to hear her out, okay? Listen, then decide what you need to do.”
The clock ticks mercilessly on. Talking to the man I still view as my father, his years giving weight to his words and experience, has at last calmed my temper some. While I have little doubt in my mind that Violet has proved herself to be an unfit mother, I at least have relented to the extent I will talk to her, see what her side of the story is, before making any decision that affects a child’s life.
Maybe if it hadn’t been for my background, the event of my conception coinciding with my rapist father being dispatched to meet Satan, I might have been inclined to turn everything over to the authorities from the beginning. Two things stop me. I’m the president of the Colorado chapter of the Satan’s Devils; we have no time for the citizen world. The other? Nathan, on his first tour overseas, had entrusted the care of his little sister to me. I’d clearly let both him and her down by assuming all was rosy in her world.
If she wanted to give up her kid, then that’s what I’d help her to do. But I’d do it my way and according to my rules.
As a baby’s high-pitched cry reaches us, Hellfire and I stand at the same time. He holds the door open. By the time I’ve stepped out, the baby is already being held in Jay’s clearly capable hands, and a pacifier placed in his mouth. Almost on Dan’s heels are Breezy and Tulia, who are coming in carrying bags. Immediately, equipment I’ve never seen before in my life is being placed upon the bar. Jay, baby competently snuggled in one arm, is examining what’s emerging from the bags as if ticking off a mental list. Stepping closer I see bottles, formula, and something which apparently is called a steriliser. Not that I could recognise it; I just read the label.
While I was debating with Hell, Jay’s obviously got down to the practicalities and has had the club girls go out to get what she knows she needs. I exchange a rueful grin with Hell, then chuckle as I see what the club girls are wearing, wondering what the kids’ store thought of that pair turning up, dressed more for twirling around a stripper pole than for taking care of a baby.
I then catch Liz’s eyes widening as he quickly turns away, seeing Breezy and Tulia fawning a little too much over the kid. Hmm. Think there’ll be more than one man doubling up on condoms tonight.
Violet will be here any minute. I want to keep her off-balance, at least until I know what’s going on. “Jay?” As she turns, I point to the kitchen. “Can you take the baby out of sight?”
“Sure, Demon.” With a nod, asking no questions, she does. We’d all had our doubts about her at first, mainly down to her tender age of seventeen. But we have none now. She’s turning out to have the makings of a great old lady.
Chapter Four
Demon
“Let me go! What are you doing? Who are you? Where have you brought me?” Violet’s shrill voice echoes around the clubroom which has gone silent as Wills brings her through the doorway. All eyes are on the woman who, as everyone knows, abandoned her baby.
I signal Dan. He nods. He goes over and takes her from the other prospect, leaving Wills free to come to me.
His face is grim. “She’s not once mentioned the baby. Not one fuckin’ word.”
“Did you ask her anything about him?”
“Thought you’d want to do that yourself. I, er, I had to restrain her, Prez. She was trying to jump out of the car.”
He’s right. I do want it to be me who asks her. I nod at his other comment too. I’d have been more surprised had she gone with someone she didn’t know calmly. I dismiss him. Our exchange has only taken a second, yet seems to have confirmed my worst suspicions. I gather the resolve to go over to her, this woman who no longer deserves to have a special place in my heart by virtue of being Nathan’s sister. She’s now the woman who I believe has let his memory
down. I wait a moment before approaching, analysing the glances being thrown her way. Some are scornful, some curious, some outright disgusted. Then I look over to see she’s managed to get free, turning and attempting to get out the door, only to be secured in the prospect’s strong, unyielding arms. Her hands, I notice, are zip-tied, and even across the distance between us, I see angry red welts have already appeared from her struggles.
Her pains are nothing to what her abandoned baby could face in his future, or, as far as she knows, could be suffering even now. Feeling no sympathy, I step forward, at last bringing myself into her line of sight.
She immediately stills. Her eyes widen in shock, then relief. “Oh, thank God! Dave!”
Her heartfelt cry makes me realise Wills, not knowing our relationship, probably didn’t see fit to enlighten her as to where she was being taken, or to whom. She may not have even realised she was in the company of a biker. The prospect, quite rightly, would not have been wearing his cut in a cage. But in light of her crime, the thought that for all she knew she was being kidnapped doesn’t worry me at all. One thought of her baby and what his future might have held has turned my heart to stone. Even if he had been cared for, it wouldn’t have been by his mother.
“Untie her hands, Prospect.”
“Dave!” As soon as she’s free, she throws herself at me. I stand, arms at my sides. After a second, I put my hands on her biceps and hold her at arm’s length. Her face, which had brightened at seeing what she believed was a friendly face, slowly pales. “Dave?” This time, my name is a question.
“We need to talk.”
I turn. I hope she’ll follow. If she doesn’t, one of the brothers will show her the way. Catching a view in the mirror above the bar, I see it’s Thunder and Mace who are encouraging her along. I lead her down the basement steps, unlocking the door at the bottom and stepping back to allow her to precede me inside.
She falters when her eyes fall on the workbenches scattered around, various tools laid out on their surfaces. Most belong to Mace, our enforcer. There’s a solitary chair in the middle of the room. As we were not expecting visitors, the customary plastic sheet is missing from beneath it. Whatever, it’s an unwelcoming space, and elicits my name from her lips again.
Satan's Devils MC Colorado Boxset 1 Books 1 - 3 Page 40