“Stop waffling and just tell me. You make it worse if you drag it out.” His woman snipped at him.
Drawing her hand to his mouth he kissed her knuckles then held on to it with both hands. “When I was sixteen I got involved with an older woman. She was a hangaround at the club and I was so damned cocky that she was hung up on me. My mum caught me fucking her a week after my seventeenth birthday and lost her mind. She had her thrown out and immediately had me transferred to Cape Town. I didn’t care because the woman hadn’t meant anything other than bragging rights with my friends and a learning experience. I didn’t give her another thought until today, when I found out that there’s a possibility she had my son and never told me about him.”
His woman’s mouth hung open in shock. “You’re telling me there’s a man out there who says he’s your son?”
War nodded slowly then withdrew a hand and slipped his phone from his pocket. One handed he opened it, found the photos and gave the phone to his wife. Withdrawing her hand from his she held the phone in both hands and stared at the photos. Flicking through them several times.
“How old is he?” She asked softly.
“He says he’s thirty eight. He was born on the 15th of August 1982.”
“What about his mother? What happened to her and why didn’t she tell you?”
War immediately became pissed off again. “She married my half-brother and told him Nathan was his. She didn’t tell the boy who his father was until yesterday. The man is shocked and relieved if I read him right.”
Marcia sat up with a loud curse and his woman didn’t curse, not ever. “The fucking bitch! Anyone with eyes can see this boy is yours. The eyes, the hair even the shape of his face, it’s all yours.”
“I’ve asked for a DNA test so we have proof that he’s mine. I’m going to need the test when I take this to my brothers and acknowledge him as my son.”
“What about Rock and Keeley? When are we going to tell them? They have to be told before you tell the club, Cam. They have a right to be the first to know.”
She still held his phone and every now and then she would glance down at the photo that had captured her attention the most. A close up head shot of Nathan Warne.
Fuck that! He was Nathan Knight and War was going to bring it up with him as soon as he had that fucking DNA test in his hand. He wanted his son to carry his name, not the name of that piece of shit half-brother of his.
“We’ll call the kids in and tell them over dinner as soon as the results come in. Hawk assured me it would be done as soon as they had my DNA. Okay?”
Nodding in agreement she reached up and pulled his head down to hers and kissed him softly then pulled away a little. “Do you think he will move to Cape Town to be close to us if the DNA test confirms that he’s yours?”
War shook his head sadly. “No, baby, he rides with the Iron Dogz MC and he’s their SAA. His loyalty will be with his president and his club as it should be.”
“But...but if he’s our son and he patches over he’ll have a chance to be Rock’s VP when the time comes. He will never get that chance with the Iron Dogz. Everyone knows their club works just like ours. The gavel is always handed over to family. If not the eldest son then the eldest nephew of the current president.”
War smiled and pointed at his phone. “Look at that photo, Marcia, really look at it. That man would never serve under Rock. He’s much harder and deadlier than our son and I think it’s because of the way he grew up. And baby, like Rock, he grew up in his club. Those men are his brothers, and he would never walk away from them or his club.”
Her shoulders slumped and she pouted. “I thought I was going to have another son to spoil. Joburg is so far away.”
“Not really, baby. It’s a few hours on a plane, we can visit him and he can visit us, easily.”
She was still pouting as she looked down at the photo. “He looks so alone, even standing next to his friends he’s somehow removed from them. Does he have an old lady and children? Are we grandparents?”
Again he shook his head. “No sweetheart, he’s cold and bitter and says an old lady and children aren’t in his future.”
He saw the determined glitter in his old lady’s eyes and hid his smile. She was going to give their new son even more grey hairs than he already had.
CHAPTER FOUR
Noelle - Aged Four
The shouting and screaming woke me up and I slid out of bed and ran to my big sissie’s room. She had the duvet pulled up to her chin and lifted it for me to slide in. I snuggled into her side and we both jumped when we heard a thump and glass breaking.
“I’m scared.” I whispered.
“Shh, if we’re very quiet they won’t know we’re awake. Close your eyes and pretend we’re at the Two Oceans Aquarium looking at the fish. Can you see them? All those pretty fishies?”
“Nooo.” I moaned softly. “I’m too scared. I want Mummy.”
“They’re fighting again, Noey. Daddy sounds like he’s very angry and if we go down there he’ll smack us.” Rentia whispered and I started shaking because my big sissie was scared and shaking too. Our daddy was scary when he was angry and his smacks hurt, a lot.
There was a loud sound and a thump and Mummy stopped shouting. We lay on our sides with our backs to the door and pretended to be asleep when we heard the heavy footsteps on the stairs. He was coming to check on us. He always did once they stopped fighting.
Mummy always had a bad headache the next day and stayed in their room.
Sometime after Daddy had checked on us we fell asleep and were woken up by him shaking our shoulders. He had a big smile on his face and didn’t look angry at all.
“Time to get up my pretty girls. Your mummy has gone to visit a friend for a little while. She’s sorry she had to leave before seeing you but her friend is very sick and needs her.”
We waited for Mummy to come home but she never did.
Noelle - Aged Nineteen
The banging on my front door dragged me out of sleep and I groaned at the pain and fuzziness in my head as I tried to force my eyelids open. My eyes felt crusty and wrong and I tried to blink only to find that whatever was crusted over them was sticking to my eyelashes and keeping my eyes from opening completely. What the hell? Did I somehow get pink eye overnight?
Reaching out I realised I was alone in bed, where was Olaf?
“Olaf!” I cried out for my lover and bodyguard but he didn’t answer.
I had to somehow get the stickiness off my eyes.
Swiping at my eyes had pain slamming into me but I forced them open and sat up. I couldn’t stop the scream from escaping when I saw the state of my bed. Blood had dried in dark crusty patches all over my white duvet. I kicked it away from me in a panic only to realise that there was blood on the dark blue jeans and white t-shirt I was wearing. The banging on my door became like a far off thunder as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing through the pain radiating through me. Holding my hands out in front of me I stared in confusion at the dried blood that was stuck between my fingers and caked under my fingernails. My breathing was choppy and loud as I gingerly touched my cheeks and realised that it must be blood that was stuck over my eyes and face. My face hurt when I touched it and I yanked my hands away.
What had happened to me? And why was I in bed wearing clothes that weren’t mine? Where was Olaf?
My head and face ached and when I gingerly touched my forehead I felt crusted blood.
What was going on? Why couldn’t I remember?
I was still sitting there staring at my hands and my bed in confusion when the pigs rushed into my bedroom. A whole troop of them, brandishing guns and shouting at me. I was in such a haze I didn’t understand a word they shouted at me. I just sat there, staring at them.
It turned into a scene from a b-grade movie.
I was ripped out of my bed and thrown on the floor. My face hit the wooden floor with a loud clunk, blood splattered around me and I screamed in agony. I moane
d in pain as one of the pigs pinned me down with a knee between my shoulders and a hand grinding my head into the floor while another zip tied my wrists. I was dragged out of my flat with blood running freely down my face and roughly shoved into the back of an aapkas (police van). With my hands zip tied behind my back I couldn’t stop myself from falling and hit the steel bottom with a loud thud. The bastards laughed as if it was a big joke. The joke was on them, because when I manoeuvred myself upright I shook my head and blood flew out in a wide arc and splattered all over the back of the van. The assholes would have to clean it before going off shift.
I ached all over but refused to show the watching pigs and onlookers even one second of discomfort. I had been well trained to keep my mouth shut and wait for the lawyer.
I sat on my ass in the back of the van staring out of the small welded mesh windows at the bullshit going on outside. Blood ran freely down my face but no one gave a shit about it. Looking around I noticed one of my neighbours with her phone out, recording the entire mess. The pigs didn’t notice her, they were too busy ripping my flat apart looking for evidence of whatever crime I was supposed to have committed. They wouldn’t find anything because I wasn’t stupid. There was nothing in my flat that would connect me to my job, unless they planted shit. And that was a very real possibility.
Sitting on the cold steel in the back of the van I tried to put together what I could remember of the day before. Something had happened to me and I needed to remember what that something was. My life depended on it. Hopefully the answer to the blank spots in my memory was in my head somewhere. I just had to find it.
I silently ticked off my memories of the previous day.
I remember spending the morning with my sister and having lunch with her and her fiancé. I left at about four to meet with my dad. Rentia begged me not to go, to stay away from him but I didn’t listen. I wanted to try and smooth over the mess I had made of my last job plus I had to try and explain about Olaf. He was furiously angry with me for walking away from the job and not doing as I was ordered to do. They had lost their target because of me.
Just thinking about that job had me once again shivering in horror.
Two weeks ago my father had sent me to liberate (okay, for the sake of honesty, steal) a package and deliver it to the warehouse where he did most of his business. I’ve done similar jobs so many times before I didn’t give it a second thought. It was just another job, nothing more. I had been doing jobs (stealing) for my dad since I was fourteen years old. My record was flawless and I was determined to keep it that way. But ever since I turned eighteen I had become super careful. If I got caught I would be tried as an adult and that was something I wanted to avoid like the plague.
I remember being so damned cocky as I slipped through the dark sleeping house to where the package was supposed to be. The fancy alarm system hadn’t given me any trouble at all.
The blueprint I had of the house said I was about to walk into a study with a computer or a laptop and files and shit.
And that’s when everything went completely pear shaped.
It wasn’t a study like the blueprints said.
It was a baby girl’s room. She was sleeping peacefully in her little princess bed. One look into that pale pink room and I knew she was loved. With my heart beating furiously I silently stepped into the room, closed the door behind me and let my small flashlight glide over the white rocking chair, the white and pink toy chest and fluffy toys stacked in a basket in one corner. I silently opened the cupboard and one glance assured me there was no damned package in there. Nothing in the room jumped out at me, and then my flashlight caught the white framed photo of her parents above her bed.
Every single hair on my body stood straight up and an icy shiver slid down my spine. Shocked and horrified I stared at the handsome man whose hands were possessively clasped over the very pregnant belly of a smiling pretty woman. My breathing hitched as I glanced down at the little girl in her princess bed and back at the photo.
The man in the photo was her daddy and he was what was known as a top cop. A man feared by all criminals. Once he took on a case he didn’t give up until he had those responsible locked behind bars. He had been transferred to the gang unit and was heading up an investigation into the organisation my dad worked for. That I worked for. As far as I knew they had nothing on the organisation, yet. But what if they did and that’s why I was sent here?
No. No, no, no, no. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t send me to do something like this. I tried to convince myself but it didn’t work. This was evil, so very evil.
I was in the house he had sent me to. I was in the room where he said I would find the package. I had the big duffle he said I would need to transport the package. He said the package wouldn’t give me any trouble.
I had smirked and told him they never did.
God! If only I had known what I had been sent to steal I would never have taken the job.
If I took this child what would happen to her? Would they give her back to her family after they got what they wanted from her father? I couldn’t see that happening. That meant they would make her disappear.
Shaking my head I backed away from the peacefully sleeping little girl.
Oh God.
I couldn’t do it. My soul had enough darkness smeared all over it. Doing this would mean crossing a line I hadn’t even known existed for me. Yes, I stole shit for a living, but I did not steal children.
My dad, a man I looked up to and worked for, had put me in this position. Was it a test? Was it a test to see if I had the balls to rise in the organisation?
If it was a test then I had just failed spectacularly.
I took a big step back from the bed and half turned away but then I looked back at the little dark haired bundle in the bed.
I shouldn’t have looked back, because my conscience started screaming at me to warn them. To warn this man who would lock me up and throw away the key if he found me in his baby girl’s room. But, if I didn’t she would be taken and used to blackmail her father into betraying everything he believed in and stood for. I didn’t really give a damn about him. But that little girl...I cared about her.
If he refused to co-operate, which let’s face it he would, and instead used his unit to try and find her, she would disappear never to be seen again. Maybe they would kill her as a lesson to the pigs but I didn’t think that’s what the nasty bitch would do. She would sell her to the highest bidder. She was that evil and twisted. And now I knew my dad was the same.
Seeing the chalkboard propped up on the little easel I didn’t hesitate. I wrote him a message then put the easel at the bottom of the princess bed. That way he couldn’t miss it when he checked the noise that was going to wake him.
I’m walking away. The next one they send won’t. Protect your family. Today!!!
Before I left I stuffed the duffle with a big teddy and some clothes just in case my father had someone watching me. I needed to give the cop time to secure his family.
I slammed the back door closed, then ran to my car and drove towards the warehouse. When I was sure I didn’t have a tail I headed to a rubbish dump and threw the duffle out and drove away. Then I went home and cried on Olaf’s shoulder while telling him everything, and he told me not to worry, that he’d sort it with my dad.
A few hours later, against Olaf’s advice, I gathered my courage and called my dad.
“I didn’t do it.”
He didn’t say a word and his silence had my damned knees shaking.
I shut my phone down and sat on my couch with my head in my hands. I knew I would be punished but I had no idea what form that punishment would take.
And now I was here, covered in blood and with no idea if it was all mine or if I had someone else’s blood on me.
Rubbing the left side of my face against my shoulder to try and clear some of the blood off I whimpered in pain and stopped immediately. Closing my eyes I concentrated on trying to figure out what had happe
ned to me.
Disregarding Rentia’s fear of our dad I went and saw him to try and explain. He was so damned angry and then he became strangely calm.
“You put all of us in jeopardy with your refusal to do your job. I can’t help you to get out of this. And starting an affair with your bodyguard? What the hell were you thinking? You will have to take the punishment she decides on. Keep your head down and your mouth shut when the time comes.” He looked at me for what felt like the longest time then closed his eyes and sighed.
“Let’s have some tea and forget about this shit for a while.”
I remember the tea. I remember drinking it. I remember feeling weird and then nothing.
Not. A. Damned. Thing.
He roofied me. My dad, the man I trusted with my life had betrayed me.
They had done something last night and planted me in the middle of it.
Every now and then there were flashes as if from a horror movie of blood and screaming. And Olaf hanging suspended by chains, blood slowly dripping into a huge pool underneath his feet. Me screaming his name. His blue eyes staring at me before they went blank.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. What did it mean? Was it real or my imagination?
It couldn’t be real. Olaf was one of my dad’s most trusted men, he would never kill him. Would he?
I was absolutely and completely fucked. I didn’t like swearing but there was no other word for it.
Hours later, still covered in blood but no longer wearing my bloody clothes, I sat chained to a steel table in the interrogation room.
A tech had been in and had taken swabs of the blood on my hands and face and for some reason she had drawn my blood. If they were going to railroad me my blood would prove I had been roofied, they couldn’t have that. Unless...unless the sample was going to be tampered with. She took my clothes and gave me an overall to wear, a prison overall. She was horrified about the state of my facial wounds and tried to get me treatment but it was refused.
Neither Black Nor White (Iron Dogz MC, #6) Page 5