Riven Knight

by Devney Perry

  Dash came with Bryce to the cemetery. Draven followed.

  We had an awkward introduction, at best. Thankfully, Draven didn’t try to hug me or shake my hand. He waved, introduced himself as Draven and said, “Guess I’m your dad.”

  Then we stared at one another—until I couldn’t stand the sadness and regret in his gaze any longer and ran back to my car. He hadn’t attempted to contact me since.

  Draven cleared his throat and stepped closer.

  I inched toward Isaiah until my arm brushed his and I begged the universe for strength.

  “So? What’s the news?” Presley asked Dash.

  He looked down at Bryce and his smile was blinding. His face was so full of love it made my heart hurt. Never had I seen a man look at a woman that way.

  “We got engaged this morning.” Bryce held up her hand.

  I smiled, instantly delighted for my friend. She was marrying the love of her life. After our near-death experience, I was glad to see she and Dash weren’t taking life for granted. They deserved a happy day.

  And I wasn’t going to ruin any part of it with my lies.

  Isaiah was staring at Dash and Bryce, not paying me any attention. I nudged him with my elbow, mouthing no while shaking my head.

  Today was not the day to announce our marriage. I wouldn’t steal an ounce of Bryce’s joy.

  His eyebrows came together, so I mouthed no again. Understanding washed over his face and he nodded, tucking his left hand into his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Dash asked.

  “Huh?” My gaze whipped in his direction. “Oh, nothing. I’m just happy for you guys. Congrats.”

  “Thanks.” Bryce tucked herself into Dash’s side.

  “And . . . we’re having a kid,” Dash announced, practically floating.

  The group erupted in cheers. Draven crossed over and held out his hand. It took Dash a minute to shake it. Their tension was palpable. What was that about? Me?

  I felt like I had stepped into the middle of the story and was racing to catch up on all the chapters I’d missed. My list of unknowns was three times longer than my list of knowns.

  Draven was my father, but I had no idea how he’d known my mother. She’d come to Clifton Forge and been murdered. For weeks I’d thought Draven was her killer, but now I knew he was innocent. So who’d killed Mom? And why? Was it the same man who’d kidnapped me and Bryce?

  Would he come after us again?

  He’d have a hard time finding Bryce alone, given the way Dash hovered.

  She snuck away from his side, coming our way.

  I pulled her in for a hug. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” She beamed.

  “Happy for you guys,” Isaiah said.

  “Me too. So . . . how are things?” Bryce asked me. “Would you like to go to coffee one of these days? Catch up?”

  “That would be nice.” It would be much easier telling her about Isaiah and me over coffee than in a crowd. “I’m free any day next week. And the week after that. And the week after that. I’m still hunting for a job.”

  “What kind of job?” Draven appeared at Bryce’s side.

  I shied back a step. It was his eyes that unnerved me the most because I saw them in the mirror every morning. “I was a paralegal in Denver. I was hoping to find something with a lawyer but the firms in town aren’t hiring at the moment, so I’ve applied for other jobs, but most everything open is part-time.”

  He ran a hand over his salt and pepper beard. “I’ll give Jim a call.”

  “Jim?”

  “My lawyer.”

  Right. He had a lawyer because he was being prosecuted for my mother’s murder. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work for his attorney—that was hitting awfully close to home—but I simply said, “Thanks.”

  I wasn’t holding out hope. When Bryce and I went to coffee, I’d ask if they needed a new barista with no barista experience.

  A car door slammed, and all eyes turned to the parking lot. A car was parked in front of the first bay, and its driver was walking toward the office.

  “Guess that’s my cue to get back to work.” Presley hugged Dash again, smiled at Bryce and rushed for the office.

  “Better get back to it too.” Isaiah excused himself, going to the car directly behind us. He must have been working on it earlier because there was a pair of coveralls on the hood, identical to Emmett’s.

  He stepped into them, hiding his jeans and black T-shirt away. He zipped them up, then turned his back to us, bringing his hands together where we couldn’t see them, slipping off his ring.

  Isaiah shoved his hand into a pocket. “I’m going to—”

  “What did you just do?” Draven cut him off, pointing to Isaiah’s pocket. “What’s in there?”

  My heart dropped. The entire garage stilled as Draven’s bark echoed off the walls.

  “What’s in where?” Dash asked, walking closer.

  “There.” Draven pointed to Isaiah’s pocket again. “Did you just take off a ring?”

  I slid my hand behind my hip, but I wasn’t fast enough.

  Bryce’s eyes widened at me. “You got married?”

  I winced at the volume. “Yes.”

  “What? When? Why?” She fired the one-word questions like bullets. “You just met.”

  Isaiah and I had decided to tell people it was love at first sight. We’d acted on an impulse and were rolling with it. We both figured that the less we elaborated, the less likely someone would catch us in a lie.

  But even our simple explanation was hard to remember when I was being stared down by a star reporter, my long-lost father and a trio of bulky bikers.

  “We got married.” Isaiah came to my rescue, striding over to take my hand in his. He gripped it tight to hide the shaking in my fingers. “We connected. I asked Genevieve to move up here. She agreed. We decided not to mess around and just make it official.”

  “You’re married.” Bryce looked between the two of us, dumfounded.

  I pulled strength from Isaiah’s grip and found my voice. “We’re married.”

  “After meeting for one day?”

  “That’s right,” he answered.

  “No.” Draven huffed. “I’m not okay with this.”

  “Well, it’s not really your decision, is it?” I shot back.

  “You’re my daughter.”

  Anger and frustration were on constant simmer beneath my skin. Mom, her lies and secrets, had put me into this mess. She wasn’t here to bear the brunt of my resentment. Draven was the last parent standing, and if he wanted to act like my father, he’d get the force of my emotions.

  “Considering I met you three days ago, I’d hardly say that gives you a right to pull the father card.” The words were harsh, but I didn’t wish them back, even when he flinched.

  “Genevieve.” Bryce reached for my free hand. “What’s going on? I know the kidnapping was extreme, but this? This is extreme too. You guys hardly know each other.”

  “You and Dash are getting married and having a baby,” Isaiah said before I could respond. “And you met, what, six weeks ago? I think you know as well as we do, time doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re right.” Dash came to her side with Emmett and Leo flanking behind. “And it’s not our business.”

  Bryce crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. I’d seen that look before, when we’d been huddled together at the base of a tree as our kidnapper stood by with a gun.

  She’d been fierce about escaping. Just like she’d be fierce in finding out what was really happening with me and Isaiah. Nothing Dash or anyone said would change her mind.

  “Will you excuse us?” Bryce stepped forward, taking my elbow to haul me across the garage to a quiet corner.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Isaiah. He stood alone, facing Draven, Dash, Emmett and Leo. Four against one weren’t good odds but Isaiah wouldn’t break.

  We had too much riding on our secrets.

  “What is go
ing on?” Bryce hissed. “You guys have been acting strange all week. You go back to Denver, which I get. We got kidnapped, for Christ’s sake, and almost died. But then you show up here and move into Isaiah’s apartment without any explanation. Now you’re married?”

  I blew out a deep breath. “Something happened with me and Isaiah. He’s . . . special. I’ve never felt anything like this for another person in my entire life.”

  It was all truth. Or half-truth. Every word was a vague version of what had really happened. Maybe if I stuck to these half-truths, I’d be able to pull this show off.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  I was sweating. Why was it so hot in here? “Really.”

  Before Isaiah, I had never owed another person my life.

  “Are you sure it’s not like—I don’t know—post-traumatic stress from the kidnapping?”

  “He makes me feel safe.” It was another true statement—a full truth. “Right now, that’s what I need.”

  The single most terrifying moment of my life was when I’d been grabbed from behind in my motel room.

  I’d flown to Montana to visit Mom’s grave on a Saturday. I’d worked for Reggie that morning, then driven to the airport and boarded the plane with a heavy heart. I’d thought about canceling the trip a hundred times but needed to see Mom’s grave with my own eyes.

  I needed to know her body had found a place of peace.

  The flight to Bozeman arrived late and I checked into a motel near the airport, planning to rent a car the next morning and drive the two hours to Clifton Forge.

  Wearing black silk pajama pants and a strappy green sports bra underneath a long-sleeved white top, I left my room for two minutes to get a water from the vending machine, leaving the door to my room propped open by the deadbolt.

  When I returned, I locked myself in, thinking I was safe and alone. But a man cloaked in black stepped out of the bathroom and grabbed me by the hair. He pushed me to the floor and duct taped my hands behind my back. My bare feet were bound at the ankles. Then he hauled me over his shoulder and carried my writhing body to the parking lot, where he shoved me in the trunk of a car, right beside Bryce.

  The two of us cried in silence; the gags the man had wrapped around our heads kept us from screaming. He took us into the mountains and marched us into the woods. My feet had surrendered to countless bleeding cuts by the time we reached the cabin.

  But he didn’t take us into the cabin like I’d expected. Instead, he pushed us against a giant pine tree, where we sat in the dark, shivering and nearly hypothermic, terrified that we wouldn’t see another sunrise.

  As dawn encroached, he hauled me to my feet and cut the tape that bound me. He untied my gag. Then he forced me to hold an unloaded gun to Bryce’s temple while he snapped a few pictures.

  He bound me again, forgoing the gag, and was kind enough to remove Bryce’s too. That was when she told me about Draven—that he wasn’t Mom’s killer, but in fact, my father. He was being framed for Mom’s murder.

  In any other situation, I wouldn’t have believed her, but there against that tree, as death loomed over us, Bryce had no reason to lie.

  The next time the killer untied my hands, it was to hold the gun to Bryce’s temple again, only this time a bullet was loaded into the chamber.

  He planned to set me up for her murder, knowing Dash would take revenge in the form of my life.

  Instead, Dash had saved us. He’d saved me. Whether that was his intention or not, I was still grateful that he’d thwarted our kidnapper’s plan. All because Dash had come for Bryce.

  In a hail of gunfire, we ran for our lives—Bryce into the trees and me toward the cabin.

  I should have run the other way.

  “I know it seems crazy,” I told Bryce. “But this is the right thing for Isaiah and me.”

  “Then why was he sleeping at the motel?”

  Damn small-town gossip. I was going to have to remember that people around this town noticed everything.

  “We didn’t want to stay together until we were husband and wife. We, uh . . . didn’t have sex before the wedding.” Or after. As long as she didn’t dig too deep and find out that Isaiah had stayed there on our wedding night, we were safe.

  “So that’s it. You’re married and living above the garage.”

  I nodded. “That’s it.”

  “Hmm.” She frowned. “Have you talked to Draven since the cemetery?”

  “No.”

  “Well, buckle up.” Her gaze drifted over my shoulder. “Because here he comes, and he does not look happy.”

  Chapter Four

  Genevieve

  “I’d like to talk to you.” Draven didn’t ask, he demanded.

  I squared my shoulders and jutted my chin. Call it years missed of daughter-to-father defiance, but he wasn’t going to order me around.

  He held my stare for a long moment, then his face softened. Was he cracking a smile?

  “Is something funny?” I snapped.

  “You’ve got steel, girl.”

  No, I had pain.

  And at the moment, I was desperately trying to keep from adding more to the pile. I was clinging to this calm, collected façade, hoping it would keep people at arm’s length. Because if one more person hurt me, I might crumble to pieces.

  “What would you like to talk about?” I held my expression neutral. “Because if it’s about me and Isaiah, that is none of your business.”

  He frowned.

  I doubted many people told Draven to mind his own business. If not for the rage burning in my veins, I wouldn’t have had the guts to stand up to a man who held himself with such unwavering confidence and command.

  Every movement he made appeared deliberate. He didn’t fidget with his fingers, and his eyes didn’t wander. Except there was something different about how he stood with me as opposed to the others. He seemed . . . nervous. His anxiety clung to the air.

  If I wanted the upper hand, it was mine to take. Only, I needed him. I had questions and he was the man with answers.

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “Please.”

  “Fine,” I muttered, then turned to Bryce. “I’ll take you up on that coffee any time you’re free.”

  “That would be great.” She put her hand on my arm for a brief moment, then left me and Draven alone. She was about five steps away when she stopped and glanced back. “Congratulations on your marriage.”

  I smiled. “Congratulations to you too.”

  When she rejoined Dash, he cast Draven and me a flat glare, then dismissed us completely to escort Bryce to the office.

  Isaiah’s gaze met mine from across the room. His was full of silent concern.

  I gave him a small shrug, then braced to address Draven. “Do you want to talk here?”

  “Let’s go outside.” He held out a hand toward the parking lot.

  I nodded, crossing my arms over my chest as I followed him into the sunshine and around the back of the garage.

  The field behind the shop was a graveyard for old car parts. They littered the ground, from the exterior wall of the garage to the fence that bordered the property in the distance. The field had the potential to be a nice space, if not for the overgrown grass and abundance of rusted metal.

  Draven led me to a wide cement pad with two picnic tables and a barbeque grill draped with a black cover.

  I glanced around before taking a seat. Past the garage, at the end of the parking lot, there was a dark, ominous building situated in a grove of trees. The windows were boarded up and the doors were locked with a thick chain and padlock. All it was missing was a neon sign on the roof that blinked Keep Out.

  “That’s the clubhouse.”

  “Okay.” Was “clubhouse” supposed to mean something to me?

  He took a seat across from me, resting his elbows on the table’s smooth wooden surface. “How much do you know about me?”

  “Next to nothing. Bryce says you’re my father. I’m inclined to believe
her, but I’d like a paternity test.”

  He winced.

  A paternity test? Where had that come from? The thought hadn’t occurred to me until now, but I wanted that test regardless. It would crush my heart into tiny pieces if Draven wasn’t my father. Not because I’d grown fond of him in particular, but because if he wasn’t, I’d never find my real father now that Mom was gone.

  “I’ll set it up,” he promised. “What else?”

  “There’s not much else. I came home from work one day this summer to a cop car parked in my driveway. The officer told me that my mother had been murdered in Clifton Forge, Montana.”

  The words came out in a dull, numb stream. I didn’t want to think about how many tears I’d cried that day. How my heart had broken at the officer’s words. So I stayed the robot, spewing details like I was talking about someone else’s life, not my own.

  “I planned her service,” I said. “I made sure she was buried in the plot here where she’d asked to be laid to rest. Then I got in touch with the chief of police.”

  “Marcus.”

  “Yes.” Though I called him Chief Wagner. “He told me what he could about the investigation, and that a man named Draven Slater had stabbed my mother seven times and left her to bleed out in a motel room alone.”

  He gulped. “Oh.”

  I was pulling no punches. “Bryce came to Denver to ask me some questions. We talked mostly about Mom because she said she wanted to write a memorial article about her.”

  Was that true? I’d forgotten about the memorial until now. Bryce had seemed so genuine in her desire to give Mom closure. I’d latched onto that idea with an ironclad hold and told her all the wonderful things about my amazing mother.

  That was before. Now I wasn’t so sure half of what I’d told Bryce was real.

  Bryce had eaten cookies with me as I’d cried over Mom. She’d sat by my side and looked at the old photos and mementos I’d collected from Mom’s home before putting it on the market.

  I hoped she’d been sincere.

  Did I even want her to write that article for the paper? Not really. When we went for coffee, I’d ask her to delay the piece, assuming it had been real in the first place. Besides, would the people of Clifton Forge even care about a woman buried in the local cemetery?