Conrad (Savage Kings MC - South Carolina Book Series 4)

by Lane Hart

  “I’ll be fine,” I assure him placing a kiss on his pec. “I’m just so glad that you’re okay with everything and want me to stay.”

  “Things could get stressful for a little while, but we’ll figure it out together,” Conrad tells me when he kisses the top of my head.

  “Yeah, we will,” I agree with a smile.

  The next morning, Conrad asked me to go with him to breakfast at his parents’ house.

  His mom and dad were so great and…normal. They were incredibly warm, welcoming me to their home, making me wish I had grown up in a household like theirs. And his dad was so sweet to his mom, taking care of her every need before she said a word. Conrad had told me she had MS and was going through a tough time before we arrived.

  And while Conrad didn’t bring up the details of the blackmail videos my father has on him in front of his mom, he did get a chance to take his dad aside and warn him about what to expect. It went better than he hoped with Conrad only telling me that he obviously got his kink from his dad after he apparently learned more about his parents’ sex life than he ever needed to know.

  Still, Conrad was relieved after we talked to them, and I was happy for him. We didn’t tell them about the baby yet since we both thought it would be best to see a doctor next week to make sure everything is okay before we start sharing the news.

  Now, we’re at the Savage Kings MC’s clubhouse where I’ve gotten to meet some of the other Savage Kings’ significant others. While the men are meeting behind closed doors, the girls and I get to lounge around in the empty bar with only two young prospects standing guard at the door.

  “So, Hannah, when are you due?” Zoe, who is about a zillion months pregnant and barely able to breathe around her large belly, asks me.

  “Ah, what?” I gasp when her question eventually sinks in.

  “You’ve been staring at my belly for ten minutes, and your boobs are so big they look like they’re about to pop. You’re pregnant too, right?” When I don’t say anything, just sit there in shock, she glances over at the surprised faces of the stunning redhead, Tessa, and her gorgeous blonde friend Charlotte, who says, “Uh-oh.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Zoe says while fanning her face. “If you’re not, then I’m so sorry. Just blame it on my pregnancy brain, thinking everyone around me is knocked up too.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I am actually. About three months along. We were just waiting to tell everyone until after I see a doctor next week.”

  “Ha! I knew it!” Zoe laughs and raises both of her arms in the air triumphantly.

  “Wow, congrats!” Charlotte says, all smiles.

  “Yeah, congratulations, girl. How did Conrad take the news?” Tessa asks.

  “Well, ah, I guess he took it a lot better than Cannon,” I tell them honestly.

  “Wait. What?” Zoe asks.

  “I didn’t know Conrad had a twin. So when Cannon came up to me at the dealership, I blurted it out before I realized he wasn’t Conrad.”

  “Oh, that is too funny!” Charlotte says. “I still don’t use their names around either of them, afraid I’ll get it wrong and look like an idiot.”

  “It’s actually easy once you get to know them,” I say. “I’m staying at the house with them until we get everything figured out…”

  “Well, welcome to the Savage Kings family,” Tessa says.

  “I don’t know about all of that,” I tell her. “Conrad and I haven’t known each other very long yet…”

  “That doesn’t matter. You’re having his baby!” Zoe says. “And we all saw the way he kissed you before the guys went into the meeting.”

  “Uh-huh,” Charlotte agrees. “So many sparks were flying I thought we were going to have to call the fire department.”

  “Take my word for it, those kinds of sparks do not die down, even after ten years,” Zoe says.

  “That’s how long you’ve been with, ah, what’s his name again?” I ask.

  “Winston. And no, we’ve only been a couple for as long as I’ve been pregnant,” she replies with her hands cradling her enormous belly. “He’s my stepbrother, and I thought ten years and thousands of miles of separation would help me get over him. It didn’t, though.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I tell her. “Things are pretty complicated with me and Conrad too.”

  “Why is that?” Tessa asks.

  “Because I’m Chief Bailey’s daughter,” I explain. And suddenly, all three of the easygoing women start to look concerned.

  Conrad

  * * *

  “Now that everyone’s here, I’ll turn the floor over to Conrad,” Roman says while leaning back in his chair at the head of the table when all ten of us are seated around it.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. Then to the group I say, “Sorry for bringing you all in on a Saturday, but there’s something important I need to tell you before you hear it from anyone else.”

  “Cannon’s finally pussy whipped?” Verek jokes, and everyone laughs while my brother flips him off from his seat next to mine.

  “No, hell hasn’t frozen over yet,” I remark. “This information is about me. Chief Bailey’s been blackmailing me…”

  The table erupts.

  “That piece of shit!”

  “Sorry-ass son of a bitch!”

  “Let’s go kick his fucking chubby ass!”

  Holding up my hand to calm them down, I say, “It’s fucked-up, and I shouldn’t have let it happen, but I was afraid of the consequences if I didn’t do what he wanted…”

  “What did he want you to do?” Roman asks.

  “It was his daughter, wasn’t it?” Winston says. “That ‘favor’ he wanted wasn’t a favor but him blackmailing you.”

  “Yeah, it was,” I admit.

  “Why didn’t you ask us to help you?” Verek demands.

  “Con-man kept asking me to go with him, and I turned him down,” Cannon tells them.

  “It’s fine. I didn’t need help bringing his daughter back. Well, I probably could have used backup, but I managed. I’m actually glad I did it on my own because I’m with her now. Hannah, the girl I brought with me to the clubhouse today, is the chief’s daughter.”

  “Oh shit,” Roman says. “Fat man isn’t going to like that.”

  “No, he’s not,” I agree.

  “Especially when he finds out she’s pregnant,” Cannon adds, causing me to frown at him because I told him this morning back at the house that I wanted to wait to tell the Kings until after Hannah’s doctor appointment. The rest of the room goes unnervingly silent.

  “That true?” Roman finally asks.

  “Yes. She’s three months pregnant.”

  “Then we better prepare for war,” our president says.

  “I’ll handle it,” I assure him. “This is on me. I’ll take care of smoothing things over with the chief. He doesn’t even care about her as long as she doesn’t mess up his image while he’s running for mayor.”

  “Fuck that!” Marcus exclaims. “That asshole needs to lose.”

  “I agree,” I tell them. “That’s why I’ve been looking into his potential opponents. We need to figure out who has the best shot of winning and back them.”

  “Agreed,” Roman says. “The primaries are only a few months away. If the chief loses that, he’s toast, and it’s over.”

  “Yeah, but with the current mayor backing him, that seems like a long shot.”

  “Then we’ll make sure he loses the election, whatever it takes,” Cannon says.

  “First things first, I need to come clean about the blackmail he has on me.”

  “Something that could blow back on the MC?” Roman asks.

  “Ah, no, not really. It’s mostly just going to cause problems for me.” I then go into all the gritty details. I give them Nicole’s name and contact info for them to talk to her and verify everything. Then, when I’m finished, I wait for the condemnation to come. I figure I may as well take my cut off since there’s no way the guy
s will let me walk out of here with it. I can’t even look Verek in the eye, but I can feel his seething stare from across the table.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Verek finally explodes into the silence.

  “I wish I knew,” I tell him honestly.

  “You should’ve told us about this three months ago!” Verek shouts. “Reece could’ve tracked down where the fucker was storing the videos and wiped them clean.”

  “Huh?” I mutter in confusion.

  “Reece, the IT genius with the original Savage Kings in Emerald Isle, can find and destroy pretty much anything on computers, phones, or in the cloud,” Roman explains.

  “Yeah, I know who Reece is,” I tell them. “I’m just waiting for you all to kick my ass, take my cut, and show me the door.”

  “Nobody’s going to kick your ass,” Cannon says, dead serious for the first time maybe ever in his adult life.

  “Half the porn out there is BDSM,” Leo speaks up and says. “Not that I watch a lot of it or anything,” he adds when we all stare at him.

  “I’ve been known to spank Zoe’s ass pretty often,” Winston admits. “She likes it too, and asks for it.”

  Roman clears his throat and says, “I think what Leo and Winston are trying to say is that it’s no big deal, Conrad. What you do in the bedroom is no one else’s business, especially that son-of-a-bitch chief’s. What happened to Tessa was some truly heinous shit. No one would dispute that. But we all know you would never do anything like that to a woman.”

  “Thanks,” I tell him with a heavy exhale.

  “I’ll ask Reece to get to work scanning the chief’s technology. Not only would it be good for him to erase your shit, but it would be nice if he could find some dirt for us to use in the election.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I agree.

  “We should still start preparing for a potential war,” Roman says. “This shit with the chief could get nasty fast. But that asshole deserves everything coming to him. I’ll think on it and come up with a plan. Until then, meeting adjourned.” With a slam of the gavel, everyone starts getting to their feet.

  “Thanks for having my back,” I tell Roman again before he slips out of the room.

  With a slap to my shoulder, he says, “That’s what we do. Now, how about you introduce us all to your girl?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Hannah

  * * *

  The next week staying with Conrad at his house is just as sweet and sexy as the first.

  I try not to think about what’s ahead of us in the coming morning as we lose ourselves in each other, but it’s nearly impossible.

  I haven’t seen my father in over four years. I had hoped to never see him again. But Conrad insists that we should go talk to him at my parents’ house first thing Sunday morning while he’s not at the police department. Apparently, it only took a few days for the IT expert he knows to find and delete all of the many, many videos my father illegally obtained from the BDSM club, only a handful of which were of Conrad.

  The one good thing about our visit is that I’ll get to spend a little more time with my mother and finally see my sister again since they wouldn’t let her come to see me at rehab. Guess I’m not exactly the role model they want to give Emilia.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” Conrad says when he reaches over to the passenger seat and squeezes my knee, sensing my anxiety. He’s driving his and Cannon’s SUV since he refused to let me ride on the back of his bike.

  “I hope so,” I mutter.

  One of the twelve steps of my recovery is to try and make amends, but in this circumstance it’s my father who hurt me, not the other way around. I know I need to forgive him, but I’m not sure if that’s something I’ll ever be able to do.

  “Here we are,” Conrad says when he parks in the driveway of my family’s two-story colonial. “You ready?”

  “Not really, but I know you want to clear the air,” I tell him with a sigh.

  “If we’re honest with him and show him that nothing we do will hurt his stupid campaign, then hopefully he won’t care that we’re together and having a baby.”

  “Yeah. Hopefully,” I mutter because I’m not as confident about this idea of Conrad’s. He’s always trying to make plans and fix everything. I think he’s underestimating my father, but maybe he’s right.

  When we get to the front door, Conrad presses his finger to ring the doorbell.

  As soon as it swings open, my father says, “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking everywhere for you since you left rehab last Friday!”

  We’ve been looking everywhere for you is his way of saying that he had his police officers looking for me, but he wasn’t doing so personally.

  “She’s been with me,” Conrad says, taking my hand, intertwining my fingers with his. And for the first time it registers with my father who is with me.

  “What do you mean she’s been with you?” he snaps.

  “Hannah’s staying with me and Cannon. That’s why I’m here, to let you know that she’s safe and that I’m taking care of her.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he yells.

  “You may not like it, but you don’t have to,” Conrad tells him calmly. “I’m just here to be honest with you about what’s going on. I’m not asking for your approval.”

  “Well, I don’t like it!” my father exclaims. “And you don’t have my approval.”

  “I didn’t think you would approve,” Conrad responds. “And I know you’re also going to hate that we’re having a baby together. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.”

  My father stumbles back a step while his face begins to turn tomato red. I know what he’s going to say before he erupts. “You little slut! How could you do this to me again?”

  Dropping my hand, Conrad steps in front of me, getting right in my father’s face. “You better watch your fucking mouth before I bust it wide open.”

  “She’s still too young and out of control,” my father tells him. “She’s not fit to be a mother, especially to your outlaw spawn!”

  Even though I expect them, his doubts have me second-guessing myself, wondering if he’s been right all along and I’m too unstable to be a mother.

  Then I remember that I may have been an amazing mother even at sixteen, but he took that chance away from me.

  Conrad

  * * *

  I rarely lose my temper, but I’m about to fucking snap.

  I knew the conversation with Hannah’s dad wasn’t going to probably go great, but it needed to happen.

  Then he called her a slut and I saw nothing but red.

  Still, I’ve been able to keep my clenched fists by my side and not pound them into his face.

  “I’m having this baby whether you like it or not!” Hannah says from behind me, the first words she’s actually spoken to her father.

  “She did this on purpose to get back at me!” the chief explains. “Can’t you see that? She used you!”

  “Oh my god, you’re insane!” Hannah mutters.

  “She didn’t use me. It was an accident,” I tell him.

  “Even accidents can be corrected. How far along is she? It doesn’t matter. I can find a doctor to fix this, make it all go away…” the chief starts, even going so far as to pull out his phone like he’s about to call someone to “fix this” as he referred to it.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I ask him. “Hannah wants to have the baby, and so do I.”

  “When she’s out drunk and partying, do you really want to be the man who has to stay home and take care of her kid?” the asshole asks.

  “It’s my kid too,” I grit out. “I’ll be there no matter what.” The Hannah I first met might have been a wild card, but the Hannah I’ve gotten to know, the one who showed up a week ago and told me she was pregnant, is different. She wouldn’t touch alcohol now, and I know she won’t after the baby comes either.

  Hannah wraps her fingers around m
y elbow and gives it a tug. “Come on, Conrad, let’s just go. I told you this was a bad idea.”

  “She’s right. You should both leave,” the chief says as Hannah grabs my hand to lead me down the porch steps. “Just keep her out of trouble! I don’t want anything to do with her! I’m tired of trying to help her when she just keeps fucking up over and over again.”

  Hannah freezes midstep and turns back to her father which is the first time I see the tears running down her cheeks. “Helping me? Is that what you think you were doing when you killed my baby?”

  “He what?” I ask, looking between her and the pudgy man filling the front door of the house before I turn my attention to Hannah. “He killed your baby?” I say in disbelief.

  She nods and reaches up to swipe her fingers under each of her eyes. “After I told him and Mom I was pregnant, he took me to the doctor,” she explains between sniffles. “He said everything would be fine, and I trusted him! He…he gave me pills…pills that he said the doctor prescribed to stop the morning sickness. But then I started cramping and bleeding. I thought I was having a miscarriage. Then I found the bottles. They were abortion pills!”

  As if on autopilot, my arms wrap around Hannah as she begins to sob, holding her while it feels like the rest of the world is standing still.

  Suddenly, after all these months of trying to figure out why Hannah seemed so broken and lost from the moment I met her, everything that was so fuzzy becomes crystal clear.

  He did this to her.

  Her own father deceived her.

  And more than once I downplayed her anger at her father, thinking it was some bullshit teenage angst when what he did destroyed her. She was ready to be a mother even back then when she was so young, but he ripped that chance away from her. Even four years later she’s still been grieving in self-destructive ways, all because of her asshole father’s betrayal.