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I stiffened, knowing exactly who he was talking about. “Eli. ”
“Yeah man,” Bear confirmed. “And if I was a betting man I’d put my money on it being Eli wanting to take you out over daddy dearest. ”
Eli Mitchell was who Isaac had filtered his drug money up to. Well, he did until me, Preppy, and Bear ended him and most of his crew. With his thick rimmed black glasses and his short stature, no one would never think the guy was capable of half the shit he did on a daily basis.
When you wanted to scare a rabbit out of a hole you sent in a smoke bomb. Eli’s version of a smoke bomb was killing anyone you’ve ever loved until you showed yourself and he could finally kill you too.
“The intel I’m getting says Eli’s still in Miami, but he’s making a move, and soon. The MC is on lockdown, afraid of the blowback. Pops is pissed as fucking hell. ”
“First Isaac and now fucking Eli,” I said. “Can’t catch a fucking break. Sometimes I feel like I would have been better off staying locked-up. ”
“I feel ya, man. Same here. This isn’t just biker shit anymore. This is cartel shit. Bigger, badder…deader,” Bear said. “And I can’t put Grace in lockdown. I know she’s more a mom to you than your cunt of a mother ever was, but Pop’s ass is all sorts of chapped lately. He don’t want no one in the MC bringing civilians into the club, especially during lockdown, but we need to find somewhere safe for her to stay for a while. ” Bear looked up at me and as he spoke I realized what he was trying to tell me. “I ain’t got anyone close enough to me that warrants killing, who isn’t in the MC, but you sure as shit do. ”
Pup.
“Fuck!” I shouted, realizing I couldn’t bring her home. I turned and punched the wall, making a dent clear through the drywall to the cement stucco on the outside of the house. Pain shot up the bones in my arm all the way to my shoulder, but pain was a better feeling than the feeling lying just underneath it. The feeling of failure. “It’s my fault Prep’s dead. Should have never let him start the Granny Growhouse shit. Should have…” I ran my hand over my hair. There was too much to list. Happiness, sadness, and regret filled every inch of space within the last few months of my life. There was so much I would go back and change. I thought all that was missing from my life was Max. But now it was Max, Pup…Preppy.
And no matter what I did, who I killed, Prep was never coming back.
“What’s the plan, man?” Bear asked.
“We’re going to get to him before he can get to us…tonight,” I said, cracking my knuckles. The time for a pity party was over. I had more people to kill.
“Ballsy move, man. ”
“Maybe, but I have to find out where Pup is first. I may not be able to get her the fuck out of there, but I have to get to her. Tell her what’s going on. ”
Bear nodded. “I can find out where she is. Get her a message to her,” he offered.
I shook my head. “No, this message needs to be delivered personally. It’s the only way she’ll listen. ”
“I can understand that, cause if I were her, I’d want to chop your fucking balls off by now,” Bear said. I flashed him a look to remind him he was stepping close to the edge of whatever patience I had left. “I’ll find out where she is,” Bear mumbled, pulling his phone from his pocket. He stubbed out his cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill and lit another one. “All this shit, it’s fucking ballsy, man. You got a head injury or something?”
I stepped onto the deck and leaned over the railing, breathing in the salty night air. “Yeah, as I matter of fact, I do. I suffer from the same condition Pup does. ”
“And what’s that?” Bear asked, following me out and leaning up sideways against the railing.
“We both forgot who the fuck we were. ”
Bear dialed a few numbers; I could hear the ringing through the speaker as he held it up to his ear. “You remembering now?”
“Yeah, I’m remembering now. ”
“And who exactly are you?” Bear asked.
“I’m the fucking bad guy. ”
Chapter Two
Doe
Shock.
Mouth gaping. Can’t find the words. Overwhelming. Stunned.
But shock was the word that best describes how I felt in that car.
I had a million questions and couldn’t find my voice to ask a single one.
And I certainly couldn’t bring myself to make nice with the two men who called themselves family. They were just strangers, who, when I wouldn’t go with them willingly, brought out the big gun.
A little boy with blonde curls and icy blue eyes that matched mine.
A little boy who’d called me Mommy.
My life since waking up without my memory has been a cluster-fuck of unbelievable events strung together in one monstrous knot. Every time I was stupid enough to think I could untangle it, the knot just wound tighter, until it consumed every ounce of available space around me, wrapping itself around the potential for anything good to result from my being alive.
Strangling it to death.
It was shitty of them to bring the boy. It was only because of him that I sat in stunned silence, unable to ask my usual million questions. Too afraid to scare him or say the wrong thing and traumatize him for life.
The silence in that Town Car was deafening; so quiet that I’m sure if you listened close enough, you could actually hear my state of shock. The sound of the tires spinning against the asphalt as we accelerated onto the highway was a welcome reprieve.
The man who claimed to be my father sat in the front passenger seat. Everything about him was stiff and hard as stone. His suit hadn’t a single wrinkle or sweat stain, and despite the heat and humidity, he’d kept his suit jacket on. I was beginning to think that the suit was its own living, breathing entity. It was too damn perfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a small wrinkled alien living in the sleeves, controlling the senator/ suit being.
A phone vibrated in the front seat. “PRICE. ” The senator barked into the receiver. After a few seconds of mumbling into the phone, he reached overhead and pressed a button, closing the blacked out partition, separating the front seat from the back.
I sat in the back on one side of the bench seat, a small child’s body length away from the boy who’d introduced himself as Tanner.
My boyfriend?
No HER boyfriend.
“You know…,” Tanner said to me in a whisper, a mischievous look in his chestnut eyes. “…he’s the very reason they stopped calling the thing you say when you answer the phone a ‘greeting. ’” I forced a small smile and Tanner went back to staring out the window.
For most of the hour-long ride, when I knew he wasn’t looking, I stared at Tanner’s profile and willed my broken brain to scroll through its lost Rolodex, hoping to locate the card that listed Tanner and what my feelings were for him.
Tanner was good-looking in that fresh-faced toothpaste commercial kind of way. But all I kept thinking when I looked at him was that he seemed…nice. And even though he was my age, he was still just a boy.
Which was one word I could never use to describe…him.
I couldn’t bring myself to think about him just yet. I didn’t want to. It was all too much to process. King’s betrayal, his arrest. I couldn’t process it. But when I looked over at Tanner again, I couldn’t help but make a comparison. Where Tanner was clean skin and sunshine, tall and lean like his body was built by swimming laps in a pool, King was tanned and tattooed with a constant thunderstorm in his eyes. His muscular body looked as if it were built by wrestling with the devil himself.
When I wasn’t staring at Tanner, I knew he was looking at me because I felt his stare burning a hole in my cheek. But every time I turned my head his way he averted his eyes and pretended to be interested in something out the window.
And then there was the little boy.
The fact that I could be a mother was completely ridiculous.
Unbelievable at best.
But oddly enough, he was the only thing in that car I felt sure about.
My father, my boyfriend, my son. The Town Car was filled with my supposed family, and yet, with the exception of the little one, every fiber of my being was telling me my family was getting further and further away with every mile we drove.
KING.
Maybe it was all a lie. Every single bit of it. King had told me he loved me. Maybe that was a lie too. I didn’t know what I could believe anymore.
Don’t be just be alive. Live. He’d told me.
So I lived.
And I loved.
The anger I’d been feeling toward King for lying to me had temporarily fallen away the second I saw the look of disappointment cross over his face when he realized Max wasn’t in that car.
And then when the detective put him in cuffs, all I felt was blinding rage.
I wanted to fight for him. I wanted to be the one to give him his daughter back. I wanted to give him everything in my power, but all I could do was watch the horrible scene that unfolded in front of me, paralyzed in the arms of the senator as they carted King away. My insides felt like they were being squeezed to death as King was shoved into the detective’s car and carted back to a windowless cell somewhere.
I meant it when I’d told the senator that King had saved me. And I didn’t mean the times he’d saved me from Ed or even from Isaac.