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Breakneck
~February~
I was a fucking mess.
Nova wouldn’t speak to me. She had been back in town for a solid week now, and she refused to have anything to do with me. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any other affiliation with my club brothers either. She was staying at her father’s house, and that much I knew because we had members pulling rotating guard duty even if she didn’t want anything to do with us.
Thanks to the little revelation about Ashlynn that Jeremy made in his office, we had been keeping a closer eye on her. For whatever reason, Scout’s PI hadn’t been tailing her that day and had missed the important interaction between her and Mal. Kip and I were about to get to the bottom of things, though.
“Someone told me they saw you meeting with Mal Larson,” Kip mentioned to Ash. We were at his house, and I was sitting with Knoxville on my lap. Since Nova took off, I’d spent a lot more time with the little guy. For some weird reason, being near Kip’s kid made me feel closer to my girl.
“Mal Larson?” Ashlynn questioned, but there was no mistaking that the color drained from her face. “Who told you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. I want to know what the fuck you were doing meeting with the President of the Violent Order,” Kip demanded.
Ashlynn dropped into a seat as if her legs were too heavy to hold her boney ass up. It was only then that I realized she really was skinny in an unhealthy way. Kip was watching her like a hawk too and I could almost see when he came to the same realization.
“My mother finally came clean about who my father is. My real father, not the bullshit one she tried to claim was mine for so long.”
We both sat there, not believing where she was going with this. What were the fucking odds?
“Are you saying that Mal Larson is your father?”
She nodded. “I met with him so that I could verify it. For once, my mother wasn’t lying.”
“Holy shit.” The words popped out of my mouth before I could pull them back.
It looked like Kip was about to inform his wife that she had a sister, until I grabbed his arm and shook my head. He couldn’t do that. If Ashlynn had the ability to set up a meeting with Mal, that meant her mom still had to be in contact with him. At the very least, one of them knew how to get him on the hook for a sit-down meeting. We couldn’t chance Ash spilling the fucking beans about who Nova was.
The piece of shit probably already knew she was his daughter, but on the off chance he didn’t, that was information we needed to keep close to the vest.
“I need to run. I have a showing in forty-five minutes across town and need to go set up.” Ash stood and didn’t wait for anyone to say anything else. She left and didn’t bother looking back.
“How in the hell is that possible?” I asked once she was out the door.
“We’ll talk back at the clubhouse,” Kip stated as he looked around with a shrewd eye. I knew what he was doing, attempting to see if there were any camera we hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t even thought there was a possibility of hidden surveillance in his house before, but now that we knew that not only did Ash take a meeting with our rival, who had threatened our club, but she was related to him, too… We needed to be extra cautious.
When we made our way back to the clubhouse, Kip immediately pulled his father into the office to let him know what we’d just found out. “Are you saying Ashlynn is Mal’s kid, too?”
“Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. That means Nova is her half-sister,” Kip finally said what I’d been thinking for the past thirty minutes.
“Your nanny was actually your son’s aunt all along,” I added.
“Son of a…” Trip muttered. “How the fuck didn’t we know this? Mal and his club have always been enemies and even when they weren’t, they were on our radar so we could keep an eye on the shady fuckers. We did a background check on Ash when Star started hanging around her back in the day.”
“She claimed her mom only just informed her who her real father was and that she had it checked out. I’m assuming she lifted his DNA in a similar way that Jeremy did.”
“Fuck,” Tripp growled again.
“Who is going to tell Nova?” I asked.
“Maybe it would be better if she didn’t know,” Kip suggested.
“You really want another secret to make her not trust you, too?” I asked. “You see how she treats me.”
“Think that’s a little bit different. I only meant to keep her from feeling worse. Imagine finding out you have a sister in the world, but she’s the bitch who has treated you like absolute shit since you met her,” Kip said and I kind of got his point, but still didn’t think it would be right to hide it from her. I had no qualms about keeping it from Ashlynn, because that was about making sure Nova stayed safe.
“I’ll tell her. I wanted to talk to her about coming back to work for me anyway. At least this will give her more incentive to say, yes.”
