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“That woman is my sister’s mother, and you’re going to watch how you talk about other people, Ashlynn.” Star growled the words out and there was no mistaking how angry she was with her brother’s wife.
Ashlynn laughed in her face and instead of making her beautiful, the ugliness of the sentiment pinched her features and turned her into something else entirely. “I’m just calling her what she is!” She finally managed to get out through the vile, distorted version of laughter.
“Nah, see, just like you, she moved on from that life. Now, she’s a mom and a paralegal,” Star countered.
“Once a whore, always a whore!” Ashlynn shouted, but that time she did it while staring Davina in the face, as if her words were a weapon and she was on the attack. That was exactly what it was. For once, I wished she had aimed it at me, because Davina had too much going on to have to deal with Ashlynn’s brand of vitriol on top of it.
I held Knoxville closer and turned his face away from his family as he whimpered into my shoulder. There was nowhere to go to get away from the scene his mother was causing because they were in the direct path to the clubhouse door.
It was odd that I hadn’t even realized Breakneck had been standing there among them until he started to speak.
“Funny you should mention that. Had someone following you for a few months now.”
Ashlynn’s narrowed gaze swept from Davina to Breakneck, which was probably why he had spoken up, to help take the heat off his club president’s baby momma. Something happened when she focused solely on Breakneck and the words he spoke.
The meanness bled out into worry, maybe a little devastation, as she looked from his face down to his hands and took in what he was showing her. That was before he threw the stack of what must have been photos at her. There was no way for me to see what was in them, but I watched as Star bent down and picked one up.
“You were fucking someone who wasn’t my brother and had my nephew there to witness it?” Star screamed at the woman as she dropped the image only for her brother to bend down and pick it up. Kip stared at the image, his face turning ashen, as his sister jumped on Ashlynn and launched her fist into the other woman’s mouth.
Everyone else seemed too caught up in the pictures that fluttered on the ground to care, but I had to turn so that Knoxville wouldn’t see his Aunt Star beating the shit out of his mom. He might not know his aunt yet, but I had a feeling that was going to change considering what Breakneck had just said. My stomach knotted with tension as I realized what my absence had cost the precious little boy in my arms.
His mother had been taking him to work with her in my absence, but no one realized that her work had nothing to do with real estate. “I’m so sorry baby boy,” I whispered to Knoxville. “So sorry I left you behind to deal with that. Never again. Swear on my life, I will never let you down again.”
“What the fuck is going on here?” Mack bellowed from over near the clubhouse door. When he did, Bagger snapped out of whatever stupor he had been in and pulled Star off of Ashlynn, or he tried to until Kip stopped him and shook his head.
“I can’t do it, so we’re going to let Star get her licks in.”
“Ash was having an affair?” Bagger asked Breakneck, to clarify for everyone exactly what those pictures meant.
“Nope,” Breakneck answered as he slid closer to the two women, obviously ready to break them apart before the fight went too far. “She was running tricks for cash.”
My jaw dropped. That was so much worse than just an affair. Anything could have happened to Knoxville. Horrible things happened to prostitutes all the time, it was a dangerous occupation, but to have a child there, too. A defenseless baby, at that… If I hadn’t been holding Knoxville, I might have run over and got a few punches in as well. My stupid, stupid sister deserved every hit that Star landed on her.
“She was doing what?” Bagger asked for clarification, obviously not understanding the ramifications of what Breakneck told him.
“Turning tricks for cash. Been doing it for months. It was the job she claimed to have that was bringing in so much money that she could afford to hire Nova as her nanny.” Breakneck turned and scanned the yard for me. When our eyes locked, he offered a small smile, but my heart ached. It felt like this was all my fault somehow.
“Yo, finish up,” Bagger called out to Breakneck with a snap of his fingers to get his attention off me and back onto the situation at hand.
“Yeah, so there was no job. She’s been earning on her back and had the nerve to call Vina a whore.”
“All right, Twinkles, that’s about enough. There are too many witnesses here. I can’t fuck you from prison,” Bagger finally said as he moved in to retrieve his woman. Star didn’t look bad, but Ashlynn had been beaten bloody by Kip’s sister. I felt like I owed Star a drink or something more substantial for doing what I couldn’t.
“Kip, it gets worse, man.” Breakneck looked as though he’d like to stomp on Ashlynn’s face a few times as he tried to break more terrible news to Kip.
“How could it possibly get worse?”
“Half of her money was going to Malcom Larson.” Breakneck’s eyes came up to meet mine again. I felt like I was going to throw up. My own biological father, Ahslynn’s father, had been the one pimping her out.
“What the fuck did you just say?” Kip asked as his wife continued to groan and cry from where she was lying on the ground in a battered ball.
“Mal is her fucking pimp, and he is not hands off with his merchandise.” Yeah, I was definitely going to be sick.
“How the fuck did you end up working for Mal?”
“O-owed him before.”
“Before when?” Kip screamed at her. He had told me that she’d only just found out that Mal was her father around the same time Jeremy nabbed some of the man’s DNA to test against my own. According to Breakneck, Ashlynn had been working for him for longer than that. I had been hired at the beginning of September, so at least that long.
