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I shrugged. “I stayed off the radar for a while. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Sure,” Ben said. “No big deal, until you took off with the president’s woman, who happens to be Robert Preston’s daughter, and married her. When you come out from under the radar, you sure know how to do it. You knock her up, too, or is it too soon to know?”
“Ben,” Devon warned.
The lawyer sighed. “Devon here is a romantic—unlike me. He takes this shit serious. You know he’s marrying Olivia, right?”
“We hadn’t gotten that far,” Devon said.
Olivia, I thought. My brother’s soon-to-be wife is na
med Olivia.
“You’re just like him,” Ben said to me. “I can tell already. You didn’t marry this woman just to piss people off, or out of spite, Preston or no Preston. I’m looking at your face, and I can tell. Am I right?”
“You haven’t seen her,” I argued.
“Fair enough. When Wilder boys fall, they really fall, I guess. I was just curious, because you’re about to get your ass handed to you by a bunch of bikers, and I hope she’s worth it. That’s why I came in here, because they’re coming off the highway now. I thought I’d let you know.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “I hope she still thinks you’re pretty when they’re done with you. Good luck.” He turned and left, taking his phone from his pocket and putting it to his ear.
I turned and looked at Devon.
“You see why I hire him,” my brother said, deadpan.
There was the unmistakable roar of motorcycle engines, and outside the window of the bar, five bikes pulled in to the darkening parking lot. I recognized McMurphy’s big, ugly figure in the lead.
We have what we need, Devon had said. The question is, what are we gonna do with it?
I slid out of the booth and stood up. “I want all of it,” I said to Devon. “Everything you said. But this is my old life, and I have to finish it before I can do anything else.”
My brother’s green eyes were crystal clear with understanding. “I get it,” he said to me. “Go.”
Twenty-Four
Dani
Visiting someone in prison, it turns out, is actually like the movies. You sit on one side of a plate of Plexiglas, and the prisoner sits on the other. You talk through a plastic receiver, like a phone.
At least in this prison, that was what you did.
The man on the other side of the Plexiglas was fifty-one—I knew that because I’d looked him up years ago. He was fit and whip-thin, without an ounce of fat on him, even in prison. He had tattoos on his forearms, where his prison-issue shirt was rolled up. Some of the ink was blurred and faded.
His hair was graying, thick salt-and-pepper. He was clean shaven. He was handsome enough, but it was very clear that anyone who underestimated how lethal he was was very, very stupid. He had dark brown eyes—my eyes.
My father, Robert Preston, founder and president of the Lake of Fire MC. Convicted murderer.
“Danielle,” he said. “I wondered if you would come to see me.”
I tried not to sweat in my chair, or throw up. I was wearing jeans, the thickest sweater I owned, and the sneakers Cavan had bought me in K-Mart. I had no makeup, no jewelry, and my hair was tied back in a barrette. My best attempt to look as much like a bag lady as possible in this terrifying place.
“How much do you know?” I asked him.
He gave a faint shrug. “Probably everything.”
That didn’t surprise me. I’d spent seven months in a motorcycle club, and one thing I knew was that they gossiped more than a bunch of old ladies. The Lake of Fire could get information to their leader inside prison walls faster than Western Union could send a wire.
“Then you know I’m married,” I said, surreptitiously touching my wedding ring under the table with my thumb. “And you know who he is.”
“Sure,” my father said. “You found yourself a rich man. I always knew a daughter of mine would be smart.”
