That same gut instinct burned a little hotter low in his abdomen when he saw the office was already filled. Rider. Preacher, Lawless, Grinder, Dax, and Tanner.
He met their eyes. Instantly, he saw how deadly cold his father looked.
“Is it Mom?” The words flew out of his mouth, dread tying up his stomach.
“No, man. No one is hurt.” Alpha was the one to answer, closing the door behind them. He took root with a shoulder against the wall.
“Well? Does someone want to explain why you’re all staring at me like I grew a second head? Is this an intervention? Did I fuck something up in the shop?”
That’s when Preacher started pacing. And because Rider’s office wasn’t all that large, his father’s long legs ate up the space in four steps before he turned around and started again.
“I should’ve killed him.” He grated in a dark voice.
The only time Preacher lost his shit was when he was in protective mode over their family. Other than that, he was the most amenable guy, so to see him seething, his two meat-sized fists clenched at his sides, got Seb ready to ride into fucking battle with his father. He didn’t need a reason. If Preacher was this angry, Seb was by his side. He stalked over and stopped Preacher from pacing. He met eyes that didn’t look like his, but they didn’t make the man any less like his father. Some even joked that they had the same mannerisms and speech patterns and that Seb must be his secret kid.
“Dad? Is it trouble?”
“You could say so, son,” answered Rider. Then. “Lawless, you’re up.”
“I finally got a hit on my face recognition program,” Lawless explained, showing Seb he was holding a stack of pictures. The first few he dropped on the desk he’d seen on his phone screen. They were of the man who had approached Sunny, but the pictures were clear and not blurry this time.
“You know who it is?”
“Should’ve put a bullet in his fucking skull.” Burst Preacher again, and this time, it was Grinder, Preacher’s best buddy from long ago, who stepped up and told the road captain to cool his shit.
The following photos, laid out on the desk by Lawless, were prison mugshots of the same person, taken decades apart in age.
Seb’s brows pinched in the middle. “I don’t recognize him. This is who’s been fucking with me? What the fuck for? I at least thought I’d know who it was.”
As big as he was, in both shoulder width and height, Preacher muscled through Grinder and Lawless and came to stand at Seb’s side, glaring at the photos just like Seb was. But there was pure hatred in Preacher’s green eyes. He stabbed a finger at the black-and-white image of the younger version. His voice was like granite.
“This is Dwayne, your piece of shit birth father.”
The shock felt strange for different reasons.
Seb prided himself on rarely losing his cool, so surprises over the years were far between.
But this one.
It hit him like a frozen sledgehammer to the solar plexus.
They were words he couldn’t have expected to hear.
Dwayne.
His birth father.
They were foreign, and his brain took seconds to catch up, to put shit in order so he could crankhis head back.
A killer had walked up and spoken with his Sunny.
Seb couldn’t get his head around that. How dangerous it made him feel.
“He approachedmy wife.” He ground his teeth. His voice was kept low because if he let go of his anger, he would erupt like an atom bomb. “He breathed the same air asmy wife.”
He’d been disassociated from his past for a long time.
Sure, Ruby still talked about his birth mother—her sister—and he liked those few stories, but he hadn’t ever felt attached to them like she was.
