TWENTY-TWO
Giveher a reason to trust me.How the fuck am I supposed to do that? Everything about our situation screams caution. Her father. My club. Our propensity to fucking fight every time we talk.
Her ability to do shit that gives me reasonnotto trust her.
Jenna moves through the dark, a shapely outline against the night as she returns to the clubhouse. Chaos wants answers, and I don’t blame the guy. We rode in there to disrupt the business being done on our turf. To get women out of forced service and send them home to their loved ones.
Jenna was right—we didn’t think about if any of them could be more foe than friend.
And now that oversight bites us in the ass.
“Fuck me.” I start after her, keeping a safe distance behind. I have a daughter upstairs who I already feel guilty about offloading onto Jezabel all afternoon. She doesn’t get to see me much, and when I do finally take her for a few nights, it’s as though I don’t exist.
If nothing else, Molly deserves to have her daddy put her to bed.
I flex my hands at my sides, attempting to shift the weird tingly heat that runs up my forearm to my elbows. Why does the thought of being what Molly needs frighten me so much? I can’t fuck it up much worse than I already have, so what do I have to lose in trying?Everything.Just having Molly here during this friction is enough to place a courtroom squarely on Reno’s side if she took it to that. Not that I think she would—she couldn’t afford to.
I haven’t seen a lot of my daughter over the years, but I’ve been there enough that I’m an important fixture in her life, and she mine. I couldn’t stomach losing what little we have.
Jenna enters the clubhouse a few yards ahead of me and swiftly closes the door behind her.
I climb the porch and hesitate before the obstacle, staring down at the brass handle.Get your shit together, Fang.I’ve dealt with enemies without a second thought. Sorted out junkies who were hellbent on breaking into our premises under the illusion they could find an easy hit. Forced rival club members back over state lines. Put bright-eyed and delusional young men in their place after they tried to join our ranks uninvited.
And yet none of it messed me up as much as a five-foot-something freckled firecracker telling me no.
Why not? Is it my patch that revolts her or my habits? I ain’t ever had a woman turn me down, and trust that the first time one does, it’s a woman I really shouldn’t give two fucks about. It’d be so easy to walk away from her. To make her somebody else’s problem and ask Chaos to put me on the road.
But I don’t want to.
My eyes lift to the window on my left. To the closed door and what that means.She’s fed up with you.Yeah. Cool. I know. But she doesn’t get to hold the power like that. It’s not her choice to shut me out. She’s in my goddamn home, near my goddamn daughter—I’m the one who calls the shots, not her.A firm handwon’t get you anywhere, champ.Not when she’s already been manhandled and forced to do things against her will.
What did happen to get her lifted by the Devil’s Breed? What did she mean about trust getting her where she is now?
Who did she wrongly place trust in? Who did this to her?
You’re fucking looking way too far into this.She’s not my sole concern; the lot of them are. Three women and a kid that are stuck in limbo until they figure out where they belong. Always figured my Achilles’ heel was women—just fucking got it wrong about how. I thought it’d be the regularity with which I took them to bed that’d be my undoing. Turns out it’s the rage and associated guilt I feel at the injustice they face simply for being born with different genetics that leaves me feeling unanchored. The realization that the way I act fucking adds to that imbalance. That unfairness.
I’m no better.
I hesitate, separated from the people inside.Pull it together.My stomach churns thinking about where any one of the women inside could have ended up if we didn’t take them out of that house, what they would have been forced to do, what akidwould have been forced to do.
Fuck.I never used to get this messed up by the things we did, the shit I saw. I could detach from the reality of the bullshit around me without a second thought.
But now I have a daughter.
And faces to put to the name. Real people who embody what was always just a story to be told over a beer to shock and awe. And those goddamn faces haunt me.
Especially hers.
Why did we never do anything about this until now? Why the hell have the Kings of Anarchy chosen to neglect a real and obvious issue? Sure, this is the first time we’ve known about it happening on our turf, in our state. But shit, tell me with astraight face that they ain’t been doing this for years; we’ve just been too blind to see what was right under our goddamn noses.
I draw a deep breath and let myself inside, figuring I’ve left it long enough for Freckles to be out of the way. Soft discussion and muted music drift from my left, Chaos’s office dark on my right. I ascend to the first floor and slip into my room to see if my daughter is already asleep.
“Hey, Daddy.” She shifts a little under the covers to face me better.
“Hey.” I kneel beside the bed. “Not asleep yet?”
“There’s different noises here,” she explains. Plain. Logical.
