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The two women laughed and for a moment, it was great to hear some easy laughter. It was true that it soothed the soul. She hadn’t laughed in a long time, so Syn breathed theirs in like oxygen to keep from drowning in the depths of darkness.
Not even thirty seconds after that laughter died off, the three men were bulldozing their way back in, immediately surveying the scene. Sig did a visual inspection of Autumn, while Dodge did the same with her.
“Keep your shit together, you hear me?” Reese warned them. “Any of you get crazy, I will not hesitate to kick you back out. Sig?”
Sig’s jaw shifted but he nodded.
“Dodge?”
Dodge nodded, too.
“Red thinks we should forego the legal way to handle this. And you know what, for once I agree with that route. It’ll take too long and it sounds like we need to get Maya out of that situation as soon as possible. So—Jesus, I can’t believe I’m saying this—we’re going to do it the Fury way.”
All the men stared at her like she had grown a third head.
“Say that again?” Deacon asked, bouncing up and down while patting the diapered butt of a now very awake baby.
“You heard me. I’m not repeating it.”
“Damn,” he whispered. “When you get bossy like that…” He grinned but it quickly disappeared when Reese shot him a “not now” look.
“Okay,” Deacon’s ol’ lady started. “Here’s what I suggest. For insurance, we need to grab the DNA of Maya, Syn and the father. This way if any questions come up down the line, we have absolute proof that Syn is Maya’s mother. We’ll also have proof who Maya’s father is. That’s proof we can use for leverage since Maya was conceived during the,” she grimaced, “assault of a child.”
The air began to vibrate.
“Keep it together,” Reese warned the men again. “I already feel the temp rising in here. We need to think clearly and logically on this.” She took a breath and addressed Syn. “Will they want that info exposed? That this man,” she grimaced again, “touched a child and got her pregnant?” Reese shook her head. “I doubt that. Even if it came out, we would file for custody and win that case, Syn, using that evidence. I have no doubt about that.”
“What if the fucker fights her for custody?” Dodge growled. “Hasn’t that happened before? A rapist has fought for custody?”
“If he does, we’ll expose what he did and he’ll go to jail and automatically lose custody, anyway. At least I hope I’m right. The justice system is a little flawed—”
“A little?” Sig yelled.
Reese ignored his outburst and kept going, “I think if we need to threaten him with that, he’ll go away quietly.”
“Do we want that fucker to go away quietly?” Deacon asked with one eyebrow cocked and gleam in his eyes.
Sig’s eyes narrowed. “Fuck that. That motherfucker’s gonna go away, but fuck if it’ll be quietly.”
Chapter Nineteen
While Syn was excited to hear that something was going to be done, worry also ate at her.
She didn’t want her problem to be the reason any of them did more time. Her brother had a home now and a woman who very clearly loved him. Deacon had a wife and baby. Or she assumed that Reese was his wife. Though, she didn’t see any wedding rings on their fingers.
And Dodge… Would he be willing to sacrifice his freedom for her? A woman he hardly knew?
It didn’t make sense.
“I don’t want you to think I didn’t try to do it the right way. I wanted to prove to them that I could take care of her. And I did take care of her every damn day until I turned seventeen. At that point I moved out, hoping we’d only be separated temporarily and got a job and a shitty little one room apartment. But none of that was good enough for them to let her leave with me. I couldn’t afford day care. I couldn’t afford more than the rent. I couldn’t afford shit. I then mistakenly thought they’d give her to me when I turned eighteen. Again, they refused and that’s when they made up shit to get the restraining order. So, everything I did was for nothing. None of it was good enough.”
Nothing she had done was good enough. And it never would be. They never had any intention of returning her daughter. They wanted to keep Maya for themselves.
Maybe they thought by keeping her, the truth about Sam would never get out. By keeping her, it was their insurance policy and used Maya as a tool to control Syn. To keep her mouth shut. What was crazy was Cara and Lyle Danzig had actually been decent parents to Syn. Until that first time Sam Danzig walked into her dark bedroom.
Then the second.
