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“Not much. Have you administered morphine before?”
“I’m a nurse in an emergency room. I know how to give pain meds.”
I nod toward my medical bag. “Take what you need. But don’t be long, I’m going to need your help. This could go downhill at any minute.”
“We’re being held captive in a hotel in the middle of God knows where. I think it already has, don’t you?” She gives me a wry smile before disappearing out the door.
Before I can contemplate what Lily said, Sunshine lets out a wail in the other room. “This baby wants to come out, Doc. I gotta push. I gotta push bad!”
Twenty minutes later, Sunshine’s baby makes her entrance into the world, with her father, sister, and one kidnapped doctor in the room.
It’s a girl.
So much for Sunshine’s intuition and Rain’s crystal readings.
“What are you going to call her?” Lily asks, handing the clean and wrapped baby to her mama.
“Bluebell,” Sunshine says, gazing at her daughter.
I look at Lily, who gives me a soft smile, and something pings inside of me, forcing me to look away.
“What do you think of your sister, Tiger Lily?” Max says, looking over Sunshine’s shoulder at his youngest daughter. “Isn’t she perfect?”
“She’s beautiful,” Lily says, her voice wistful.
I study her.
There’s something sad in her tone, and it lingers on the edge of her words.
“Lily mentioned the other situation unfolding down the hallway,” I say to Max.
His smile vanishes. “Yes, go.”
I look to Lily, who is already walking toward the door, but as I follow her, Max’s voice stops me, “And Doc…”
For a moment, I think he’s going to thank me for helping to deliver his daughter safely into the world. Which is stupid because Max is a psychopath. He doesn’t thank people. He uses them and then discards them, probably in the ground with a bullet in their brain.
He snaps his sharp, cold eyes on me. “I expect that particular situation down the hall to end well also.”
His meaning rings loud and clear.
If I want my freedom back, then I’ll have to fix whatever is waiting for me down the hallway.
But I have a feeling that’s going to be an impossible task.
LILY
I feel weird.
Not to mention emotional.
But I suppose it’s to be expected.
After all, I’ve just watched my baby sister being born and then witnessed Max’s hard edges soften as he looked at her cradled in Sunshine’s arms. I want to hate him, but it’s hard to do when a part of me still loves the man he used to be before all the power and craziness went to his head, and he lost sight of what it means to be a real family.
He used to be a loving father, but then my grandaddy died, and Max became President of the Inferno. That’s when the change happened. All that power went to his head, and he started making his own rules. He became distant. Hard. Cold.
When my mama died, he decided to take two new wives, young women who he liked to keep pregnant and under his control. And if that isn’t bad enough, he didn’t just have children with his wives, he knocked up club girls and strays, even another biker’s old lady.
It’s as if he’s trying to breed his own damn club.
They weren’t the only changes that happened when Max took the Inferno throne. Under his reign, the club became all about power and greed. Moonshine and weed were no longer their primary income. The focus turned to meth and heroin. As a result, I watched people become addicted to the poison that surrounded them. I watched their teeth rot and their lives decay. I watched them die with needles in their arms and with barely any skin left on their bones.
My brother, Valentine, saw it too. That’s why he ran away, skipped out in the middle of the night when I was just fifteen years old. Max was grooming him to be just like him, and my brother didn’t want anything to do with it.
Valentine's last words to me before he disappeared were, “The father we knew is gone, Lily. The man in his place is drunk on power and control. He’s not a good man. He’s an insane man.”
Thirteen years later and Valentine is a memory. No one has ever heard from him since the night he slipped into the shadows and disappeared out of our lives. And I miss him more than words can describe.
Valentine was my best friend, my ride or die, and his absence is a hole in my life I can never fill. I can’t count how many times I’ve wished I’d left the Inferno with him since that night. But back then, I didn’t—no, couldn’t—believe what he said about Max. Back then, I still believed Max was a good man. A powerful man. That being the president of a motorcycle club came with responsibilities I couldn’t even fathom as a young woman. I wore rose-colored glasses because he was the only person I had left in the world, and I thought he would do anything for me. I loved him, and no one was going to make me feel any different.
