AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Carson.”
“Carson? That’s it. Care to fucking elaborate?”
The dark circles around my father’s eyes deepened, making him appear as though all the energy had been sucked clean from his soul from uttering the name alone.
“That’s not right,” my Sparrow argued, shaking her head, staring at Diesel with narrowed eyes. “The initials were L.R.B. No ‘C.’ Besides, you would’ve recognized your own son.”
I caught the way Diesel’s jaw flexed, and no one failed to notice his lack of reply.
“Dies?” Rook asked, his tone even. The vocal equivalent of going dead-eyed. Hiding his feelings from the rest of us.
Diesel inhaled deeply, holding a long meaningful look with Pinkie. The big guy was a shade of green.
“That’s because they aren’t Carson’s initials,” Diesel finally replied, going for the decanter of good scotch by the far wall to pour himself a few fingers of amber liquid. He drained them and poured two more, bringing the bottle to the table with him. It thudded against the table as he folded himself back into the chair. “They’re his mothers.”
Rook curled his fingers, indicating the scotch and Diesel slid it all the way down the table, into Rook’s waiting palm.
“Pinkie, you mind? Leg’s bugging me.”
Pinkie rose to get Rook a class. “Sure it is. Lazy ass.”
“Diesel, I need you to start fucking talking here.” The words rushed from my mouth, chased out by the slow-building feelings of absolute betrayal in my gut.
Diesel had a son? One that shared his blood?
How did I not know this?
Why hadn’t he told anyone?
“L.R.B,” he said on a breath. “Lilliana Rose Bates. The lighter belonged to his mother. The first woman I ever loved. His name is Carson Gregory Bates. Born March 31st, ’96.”
Rook filled himself a glass of scotch before sliding the decanter back down the table to Diesel, who’d already drained his second glass. I stopped it before it could reach him. “Keep talking.”
Dies licked his lips, abandoning the glass to steeple his fingers in front of his lips. “I haven’t seen him since he was twelve. He didn’t look anything like he does now.”
I could tell there was more he was holding back, trying to decide what to say first.
“I wasn’t around,” he admitted. “When I got Lilliana pregnant, I was… I was with Jacqueline.”
“Are you serious?” Grey asked, disgust tainting his tone, offended on behalf of a woman he never had the chance to meet. But meet her or not, we knew her from the countless stories Diesel and the guys told about her. Their memories bringing her to life in our minds just as though wehadknown her ourselves.
Diesel was her everything. And we thought she was his, too.
“Not my finest fucking moment,” he sighed. “Lily had this way about her. She could get you to do pretty much anything. Manipulative. You know the type. Anyway, Jacqueline and I had just gotten hitched and we were trying to have a kid. Well, Lily got it in her head to try to trap me before that could happen and split Jacqueline and I for good. She seduced me into her bed—”
“No. You don’t get to put it like that,” Sparrow corrected him.
I nodded, glaring at our father. “You fucked another woman. That wasyour choice. Own it.”
His upper lip twitched but he gave a tight nod. “Yes. It was. She’d poked holes in the rubber and within weeks she was at my doorstep, waving a positive test in my face. She thought I’d leave Jacqueline on the spot. Do the right thing.”
“You obviously didn’t,” Ava Jade put in, tapping the table, clearly more than a little put off by Diesel’s past. But I had a feeling the worst was yet to come.
“Yes,” he answered plainly. “I did do what was right. I stayed with the woman I vowed to spend the rest of my life with, and I offered Lilliana more than she deserved. I bought her a little place in Lennox. I sent monthly payments. More than enough to cover anything she needed.”
Rook sipped his scotch before running the pad of his middle finger over the rim, not looking at Diesel. “And the kid?”
“Jacqueline and I just found out the week before that she couldn’t have kids. I couldn’t…” He choked on his next words. “I couldn’t do that to her. Make her see the one thing she wanted most in this world and could never have. I never admitted the affair to her for fear she’d figure it out herself. The house and the money, they were contingent on Lilliana never telling a soul who fathered her son.”
