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His gaze held mine and he smiled. “The day you were born.”
Shit. My inner child was openly crying while holding on to her stuffed unicorn. Not small cries either. These were big gulping sobs that could probably start a tidal wave.
“I used to play you AC/DC while you were growing in your mother’s stomach,” he snorted. “She told me that if you were born with a mullet, she’d never forgive me.”
I let out a watery laugh, tears welling in my own eyes.
“You weren’t.” He sighed dramatically. “But you were still beautiful all the same. I remember the first time I held you; you wouldn’t stop crying, and then the nurse placed you in my arms. The world shifted beneath me, and I swore I would do everything to make sure you always felt loved and cherished. I swore I’d protect you and your mother with my life but…” He hung his head.
“What was she like?”
Another fond smile. “You look so much like her,” he said. “You’ve got my eyes and hair, but everything else is her. Lizzie was all fire, but where I was brash, she was calculating. Her world had been tainted in college, but still, she managed to see the good in it. Her smiles could light up a room, and her laugh—her laugh was infectious. She’d give you the shirt off her back and never ask for anything in return. She’d built a community around her. A community of people she loved and respected. One she trusted.”
I beamed. “The Vixens.” Yelena had given me her number after the rescue and ordered me to call her when I was settled.
“The Vixens were her family. Victims of sexual assault or trafficking. Some were family members of those who fell into those categories. They wanted justice any way they could get it. They ran an underground network of vigilantism. People reached out to them to exact the justice the courts refused to give. It was her life’s work.”
He rubbed a hand down his tired face.
“Your mother was supposed to meet a potentialclientat the warehouse her club operated out of. She’d taken you with her, set you up in your playpen in your room there. She often brought you along to the club because she hated being separated from you. There was no way of knowing it was a trap. One of the club girls I’d banned for doing drugs had somehow managed to gain access to the warehouse. She sold the information to one of your mother’s old friends.”
“Sarah Crowe,” I breathed.
Toph nodded. “Sarah had been after your mother since college. She’d set her up to be drugged and raped by her boyfriend and his friends. What I hadn’t known was Lina had been in on it too.”
“There was no way for you to know who she was,” I assured him. “Crowe admitted that he’d paid good money to have her nipped and tucked enough so that no one would recognize her as Marilina Brandt.”
“Your mother knew,” he pointed out with a deep sigh. “She might not have known exactly who she was, but she knew something was off, and I—I didn’t listen. Lina was a club favorite, and I chose my men over her. It’s still my greatest shame.”
“If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t linger on the mistakes of the past.” My teeth sank into my lower lip. “You can’t move forward if you’re stuck there, and I’d like very much to move forward with you.” I paused, heat spreading across my cheeks as a sudden bout of shyness crept over me. “If you would like that too, I mean.”
His answering grin settled any nerves that had crept into my mind.
“I would love that.” He leaned back in his chair, shooting me a devilish smile. One full of mischief. “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle before?
40
Iwatched her like an obsessed fucking lunatic. Every move she made had my eyes tracking to her and my body on high alert. Jaysus, I needed fucking therapy. I snorted. That wouldn’t fix the sudden need I had to be with her, near her—inside her.
We’d begun to mend the broken trust, but it wasn’t easy. Shit, the wall she’d built between us was proving harder to take down than the Berlin Wall. Sure, we’d come together the night we’d brought her back, but that didn’t mean shit in the long run.
Bailey was waiting for something. Waiting for us. I knew deep down in my gut that the next few days would either bring the three of us closer together or break us apart completely. She wouldn’t choose just one of us, and we wouldn’t let her.
I’d been the one to betray her. To utter those cruel words. I’d had to. It was the only way to keep her safe, but that didn’t matter to her. She might not have believed me when I’d handed her over to her father, but on the day of the auction, I could see that my words had shattered any hope she’d clung to.
Bailey’s rich laughter reached my ears, echoing across the near empty bar. It was late, and last call had been ordered a while ago. A few people still lingered, mostly staff and a couple of my father’s men, but otherwise, it was a ghost town. I turned my gaze from where I’d been busing tables with Seamus to find our girl huddled at the bar with Ava. The two were smiling, and it was good to see that.
Ava had been a little off since the raid on Drew and Brittany’s a few days ago, and I could sense there was something she wasn’t saying. I wasn’t about to pry, though. Our relationship was still new, and Ava was hurting. So much had gone down that night, and the responsibility that had been placed on her shoulders was enough to cripple most.
But Ava wasn’t most people, and she had the backing of some of the most powerful men on the West Coast.
“I’m out of here.” Ava sighed as she stood from the barstool. “Let me know what you think about my offer. I could use a woman with your talents.” She reached out to Bailey and gave her a small hug.
“Will do.” Bailey smiled at her. “Let’s meet for lunch next week.”
Ava grinned. “Sounds good.” She turned toward Seamus and me. The two of us quickly turned away so neither of them would know we’d been spying. “Bye boys,” she hollered back to us and gave a small wave.
We turned toward her and smiled, giving slight waves of our own as she slid out the door with Leon, her bodyguard, right behind her. Sighing, I heaved the tub full of dirty dishes behind the bar and slid it back to the kitchen for the washers to take care of. Seamus did the same.
