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Mom draws a deep breath, and nods. “Of course. I'll always trust you.”
I hold out my hands to help her sit up, and she does. It makes me smile despite it all. “You're looking so much better than you were.”
She lets out a weak chuckle. “I've definitely been better, but also a lot worse. Where are we? Nobody would tell me.”
Outlaw opens the door from the room carefully. It's thick and solid, but it opens. I was half worried she’d be locked in. “Looks clear,” he says.
Mom nudges me. “Who’s he?”
“You have no idea how complicated this question is. Let's save it until we're out, okay, Mom?” I'll need a whole night just to explain the whole biker thing to her, never mind everything else. “He's here to help us, that's the most important part.”
When I help her up from the bed, she's weak, needing me for support. Outlaw sees and comes to help. He slips off his gun and hands it to me. “Do you remember the rules?”
This is for real. I nod, even though I’m terrified I’ll screw up.
“You can do it.” He sweeps her off her feet, grunting slightly from the pain. In a fair world, he’d still be resting and recovering from being shot, not rescuing my mother.
I nod. I can. I have to. If he can keep going, so can I.
“Oh, well isn’t this sweet.” Standing right outside Mom’s room, is Vincent, Devin—my ex-fake fiancé—and a small army of security guards.
Just once, some day, I want things to work out in our favor.
“Took you long enough,” quips Outlaw.
Vincent laughs harshly. “I could say the same. You didn't think I expected someone to find Eileen? That was the whole point of taking her in the first place. My only surprise was that it took you meatheads so long.”
“You have no right to keep her here,” I snap at him, slipping the gun into the back of my jeans. “I'm just here to discharge her from this place.”
He chuckles. “Should we just settle the bill then? Operations, gene therapy, convalescence… I mean, it's a pretty hefty bill you've racked up, and you can't possibly expect me to let you just leave without settling it.” He looks at Mom. “How are you doing, Eileen? Not very well apparently, but such is life. It's got to be at least, what? Twenty years? Twenty-one? Time passes so fast.”
Mom glares at him with more energy than I’ve seen her have in a long time. “It’s too bad it wasn’t longer.”
He cocks his head and puts on a very fake-looking expression of innocence. “Oh, so cruel. To think you ran away before letting me know that I might have a daughter, and such a lovely one at that.” He gestures at me. “Very headstrong though. Did you know she ran away from her own wedding? Devin was quite disappointed.”
Oh, give me a break. “I should never have contacted you in the first place. I’d rather be paying medical bills until I die than feel like I owe you anything.” I look at Devin. “Disappointed? You don’t even know me.”
He laughs. “You would’ve been fun, you know that? For me at least.”
Vincent sighs. “Well, I suppose this shouldn’t be that big a surprise. Deceit runs in the family after all.”
“Like father, like daughter?” I spit at him.
“Oh absolutely, but I can’t take any credit for that.”
I blink. “What? But the DNA test…”
He just laughs. “God, you really are as trusting as he used to be. You want to tell her, babe? Or should I? Did you even know for sure?”
“Nathan…” she whispers, and the realization hits me like a truck.
Nathan. Nathan Carnell. Blond hair, blue eyes, something neither Mom or Vincent have, but Carnell definitely does. Just like me.
Carnell is my real father.
30
LIGHTNING
I slam a security guard face first into the wall just as Carnell and his guys rush in, tasing the last one to the floor. The guard flops like a fish on land. My guy sags into a pile on the floor, knocked out. Carnell'd better appreciate our restraint. When fuckers come gunning for us, I prefer to gun right back rather than playing nice.
“Everyone alright?”
“I'm good.” Havoc drags another unconscious guard over and drops him on top of mine. “But this is bullshit.”
“Fuck yeah, it is. Now let's get up there. Anyone get a bead on Outlaw and Harper?”
“They fucking vanished,” Thunder rumbles. “My call's to go back for them.”
Shadow shakes his head. “Nah. Outlaw's taking care of her. Either he made the call to get her out, and we'll have to haul her mom outta here by force, or they kept going and need our support. All alarms have been set off. We gotta make this happen now, or get the fuck outta here.”
Carnell nods in agreement. “These are just the on-site staff. Pretty soon the building will be crawling with police or better trained security.”
