Page 3 of Miguel
And it filled me with fucking rage.
Miguel, I can’t do it anymore. I have a life to live and can’t be held down by the brat. He’s your son. His name is Ezequiel. We call him Zeke. His shit is in the bag. Good luck with him.
Yenny.
I remembered her. Reading the cold, callous words had memories of a drunken, drug-filled night at the clubhouse rushing back. She hadn’t been a club girl, just some puta who came looking for a good time with a biker and kept coming back again and again.
I probably should’ve felt remorseful for thinking badly about her, but I couldn’t muster the sentiment. Not when she dropped the kid off and sped away. Not with the terrible words I’d just read on the page.
Only an evil bitch abandoned her child like this.
And he was mine? I had no fucking idea if that was true. I always wrapped up my dick, not willing to take chances when the club putas and hangarounds hopped from bed to bed. But I’d been drunk and high almost every night during that time. I’d never been drunk enough to not take care of business, though.
So was she fucking lying? She had to be, right? I had no idea. If hewasmine, why hadn’t she told me before now? She just pawned him off on me and hadn’t even had the decency to tell me to my face.
I threw my head back and roared to the sky. “Carajo!”
When I looked down, it was to meet the kid’s wide eyes again.
Carajo.
Something tugged in my chest. It wasn’t his fault. He was probably confused, scared. Everything he’d known had been ripped from him. His mom had just dropped him off in a compound full of strangers. He had no idea what the fuck was going on.
And I was the adult here. And whether I believed he was mine or not, whether I was sure or not, he’d been left inmycare.
That made himmyresponsibility.
I leaned towards him and forced a smile to my lips, but the action felt stiff and fake. “My name’s Miguel,” I said. “Are you hungry? Do you want a paleta or something?”
He opened his mouth, and I waited with bated breath to hear his voice. Maybe to feel some sort of connection with that first spoken word. But he didn’t speak.
The kid opened his mouth and a terrible keening sound ripped from his throat, loud like a siren. And I could only stare with wide eyes as my new ward screamed his fucking head off.
Chapter Two
Miguel
Three days later…
Exhaustionslammedagainstmybones, enveloping them in a tight grip. My legs could no longer carry my weight and buckled beneath me. I let it happen, my body cushioned by the couch, but even that didn’t give me the relief I needed. Didn’t think I’d be getting any of that anymore, if I was honest.
It’d only been three days and the time passed like a lifetime, slow, drawling, and nearly unbearable. It had started with the screaming. Zeke’s wailing had been loud and frightening enough to send my club brothers rushing out of the house, guns drawn and prepared for battle. Of course, that had only scared the kid even more and sent him into a red-faced fit.
It didn’t matter how much I tried coaxing him, calming him. No offer of paletas or churros was enough to calm him down. Even the club putas had tried, but they’d just made it worse with their attempted coddling.
I didn’t blame the kid for his freak out, but damn he had a powerful set of lungs on him. For a while I’d been worried that the cops would show up at our compound and think we’d kidnapped him.
Luckily, he calmed down after a few hours and eventually hiccuped himself to sleep. I’d taken that time to bring him home and to think about my next steps. It wasn’t hard to decide that I was going to keep him. It could’ve been easier to drop him off with the government, let him be taken by the system until I was sure he was my kid. But looking into those big, wet eyes, I couldn’t fucking do it. Knowing that my blood might have been flowing through his veins? And even if it wasn’t, he’d already been screwed over by his mother. I couldn’t do that to him, too. Whether he knew me or not.
So yeah, until the results came in, he was mine. I was going to take care of him.
Too bad I didn’t know how to do that. A theory that proved true in the following days. The kid ate in nibbles, barely enough to keep his strength up, and spent most of his time wailing. If he kept it up, it wouldn’t be long until my neighbors called the cops, and I didn’t want the pigs up my ass about this.
So that morning, I’d called Camila and gave her a rundown of the events. After she berated me for thirty-fucking-minutes, she calmed down enough to tell me she was coming over. I’d just gotten Zeke to sleep and sat down when there was a knock at the door. Just a few raps before the lock turned and it opened then clicked quietly shut.
I let out a sigh, knowing that the soft, calm footfalls that followed in no way mirrored the mood of the approaching storm. When she stood before the couch, I was met with her thunderous, angry expression.
“Cami,” I greeted.
