I’m reeling.It can’t be true.Can it?Do my parents know?Mom always said my birth certificate was blank when it came to naming my father. It could be true, but even if it is, I’m not sure I want to believe anything he says.
“Why do you think I went after you in high school?” I look up to see him smiling widely. “Everyone knew. No clue how you didn’t. I already knew Carolyn was a bitch, but I figured if I got the other sister, too, then Daddy dearest could pay me twice the load. He always looked out for you, but then the night of our wedding, he got into the car crash. Thank God my dad knew what I was up to. Might have gotten stuck with your ugly fat ass for longer than I needed.”
“You lie.”
He leans over. “Not about how ugly and fat you are. As for your daddy?” He shrugs. “Guess we’ll never know, will we?”
I react without thinking and slap him across the face. The world pauses for a second before we all realize what I just did.
In the next second, his hand is wrapped around my throat, pinning me to the ground as his other hand folds into a fist and starts smashing my face. I try to fight him off, to push him away. I wiggle around on the ground, but in this position, and with how strong he is, I can’t do much but flop around like a fish.
I hear the girls screaming and crying a second before I hear Hunter shout my name, and then Troy is knocked away from me. This time it’s Hunter on top of Troy, hitting him, but he only gets a few punches in before he’s pulled off by Troy’s men.
Troy roars with rage as he stands. Marching over, he smacks Hunter across the face with enough force that I wince for him, even if I’m feeling every bit of the beating I just got and can’t really see out one of my eyes.
“You think you’re tough?” Troy punches him in the stomach, and Hunter falls forward, but he’s still standing as the guys on either side of him continue to hold him up. Troy grabs the back of his hair and pulls his face up. I can’t tell what he sees, not from the way I’m lying on the ground, but I can hear him.
“Yeah, you think you’re tough. Let’s see how tough you are after I’ve had my turn. Take him upstairs.”
“No, don’t! Let me go! Ms. B… Bailey, help me! Please!” His shouts ring out even after the guards take him from the room.
Troy looks around. “Any other heroes?” The girls scoot farther away, and it makes him smile. “Good.” He heads toward the door. As he goes, he kicks me straight in the head, and I roll with the impact into a wall.
It’s the crying of the girls and the screams I can hear from Hunter above that haunt me as I fade out of consciousness.
Chapter 31—Gator
“Where the hell is she?” I yell as I sweep my hands over the table we usually use for Church but that’s now become our main operation room. Stacks of intel lie in disarray on the floor, and I don’t give a shit about it.
“You need to calm down, Gator. This won’t help anything,” Law says, but he makes no move from his seat to pick up what I threw down.
“How the fuck can I calm down? It’s been three fucking days.Three days, and we know nothing besides another kid has been taken.”
“They could be together. We find one, we find the other,” Bulldog tries to pacify me, but it doesn’t work. Nothing will.
“How are we going to find them if we don’t know shit? Cops found nothing. We’ve found nothing. Not a single piece of evidence to use to figure out who took her.”
“We know who took her.” I look to Bass for him to continue, hoping he voices something I don’t know. “Duke,” he says with a shoulder raise that just makes mine sink as I sit in my chair and hang my head low.
“That tells us shit. Guy’s in the wind. He might be involved, but we’ve got no clue how close or how far he’s connected, only that he’s into the skin trade and no one else is claiming this. So of course it’s Duke, but it doesn’t make any sense.” I shake my head. “Why take her? She’s not the type Fairy said they were after. No reason for her to have been snatched.”
“Wrong place, right time,” Mad Max says, and I look over at him. He has his elbows on his knees, staring with the same intensity he always does, but this time it’s focused on me.
I nod slowly. “Maybe.”
“Right, let’s take a break. We’ll regroup after we get some fuel in us, and Flint can tell us if he’s learned anything new.” Law stands, and the rest of the brothers file out.
I sit for a second till Bass slaps my back and pulls me up all at once. He’s been making sure I’m eating and sleeping. Even if it isn’t much, it’s better than nothing.
The clubhouse has been busy the last few days. More brothers have come in from the other chapters to help. The women have been keeping the food coming, and Mama Bear’s been making the coffee for us all, so at least we can choke that down to keep going. Law usually makes it, and I won’t touch that shit with a thirty-foot pole.
The spread today is just deli sandwiches, but there’s a variety and enough for us each to grab a few. I put one on my plate, and then Bass puts another on top of it. I don’t fight him anymore about this. I can either eat like the good boy I am or he’ll just bitch at me all day till I do. Once this is all over, I’m going to have to talk to him about it. Him caring so much is starting to freak me out.
I grab a seat, and he claims the other, and then my dad sits in the third. Sometimes another brother joins, but usually it’s just us three. They know not to engage with me—not a lot, anyway. I might be physically out of that room, but my brain is still working the problem. Trying to figure out something that none of us have thought of yet.
The clubhouse door smashing against the wall after it’s flung open has most of us looking up to see Fairy standing in the doorframe, holding on to either side as she gulps for air.
“Babe?” Mad Max is up and rushing to her. “What’s up? Something wrong? Shouldn’t you be at Mama Bear’s house? Where’s the prospect who was guarding you?”
