by Anthology
I gave up everything for a lie.
I gave my fucking heart.
And now?
I smashed at bottle. Whiskey poured everywhere. The glass shattered. Just like the glass that hurt Silver.
“Gold?”
Annie’s voice wrecked me. I wasn’t ready to face her. I refused to turn and grabbed the truck keys from Keep.
Silver’s nonsensical babble squealed her delight.
And my heart fucking broke, crushed, and reformed itself in a single beat.
I turned. Annie held her, and my vision faded to just the two of them. The beautiful woman I lost to chance and time and every bad decision in my life, and the one baby girl who made my every choice the right one.
Silver kicked her legs and reached over Annie, her chubby arms and tiny, perfect fists opening and closing for me.
I didn’t move.
Silver whined.
I couldn’t get up.
She gave a shriek.
Annie called my name. My world collapsed over me and buried me in the rubble of a life I no longer wanted and absolutely couldn’t live without.
My baby cried for me.
And that was a pain I couldn’t bear.
I launched from the bar and seized them both, squeezing Annie in my arms and practically crushing Sophie between us. My breathing wracked, but I held them both.
“What happened?” Annie whispered.
I couldn’t answer. I took the baby and did the only thing that made any goddamned sense to me anymore.
I held her—my child, my absolute world, the only fucking good thing I had in my life for the past six months. I’d be damned if I ever let anyone take her from me. Not Alexis. Not whoever the fuck was supposed to be her real father.
Silver was mine.
The only way that would change was if some bastard got the unlikely shot that bled me out in the street, and ain’t no way I was dying if I had a little girl who needed me.
“I need a minute with Silver,” I whispered.
“Gold, what happened?”
Silver tucked into my arms. I kissed Annie, hard, before I took the baby.
She let me go, giving me the privacy I didn’t deserve. Scotch called her to the bar. At least, surrounded by the rest of my brothers, Annie’d be safe.
I didn’t know about me.
Silver was fifteen pounds of squirmy, beautiful, perfect little chub, and she would bring me to my knees quicker than a jammed wheel on my bike. I preferred rushing pavement to anything she’d give. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it. Broken bones. Sickness. Her first day at school. Her first boyfriend. The first time I had to kick some guy’s ass for breaking her heart.
But, until then, I was her everything.
I was supposed to be her everything. I meant to keep her safe and fed and warm and loved.
I never thought I’d be a good father, but I’d be enough of a man to take care of her and do whatever I needed to give her a good life.
I sat the kid on the desk in the office. She immediately reached for everything sharp and dangerous—less like a baby and more like a girl who knew how to survive Anathema. I pulled her fists away from the scissors. She let out a sassy shriek.
The cut on her cheek tugged.
I couldn’t kiss it, too afraid to hurt her. I kissed her other cheek instead. And her head. Her chin. The tiny little fingers that wiggled and tugged.
“I love you so much it kills me, Silver.”
She giggled at me. It was way past her bedtime, entirely too late for her to be pouting in the backass of Pixie, but she was too thrilled to see me to gripe about being tired.
“It doesn’t change anything.” I knelt to look up at her. She buzzed her lips. “Not a damn thing. You’re mine. You got that, kid? Nothing’s gonna keep us apart.”
A yawn squeaked out of her. She squealed again, scooching against the desk to reach me. I picked her up, cradling her against me. She tolerated it, but she needed a bottle and a nap and probably eighteen years of therapy before she’d be right again.
I rocked with her. Clutched her to my chest. Held her.
Cried like a goddamned baby over her.
And swore to every god and devil I knew nothing was going to take her from my arms.
Annie brought us a blanket after an hour. The kid slept against my ink. Annie kissed away my frown.
Nothing changed.
Everything changed.
But that was it. No matter what happened, I needed to protect my daughter and the woman I loved. Priest wasn’t going to let my insult fade.
He’d come back. Hit me harder than before, and now he knew where to strike.
Annie brushed Silver’s cheek. She kissed my hand.
I knew what I had to do to keep us all alive.
Even if it killed me in the process.
Chapter Ten
Annie
My heart ached for him.
Gold was a man who deserved so much more than misery and devastation. When I was younger, I never had a chance to tell him how I felt. The older I became, the more I realized how bad of an idea it’d be to get involved with a man so hardened, so dangerous.
But Gold wasn’t a violent man. He did violent things, but he did them to help others, to care for the ones he loved.
Hell, he loved so hard and so fiercely that the thought of losing those he protected drove him to his knees. In his fear and panic and enraged devotion, I fell in love. More in love.
And it wasn’t because he was a boy I lost, or the one who got away, or my second chance at having a beautiful relationship.
It was because he was Gold. A lover and the father and the man who risked everything to do what was right by his family and his club. His was a loyalty unmatched by any.
And it wasn’t fair. Not to the child, and not to the man who thought he was a father.
Except he was a father. He was a better daddy to that baby than anyone might have been. He gave Silver a chance in an underworld of violence and illegality and monstrous consequences dealt in blood. No one in Anathema would let him lose Sophie.
I wouldn’t let him lose his child.
The prospects found a bassinet for us to keep in his room at Pixie. The baby slept, peaceful and warm, in a soft pink blanket. But I couldn’t sleep. Neither could Gold.
We tangled in the sheets. We hadn’t spoken, just sought our own comfort the only way we could.
Gold moved within me with the gentleness I never expected from a man etched with ink and bound in leather. The cut symbolized aggression. Gold wore it as his passion—in life and in his bed. Every rugged movement, every panted gasp, every delivered pleasure marked me as his, and him as mine. We didn’t need tattoos or a cut to label us. We just were.
I gripped his arms, arched against him, offered myself as the one comfort we denied for so long. He filled me in perfection, an intimacy I dreamt about experiencing. We shuddered together, and it was everything beautiful I hoped it would be.
But even as his arms wrapped around me, his thickness overwhelmed me, and the heat from our passion wove us within delirious pleasure, we only delayed what was to come.
Guns had fired. People were in danger. Babies had bled.
Anathema and The Coup existed in a fragile, imaginary peace. The blood wasn’t just bad, it was toxic. Every drop that splashed burned both the man who wept it in the one who drew it.
I remembered the last war. It was the reason I didn’t return home during summer break in college. Why my father was buried and half of the older generation of Anathema lost to death or jail. It symbolized the beginning of the end for a club that once ruled the streets of the Valley in iron chariots.
The split came, more men died, and those who survived were bound and vengeance and honor to continue a senseless war.
Another battle was coming. Overnight, Pixie filled with women and children, members’ wives and girlfriends who weren’t safe in the comfort of their own home. Families housed in concret
e bunkers. Men armed themselves. Guns were drawn. Ammunition secured.
I didn’t want to think what morning would bring. It wasn’t a calm before the storm. We existed in a constant gale and fury but we grew too accustomed to the thunder.
Gold rolled from me, but he held my body close to his and whispered every word he longed to say for the past ten years. I couldn’t listen to such loving and fragile promises, not when they felt like a goodbye.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked. “You can’t get involved in this war. Silver needs you. I need you.”
“Anathema needs me too.”
“You could get hurt.” It was the only outcome I imagined without my stomach lurching.
“You were almost killed. Silver was almost…” His grip tightened. “We gotta end this before it gets worse.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“I have to know.”
“No, you don’t. Shit’s gonna go down, and I need you to keep my baby safe. That means you can’t know anything, in case the cops or the Feds show up.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to mow them down in the street and hope they don’t shoot first?”
“It’s all we can do.”
“Gold—”
“Don’t ask.”
“And don’t treat me like I don’t know what the hell Anathema is. Christ, I lost my dad to this. I understand what you have to do for the club. What is so goddamned important that it might separate us again?”
He rolled away just to rub his face. “Priest has been earning money for The Coup by muling stolen electronics. I know when they have their next drop. We’ll catch them at night, and will end it before it gets bloody.”
I twisted, but I only saw the outline of his body against the faint light drawn by the moon in the window.
“That won’t end this fight,” I said. “It’ll only start something new. It’s a catalyst for a bigger war.”
“It’s our best shot.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“Well, if you got a better one, tell me. Because right now? I’m fighting a junkie whore who’s looking to steal my baby, and I’m running from a traitor who has a bullet in the chamber with my name on it.”
“If you jump Priest there, The Coup will just look for revenge. Unless you can end their entire goddamned club with this plan, there won’t be any peace.”
Gold swore. The idea struck me.
I launched from the bed, tossing on a shirt and pants and throwing Gold’s jeans at him. Silver stirred, but I shushed him before he questioned me. I called his cell and left it on speakerphone to act as a baby monitor. I dragged him downstairs into Pixie.
“We have to think logically about this,” I said. “I know you’re upset about Silver, but if you want to make sure she has a future with her father, we have to do this right. No blood. No death. Get the guys together. We’re gonna go to church.”
Gold snorted, but he pounded on Keep’s door as he passed. “You ain’t getting near church, Annie.”
“Fine. But they have to hear me out. Believe me, I know how to win this.”
Anathema didn’t sleep before war. The brothers met me at the bar downstairs, and Thorne’s order drove most of the members’ old ladies from the room.
A young, curly haired woman remained, tucking her hand within Thorne’s. I hardly recognized Rose, but, then again, my father never let me befriend the younger girl. His partner in crime was her father, but that meant he knew more than he should. Said it wasn’t safe with her family.
Rose looked harmless enough, but she didn’t look like Anathema’s queen. She hadn’t shifted, even as Thorne spoke.
“You got thirty seconds, Annie, and only because your father was Bullet.” Thorne was a frightening man of strength and violence, and he came alive on nights before bloodshed. The club depended on him, Rose apparently loved him, but I wasn’t intimidated. I was right, and even he would see it.
“Don’t kill Priest,” I said. “I have a better plan.”
Keep hadn’t woken up. Something else slurred his words. “Takes the fun out of the war, don’t you think?”
Nothing was fun in war, not even whatever preconceived dignity came from dying in the street.
“If you know when and where The Coup is going to mule those electronics—”
Thorne swore at Gold for revealing the plan, but I ignored the profanity and powered through the club’s indignation.
“Why not trap them instead of endangering yourselves? This club is fractured enough. You need all the men you have, and you can’t afford to lose your few remaining soldiers to death or jail. The club needs you guys. Your families need you guys. Think this over.”
Gold kept his phone close, listening in case Silver woke. “What kind of trap?”
“Call the police.”
The club collectively swore. It was the simplest and most reasonable plan, but of course men of the 1% defied any and all reason when it came to the rule of law. It was as frustrating as it was stupid, and it’d get them all killed.
“You want these assholes off the street?” I looked over the men. “Then don’t fuck around in a war when all you have is me to stitch you up in a veterinary clinic. Use the drop to your advantage. You know the police want to get rid of The Coup just as badly as you do. Squealing this one time eliminates their presence, it keeps your men safe, and hell, you might even convince the suppliers you can move the shipment more effectively than The Coup.”
Keep shrugged. “I’d rather not die, if I can help it. Don’t look good in a suit, and Rose would want to dress me up.”
Rose shuddered. “I’m not burying you. Forget it.”
“Cremation then?”
“Keep!”
Thorne shook his head. “Annie, you’re done. Ain’t gonna happen.”
Gold held his hand up. “Wait. Say we do this. We follow them. Trap them. Nail The Coup after they grab the merchandise, once their suppliers are out of the area.” His expression darkened. “It’s cleaner than killing them. And we have a chance to get Priest and his men tossed in jail. Annie’s right. We aren’t going to dismantle The Coup tonight. Hell, I don’t even think we can take down Knight.”
Thorne grunted. “Knight is squeaky fucking clean. Priest would never rat on his traitor president. He doesn’t have much loyalty, but he’s got more for Luke than for me.”
“Then we don’t need to end Knight,” Keep said. “If we put enough pressure on Priest, their new guys ain’t gonna stick around. We get Priest in County? We take out their enforcer, their best gun, and we answer for Gold’s insult.”
Thorne waved to Gold. “You trust yourself not to kill the motherfucker?”
“I won’t have a chance.” Gold rubbed the exhaustion from his face. “Anathema can’t be near the drop when this goes down. Ain’t no way I’m putting our guys anywhere near a sting. The police chief has a hard on for us as it is. We give them The Coup, and he’ll get greedy. Turn it back on us.”
“Then don’t go.” I raised an eyebrow. “Send somebody neutral. Someone who blends in. Maybe someone not wearing an entire cow’s worth of leather?”
“Who?”
“Me.”
That pissed off the MC. Thorne, Scotch, Gold, Keep, and the other guys biding their time and holding their tongues offered a chorus of profanity.
It wasn’t chivalry to keep me out of danger, but times had changed since my father was an officer. Back then, women didn’t belong in the MC unless they were dancing on tables or making the babies.
I was neither of those.
I was saving the ass of the only man I ever loved. And we do it my way.
“We know where the drop is,” I said. “So I go. I’ll take a look around and get the information. Once it happens, I’ll call the cops. It won’t be a tip coming from Anathema. For all The Coup knows, it’s just a girl, walking home, witnessing something unusual. If I mention the words motorcycle or leathe
r jacket, you know damn well they’ll send the SWAT team.”
Gold refused. Thorne smirked.
“They park the truck off Washington Street,” Thorne said. “It’s near Broughton University. Think you could pass for a college kid?”
I was only twenty-seven, and everything was as perky as ever. Gold knew better than to let the question hang.
“Of course she can,” he said.
Scotch laughed. “Good boy.”
“It’ll be dark.” I nodded. “I can look like a student.”
“So can I,” Rose said.
Thorne answered immediately, as though he expected her to offer. “No, you can’t.”
“But I am a student there.”
“Then I’ll fucking unenroll you, sweetheart.”
Rosa ignored him. “If we go together, I can stay on the phone with Thorne and keep the guys updated. Annie could call the police and give real information, her name. It’ll be more credible that way, and less dangerous. She doesn’t have a file.”
“And you do?” I asked.
“You be surprised.” Rose shrugged. “No one would know we were there. We’d watch them, make the call, and get the hell out before anything goes bad. That way there’s no blood, and we don’t lose anybody else.”
“I don’t like it,” Thorne said.
Keep agreed. “Me neither.”
Rose wasn’t having it. “Brew would let me do it.”
The club collectively tensed. Keep swore.
“You’re so full of shit,” Keep said. “He’d kick your ass for suggesting it.”
Gold took my hand. “I don’t like putting the girls in danger, but this sounds safer than having a squad of bikers heading these fuckers off in the middle of the street. I say we let them do it.”
His fingers curled into mine. If it kept him from dying in the gutter, if it prevented any more wars from erupting in the Valley, I was all for it. I wasn’t losing Gold. I wasn’t letting him throw his life away over a lie when he had so much to live for.
It didn’t matter if Silver wasn’t his own blood. She was his family. And sometimes it took a family to prevent someone from making a terrible mistake, even if he meant to protect the ones he loved.
Thorne darkened as the club looked to him. He gestured for the men to follow.
