Running to the back of the house where our bedrooms were I opened her door and found her lying on the floor between her bathroom and the bed. When I had left six weeks ago my mother was at least ten pounds overweight. Now she was nothing but a bag of bones. She didn’t look like the same woman at all. Her eyes were shrunk back into her head, her face was lined with strain and sickness, her eyes and skin yellow with jaundice.
“M-m-mom?” I couldn’t help the wobble in my voice as I crouched down beside her. “What… what happened?”
“Willa…” She was gasping for air and I turned her onto her back. How had she gotten this bad over six weeks? It didn’t seem right to me. “I’m so happy you’re home… Something I need to tell you.”
I didn’t try to hide my tears as I held her. She was ice cold and I wondered how long she had been on the floor. “Don’t speak, Momma. I need to call an ambulance.” I already had my cellphone out, 911 already dialed and was about to hit send when my mother’s thin finger grabbed the phone from my hand.
“Willa… No.” She shook her head and I noticed her hair was thinner, brittle and dry. “I have to tell you…the truth.” She sucked in a few lungful’s of air, her lips trembling. “I wasn’t honest with you. This…it’s not just breast cancer. It had…already spread by the….time the doctors…found it. My liver. My lungs.”
This was a nightmare. I was going to wake up soon. I had to. I. Had. To. I would wake up back in the compound beside Spider and he would make love to me again before I got up for my run. He hadn’t broken my heart last night. My mother wasn’t dying…
Clara Blackstone’s fingers were so cold against my cheek it physically hurt and I knew that I was awake. Her fingers trembled and I pulled her closer to me, trying to let my warmth heat her up. “I…I have six more months, Willa. Maybe a year if…if I’m lucky.”
The tears were pouring from my eyes so fast I could barely see her face. “But you’ve been taking chemo and radiation.”
“They didn’t help. The cancer is…too advanced. I’m sorry, baby. So…sorry.”
Spider
The door to Razor’s Ink Shop opened, but I didn’t bother to look up from the back piece I was designing for Jet Hannigan. The dark angel was going to be very detailed and would require a lot of shading, so I needed to get this right before I started inking it on his back later in the week.
For the last two months I’d been working myself to death. The busier I was the easier it was to keep thoughts of Willa out of my head. Of course that didn’t help when it came time for bed. I had tried to drink myself into oblivion so I wouldn’t dream of her, but that had only made the dreams that much more real.
Two weeks after I’d gotten home I’d tried to call her cellphone. She had changed her number so now I had no way of making contact with her. I knew that she lived somewhere outside of Seattle, but I was fighting with myself about going nomad and going searching for her. I couldn’t breathe right without her, though.
The only thing stopping me was that I knew she hated me. When I had woken up the next morning with two girls lain out around me I’d known I’d screwed up even if I didn’t remember doing any screwing. Cletus had told me that Willa had walked into my room and seen the two females then taken off. I’d fucked up bad and I wasn’t ever going to get that girl back.
“I am officially linked to Satan for the rest of my fucking life.”
I dropped my pencil at the defeated tone in my best friend’s voice. Glancing up, I found him standing at the front counter, leaning on his elbows that he had propped on the glass top. His shoulders were slumped, his head bowed. Last month Tasha had called Bash and told him she was pregnant. She had no idea who the father was, could have been any of up to six guys including The Red Dragons’ sergeant-at-arms her father had offed. She had planned on having a DNA test and Bash had to produce his sample. That had been the end of it. Bash hadn’t seemed to be worried about Tasha’s kid being his.
Apparently he should have been worried, because now he had a huge problem on his hands.
Bash hadn’t been in a good place since before we had gotten home. Raven was avoiding him and I knew that was killing him. The chick had come out and told him point blank she wanted to be his ol’ lady. Guess his way of telling her no had put her off for good. Bash was slowly losing his mind, fucking anything with a vagina that got near him to get Raven out of his head. I could have told him it wasn’t going to work, but now he had living proof what a bad idea it was.
“What are you going to do?” I asked the only question that really needed answering at the moment.
Bash ran a hand over his face. “I told her that I didn’t care what she did with the kid. I’d send her support checks and that was all she was getting out of me.”
His answer had my jaw clenching so hard it started to ache. I wanted to yell at him that with a mother like Tasha to deal with, Bash should take at least some interest in the poor kid. It wasn’t my place though, and I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to say I would be handling this situation any differently if I were in his shoes.
“Are you going to tell the club?”
Bash shook his head. “Not yet. Not until I have to. I can just see Jet getting all holy on my ass, wanting me to get custody of the kid. She’d be better off without a shit father like me.”
I raised a brow. “She?”
“Whatever DNA testing Tasha had done confirmed she’s having a girl.”
“Congrats, man.” I slapped him on the back and then picked my pencil up. “What about Raven? You planning on telling her?”
His face tightened. “She isn’t talking to me right now, so no. I won’t be telling her unless I have to.”
“It won’t be forever, brother,” I assured him as I started on the tattoo once more. “Raven will be eighteen before you know it and you can have what is yours.”
“Yeah, if I survive that long,” Bash muttered as he walked out of the shop.
Chapter 7
2 Years Later…
Bash
I was going to kill someone tonight.
Frowning at the men sitting around me, I clenched my teeth and tried to concentrate on anything other than the fact that Raven was walking around with shorts on up to her ass and a hot pink bra on under her white Hannigans’ shirt. Didn’t she realize that I had trouble not looking at her when she was wearing her normal work outfit, so it was ten times as hard when she was showing off what only I was allowed to see?
Muttering a curse under my breath, I chugged the half full beer in front of me and practically slammed the bottle down on the tabletop. The secrecy thing was getting to me. Bad. For three months now I’d been sneaking around with Raven and I was tired of it. Tired of not getting to claim what was mine. Tired of having to keep my feelings hidden when all I wanted to do was watch her. Tired of not getting to touch her when every second she wasn’t in my arms I ached for her skin on mine.
I knew she was struggling just as hard as I was, but she refused to let me go to her brothers. My Raven, who was scared of nothing and no one, was terrified for me. Afraid that they would kill me. I didn’t relish the beating that would follow, but I could take it. There was nothing they could do to me that would keep me from my female.
“Eyes to yourself, brother.”
I didn’t glance to my left at the sound of Spider’s voice. My eyes were on Raven as she bent over a table in the back near the pool tables. A few of the ol’ ladies were sitting there with a pitcher of frozen margaritas. They said something that made her laugh and that sound was like an electrical shock to my dick, which was already at half-mast in readiness for her.
Two tables over from the ol’ ladies sat a group of newcomers. They’d ridden in an hour or so ago, stopping on their way through to who-the-hell-knew-where. Posers, in their leather jackets and expensive boots. Their bikes had badass artwork on them, but that was about the only thing going for the young punks playing at being a gang.
That was what they h
ad called themselves. A gang. They didn’t have a clue what it meant to be part of an MC. Were clueless as to the rules. Especially the Angel’s Halo rule.
No one touches Raven Hannigan.
They hadn’t attempted to touch her, but I could see them building up the courage. It was Saturday and like usual the sheep were in attendance. Girls were all over the single club members sitting around drinking or playing pool. None of them attempted to approach the newcomers though and I could tell that was pissing them off. It was just a matter of time before one of them laid a finger on Raven.
I wasn’t the only one watching them watch Raven. Jet was standing behind the bar mixing drinks while Colt stocked the fridge with more bottled beer. Even as he was pouring shots his eyes never left the five newcomers who were talking loudly over the bar’s usual noise of rock music and high-pitched female giggles. It grated down my spine—all of it. I popped my knuckles, ready for them to make a move.
“Am I going to have to go over and rip their heads off to get you to calm the fuck down?” Spider demanded in a low voice so that Hawk, who was sitting at a table nearby with Raider and two other members of the club, wouldn’t be able to hear him. They had a poker game going, but like Jet, the other two Hannigan brothers were watching the newcomers watching their baby sister.
“I’m cool,” I assured my friend with a lie that tasted bad on my tongue. I wasn’t cool. I was boiling with rage. If only I could stake my claim, those fuckers wouldn’t be sitting there eyeing my female.
“Hey baby, how about another round of beers?”
I jerked as the one who appeared to be the leader of the five posers called Raven ‘baby’. When she didn’t automatically turn around, the loser reached out and tugged on her arm. Every muscle in my body tensed, ready and willing to kick ass. Behind me I heard two chairs scoot across the wood floor. Hawk and Raider. I didn’t have to glance at the bar to know that Jet and Colt were about to jump over the bar top. But they didn’t take a step forward, waiting to see what happened next.
Raven turned her head slowly, glancing down at the hand still tugging on her arm. When she lifted her eyes they were ice cold as she glared at the man. “I’m not your baby. Get your own beer.”
“Come on, sweetbutt.” The poser gave her a grin that I assumed was supposed to be charming, but just served to piss me off. “Go get daddy a beer.”
Spider snorted beer out his nose. He coughed, laughing so hard he was choking. I couldn’t help but grin myself. That wasn’t going to end well for the newcomer. Some of my tension eased as Raven turned to face the biker and his friends. Her olive-jade green eyes were bright with anger. Stepping closer she bent her head and whispered something in the man’s ear that had his Adams apple bobbing.
The man stood and reached a hand out as if to grab her ass. She didn’t give him the chance as she elbowed him in the sternum and then lifted her knee quick and hard to his groin. “Call me a sweetbutt again!” she screamed. “Now go get your own fucking beer, daddy.”
Behind Raven, the ol’ ladies were cracking up while the biker fell to his knees, wheezing as he struggled to stay conscious after the debilitating hit his dick and balls had just taken. As hard as she had kneed him, I was sure that the guy was going to need retrieval surgery to remove his balls from his throat. She turned back toward the table but before she could take a step one of the other newcomers reached out for her, his face set in angry lines.
As if in slow motion I saw his hand rise and I was across the room a second before he made contact with her arm. His hold on her was hard, bruising and I saw red. Jet and his brothers didn’t have time to move before I had the man on his back, his nose broken and his left eye already swelling shut. I didn’t even remember punching him the first time, let alone the second.
No one touched Raven Hannigan. No one touched my female.
Three sets of arms were suddenly around me, punching me. I elbowed the man on my right in the face, and grinned when I heard his nose break. The one behind me didn’t last long as I head-butted him twice, but he had a tight hold on me and I went down with him. The third man was the biggest and a little slow in the head by the look on his face. That didn’t mean he couldn’t fight though and I suspected that he was only kept around as a kind of bodyguard for the other four idiots.
I felt a kick to my ribs and growled at the sudden sharp pain. Working my way free of the man who still had a death grip on me and my shirt, I stood, only to have to duck when the ox of a man swung his meat clever fists at my head. The next punch landed on my jaw and I was unable to control the instinct to dismember as I hit the man over and over with my fists. Head. Stomach. Elbow to the ribs. Kidney. Kidney. The ox stumbled back, but not before he reached out to try and catch himself.
What he caught was my shirt that I wore when I worked at Uncle Jack’s on the older cars that he sometimes got in. The ox went down, ripping my shirt open on the way.
I stood there, shirt hanging wide open, sucking in air to calm the boiling in my veins that had started long before that fucker had grabbed hold of Raven. Around me the bar was quiet. Someone had even turned the music off so all I heard was the sound of the men on the ground around me groaning and my own heavy breathing.
When I turned around I expected all eyes to be on the bloody men behind me, but they weren’t. Instead their eyes were on me. Or rather the new ink Spider had slapped on me that morning.
‘Raven’ was in bold, gothic style writing across the left side of my chest.
I heard Raven gasp as she took in the brand that told the world that I was hers just as much as she was mine. She stepped forward, her fingers trembling as they slid over her name on my skin. When she lifted her eyes to mine they were full of a mixture of wonder and pure terror. Terror for me as I suddenly felt the breath of five raging Irish bikers behind me.
She pulled my shirt closed and stepped closer. “I love you,” she whispered before putting herself between me and her brothers. “Jet… Don’t.”
“Move, Rave.” Jet’s tone was colder than I had ever heard it. He was the one who had taken over as a father figure when Mad Max Hannigan had died. He was the one who had always been the most protective and possessive of Raven. She had been his baby from the day she was born. Of course he was going to be my executioner.
“Please.” Were those tears in Raven’s voice? She wouldn’t let me turn her around to see if there were. She was glued in front of me, my last wall of defense before my death—or my wish for death. “Don’t hurt him. I love him.”
The look on Jet’s face only turned colder. “How long?” His eyes were on Raven but the question was directed entirely at me.
I stroked my hand over Raven’s blonde hair, knowing I wouldn’t get to touch it or her for at least a few weeks. Which was probably how long I was going to be in traction once the Hannigan brothers were done with me. “Since her birthday,” I told my MC president honestly.
My answer had Jet’s eyes finally meeting mine. “That long?” His head turned to the side as if he found me curious. He most likely did. I could have lied and told him that I hadn’t touched Raven yet. That I was waiting until I had his and his brother’s permission. Maybe I should have gone that route, but I hadn’t. I’d taken what I wanted and said fuck the consequences.
Consequences that I was going to have to face like a man now.
I nodded. “Yes. That long.”
“I never would have suspected it of you, Bash. The ever loyal enforcer breaking the one rule that would automatically sign your death certificate.” He turned his neck left and right, cracking it. It was a scare tactic.
But I wasn’t scared. As soon as I could walk after the beating I was about to receive, I would get to call Raven mine once and for all.
Willa
I was sound asleep when the phone rang.
I jerked awake and sat straight up in bed. The last time I had gotten a call in the middle of the night was when my mother had died. She’d hung on for eight months before
the cancer had finally taken her from me. Those eight months hadn’t been pretty. I’d tried to take care of her on my own, but one day my mother had asked her doctor to admit her to a local nursing home. She had died three days later. I knew she had done it so that I wouldn’t have to live with the memory of her dying in our house.
Now I wasn’t sure what to expect. My heart was pounding as I reached for the phone. “Hello?”
I felt the blood leaving my face as I listened to the federal agent. There had been a raid on my father’s compound last night and most of his MC were dead. Including my father and sister. Tears burned my eyes as I nodded my head while the special agent continued on and on. I couldn’t have cared less that Tasha was dead, but my father…
“… I was hoping you would be able to assist me in getting ahold of your niece’s father.”
I was snapped out of my grief stupor by the special agent’s request. I knew that Bash Reid was Lexa’s father. Other than that I hadn’t kept up with my sister’s baby daddy issues. The only reason I even knew my niece’s name and that Bash was her father was because I’d overheard Duke telling Clara shortly before my mother had died.
“Is Lexa okay?” Lexa lived at the compound with Tasha and my dad. If that place had been shot up then there was a chance Lexa had gotten hurt as well.
“Your niece is fine, Miss Blackstone. But if I don’t reach her legal guardian in the next few hours I will have no choice but to turn her over to child services.”
Heart pounding for an entirely different reason, I assured the special agent that I would get ahold of Bash as quickly as possible. A glance at the bedside clock told me that it was earlier than I had originally thought. Just after one. I wondered what Bash was doing right now as I punched in his number. I had changed my number when I had gotten back from Vegas two years ago, but I had kept Raider, Bash, and even Spider’s numbers in my phone. Every now and then I would pull up Spider’s number, type out the anger I wanted to throw at him, but never sending the text message.
Angel's Halo: Entangled Page 6
