THE BABY OATH

by Sophia Gray

  “Fine.” I pretended to pout and he swatted me once for my trouble.

  “I couldn’t love you more,” he whispered, and kissed me once more before getting dressed and heading out to the living room.

  He’d called Maddie our little girl.

  Things would never be easy with Rafe. Life would be complicated at times and there would be drama I’d rather not deal with. But we’d face all of it together.

  As a family.

  THE END

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  SINGLE DADDY DOM: Bone Breakers MC

  By Sophia Gray

  Chapter One

  Cal

  Tap. Tap tap tap. Cal rolled his eyes, annoyed at being disturbed when he’d just opened up his first beer of the evening. It had been a long day at the office dealing with patients, and then a long afternoon at the MC clubhouse, and all he wanted to do was curl up into his couch, watch some mindless television, and fall asleep. But no, the universe wouldn’t grant him that much, it seemed. Somebody was at his front door.

  “No thanks, I don’t want to buy whatever you’re selling—” Cal started to say as he opened his door. He cut himself off when he saw his ex-girlfriend, Briana, standing on his front porch. What the fuck? Cal thought to himself. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. He hadn’t seen or heard from her in almost five years, after she’d left in the middle of the night with no warning. He stood there, fumbling over his words, for a long moment before he finally forced himself to say, “Bri. Long time no see.”

  “Yeah, save it, Cal,” Briana said, sighing deeply and brushing some hair off her forehead. Her face was drawn, her cheeks a little sunken in. She looked like she hadn’t slept in months. “I’m not here to play nice with you.”

  “What are you here for, then?” Cal wondered out loud, finally spotting the heavy-looking suitcase that was propped up on the porch next to Briana.

  Briana blew out her breath forcefully, her eyes going glassy and unfocused. “This is hard to say.”

  Cal felt his impatience start to ramp up, resisting the urge to roll his eyes in annoyance as Briana struggled to come up with an explanation. In all honesty, though, Cal knew he wasn’t as angry as he should have been. Briana had abandoned him without even telling him why. He’d even worried that she’d been kidnapped by a rival MC until he had a private investigator locate her a few weeks after she disappeared. But despite all of that, he couldn’t help but feel a little concerned as he stared at the woman across from him. She’d lost a lot of weight since he’d last seen her, and time hadn’t gone easy on her face. She wore deep wrinkles where before her skin had been silky smooth. So even though there was a part of him tempted to yell at her to spit it out, he held himself back, waiting in the excruciating silence until Briana finally spoke again.

  “You have a son,” Briana said, clearing her throat and straightening her shoulders as she met Cal’s confused gaze. “He’s right there, waiting in the car.” She turned and pointed at the cheap, beat-up car parked in his driveway. When Cal squinted a little, he could make out the silhouette of a small face pressed against one of the back windows.

  “What?” Cal sputtered out, totally dumbfounded.

  “You have a son. With me,” Briana said. “I ran away when you knocked me up, okay? And I had a kid. His name is Bobby. He’s four. He’s…a good kid.”

  Cal lost his breath for a moment as Briana’s words sunk in. I have a son? Cal repeated to himself silently. What?

  A thousand questions popped up into his mind. How do I know the kid is mine? Why did she never tell me before now? Is he healthy? Is he smart? Is he anything like me? Or is he more like her? Why did she run away? We could have been a family.

  But he didn’t ask any of that. Instead, what left his mouth was, “Can I meet him?”

  “Oh, you can do a lot more than that,” Briana said with a harsh, bitter chuckle. She turned on her heel, leaving the packed suitcase on the porch as she walked out to the car, pulling a little boy from the backseat before carrying him back up to Cal’s house. “Here he is. Meet Bobby.”

  “Hi,” the little boy said softly, waving his tiny hand a little until Cal reciprocated the motion.

  “Hey there. I’m Cal,” he said stiffly, unsure of what was appropriate in this situation.

  “He’s your dad, the guy I’ve been telling you about,” Briana said into Bobby’s head, hitching him up higher on her hips, like his weight was becoming too heavy a burden to bear. “He’s the one you’re going to be staying with from now on.”

  “Wait, what?” Cal asked, knocked off guard by Briana’s casual statement.

  “He’s yours now. He’s potty-trained and everything, so the hard part’s over with, okay? I packed everything he needs in this bag,” Briana said quickly before slowly lowering Bobby to the ground. “Bye, baby. Daddy will take care of you now, all right?”

  “Wait, wait, Bri, hold on, let’s talk about this,” Cal said, feeling a wave of panic start to rise inside of him as the small child stumbled forward into his house, brushing past him in his curiosity to discover whatever waited inside.

  “Nothing to talk about,” Briana said as she marched away from the house, power-walking down the sidewalk towards the driveway. “It’s done.”

  “It’s not fucking done, just give me a second to—” Cal cut himself off as Briana broke into a run, bolting towards the car. “Bri! Wait!” He launched himself into motion, going as fast as he could to get to Briana before she could get away, but she hopped into the car, put it in drive, and sped away down the street before he could even get to the bottom of the driveway. “Fuck!” Cal cried out, watching as Briana took the first available turn, probably heading for the highway.

  Cal quickly considered his options. He could hop on his bike and go after her, but…what about the kid? He couldn’t leave a four-year-old alone in his house, even if Briana was lying about who the father was. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Cal muttered under his breath, burying his head in his hands for a second just to steady himself before he slowly walked back up the driveway and headed back into his house.

  The little kid had found a miniature figurine of a motorcycle, something one of Cal’s patients had gotten for him years before as a thank you gift. The kid—Bobby, Cal reminded himself—was looking at it with wonder in his eyes, pushing it along the top of Cal’s coffee table and murmuring, “Vroom vroom!” under his breath.

  “Do you know where Briana—where your mom was planning on going?” Cal asked, feeling his tongue go dry in his mouth as the little kid turned to face him, staring back at him with his own bright blue eyes. Oh, Jesus, Cal realized. He’s mine. There could be no doubt about it.

  “My mommy probably went to the store!” Bobby said brightly, smiling up at him. “That’s where she goes sometimes, and then she comes back with that brown stuff.”

  “That brown stuff?” Cal asked, feeling the contents of his stomach roll around anxiously inside of his gut.

  “The stuff she puts in her arm,” Bobby said, wrinkling his nose up. “She says I’m not allowed to touch it till I get big. Oh, well.” The kid resumed playing with the little motorcycle, making it go faster along the border of the coffee table.

  “So you don’t know where she might have gone just now?” Cal asked again, speaking more slowly this time in the hopes of getting the kid to understand.

  “She’ll be back in a little bit,” Bobby said, nodding to himself confidently. “Don’t worry. I used to worry, but then I get over it.”

  Cal didn’t know what to say. He stood frozen in place as the kid kept playing with the toy motorcycle, content to wait for his mother, completely oblivious that he might not ever see her again.

  Fuck. What the hell was he go
ing to do now?

  Chapter Two

  Antonia

  “Antonia! Get in here!” Mr. Lee, Antonia’s boss called from across the room. Antonia felt the back of her neck get hot, embarrassed that everybody in the office turned to look at her as she got up from her seat to follow Mr. Lee into his private office. He didn’t sound happy.

  “Sir?” Antonia asked as Mr. Lee slammed the door shut behind her, gesturing for her to take a seat. “Is something wrong?”

  Mr. Lee sighed deeply, lacing his fingers together and pressing them to his mouth for a long, silent moment before he finally cleared his throat and spoke. “Look, Antonia. You’ve been a good employee here. Reliable. Polite. Punctual.”

  “Thank you,” Antonia said softly, feeling her heart start to pound insistently at the base of her throat. This wasn’t going to end well, was it?

  “But I got a complaint today from a customer who said that you were so rude on the phone to him that he will be taking his business elsewhere. I can’t let that happen.”

  “What? Who was it?” Antonia asked, her jaw dropping open in shock. She was never rude to potential customers, even when they were mean to her. She knew that it was essential to be incredibly nice and helpful on the phone with would-be clients for Mr. Lee’s law firm.

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” Mr. Lee said. “He said his name was Paul, I think, but it’s irrelevant now, isn’t it? We lost his business. Because of you.”

  A cold chill settled over Antonia’s body, making the hair on her body stand up. She shook her head in disbelief, then squared her shoulders back and tried to speak as confidently as she could. “Mr. Lee, sir. Please listen to me. I think I know what’s happened here.”

  “Oh, you do?” Mr. Lee asked skeptically.

  “Yes,” Antonia said. “Paul is my ex-husband’s name. I’m pretty sure he called in a complaint about me just to piss me off. I’m sorry for that, and I’ll talk to him and make sure that it doesn’t happen again, so he doesn’t waste your time with his little stupid pranks, but—”

  Mr. Lee cut her off with his hand, shaking his head at her. “Antonia. I’m disappointed in you. I know you want to keep your job, but this is such a pathetic excuse. Really? Blaming it on the ex? How many times do you think I’ve heard that one over the course of my career?”

  “But it’s true!” Antonia protested, her voice unfortunately coming out much more high-pitched and squeaky than she’d intended.

  “Sure,” Mr. Lee said, scoffing a little. “Listen, you’ve done a pretty good job here, before today. So I’ll tell you what. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation, but you’ve got to get your stuff out of here by the end of the day.”

  Antonia wanted to protest further, but she could tell based on the firm, almost stern tone in Mr. Lee’s voice that there was no room for argument in his mind. He’d made his decision already, and there was nothing Antonia could do to convince him otherwise. “Can I get the full payment for today, sir?” she asked softly.

  “Of course,” Mr. Lee said. “Just be sure that you turn in your badge and everything to HR before you leave. All right?”

  Antonia nodded slowly as Mr. Lee walked around her to open the door to the rest of the office, clearly trying to get her to walk back out to her cubicle and leave him alone. But for a moment she was frozen on the spot, her body incapable of moving as reality set into her mind. This was really happening. She was losing her only source of income, and with all the bills this month she didn’t even have enough money to feed her son Daniel for a week. What was she going to do?

  Finally, Mr. Lee put his hand on her shoulder, tapping his fingers on the top of her shirt until she finally summoned the will to force her body out of the chair and stumble back out to her desk.

  She worked the rest of the day in a haze, her thoughts all blurred together as she entered numbers into spreadsheets and answered the phone and did the other mindless tasks assigned to until 5 o’clock. Antonia cleaned out her desk, her skin burning with embarrassment as other office aides and paralegals murmured under their breath around her, clearly gossiping about her inglorious demise, and then she dropped off her badge with the HR representative before bolting from the building as quickly as she could. She just wanted to get home, hug her son as closely as she could, and cry until she fell asleep.

  By the time Antonia reached her apartment halfway across town, her whole body ached, every muscle tense and every bone aching like her body knew the tragedy that had occurred earlier that afternoon. Whatever, I’ll figure it out, she told herself, trying to summon as much inner strength as she possibly could for her son Daniel’s sake. She had to be strong for him.

  But before she could get into her apartment, she noticed a white square of paper taped to her front door. Oh, Jesus Christ, what now? Antonia wondered, blinking several times before her eyes could focus well enough to read the writing on the paper. Eviction Notice, Antonia mumbled out loud, needing to speak the words audibly out into the air around her before her brain could truly comprehend them. “No. No, no, no!”

  Antonia ripped the notice off the wall to read it more closely. “Due to circumstances in violation of the terms of your lease, you have two days to vacate the premises. Any possessions remaining after that time will be surrendered to the landlord.” Antonia crumpled up the eviction notice into a little ball, panting as she fought the urge to scream like a banshee and disturb all of her neighbors. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!” she hissed under her breath, banging her head against her front door lightly, just enough to cause a little pain to distract her from the reality of her awful, horribly unlucky life.

  “All right, fuck this,” she muttered to herself, her blood surging defiantly inside of her as she turned on her heel and marched toward the landlord’s apartment across the hall. She banged on the door as hard as she could, tapping her feet impatiently as she waited for her landlord to get off his lazy ass and explain himself.

  “What?” her landlord Craig said crabbily, barely opening the door to his apartment a crack before sticking his head out to glare at her.

  But Antonia didn’t back down. She glared back at her landlord, a creepy old guy with wandering eyes and huge hairy hands. “What is going on, Craig?” she asked, trying to come off as imperiously annoyed as possible, like she was the one with the power here. “Eviction notice?”

  “Yeah,” Craig said, licking his teeth before spitting on the ground next to Antonia’s feet. “You broke the rules, you’re out. That’s what you agreed to when you signed the lease.”

  “What rules? I haven’t broken any rules,” Antonia said, furrowing her brow in frustration and confusion.

  “How about threatening the safety of another tenant in this building?” Craig said, narrowing his eyes as he stared hard at Antonia, who felt herself tremble a little as a result of his tangible rage.

  “Did…did my ex-husband come by and talk to you or something?” Antonia asked tentatively, even though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer to that question.

  Craig snarled at her, scoffing and shaking his head. “You’re a fucking piece of work, lady. Coming here playing the victim, trying to get my sympathy. Well, it isn’t going to work. Two days!”

  “Wait, I—” Antonia tried to say, but before she could get anything else out, Craig slammed the door in her face. “God fucking damn it!” Antonia screamed, barely holding her herself back from punching a hole in the door. She inhaled deeply, sucking in as much air as possible to ground herself back to reality before slowly walking back to her apartment, only exhaling again after she closed the front door behind her.

  “Something wrong?”

  Antonia looked up from the floor and saw her babysitter Michelle sitting on the couch next to a sleeping Daniel.

  “You heard that?” Antonia asked. She sighed as she put her purse down and tossed the eviction notice into the trash.

  “Was that you howling out in the hallway?” Michelle asked as she got to her feet, repos
itioning Daniel on the couch so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. “Yeah, I think everyone on the whole block heard that one.”

  “Fuck,” Antonia muttered. She walked over to her kitchen and pulled out a bottle of whiskey she kept around for “special” occasions. “You want a drink? I’m having one. Or twelve.”

  Michelle smiled and shook her head. “No, I got to go see my boyfriend soon. I’m sorry. I wish I could stay and help out more.”

  “No, no, it’s okay, I understand,” Antonia said as she poured herself a glass full of whiskey, taking a deep drink and gagging a little at the thick, bitter taste. “Anyway, I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep paying you, Michelle. So this might be goodbye for a while.”