Hawk's Baby: Kings of Chaos MC

by Naomi West

  The house was so quiet that it was oppressive. She couldn’t seem to feel properly, her mind reeling. Suddenly a wave of nausea descended over her, crashing hard against her center. The shattered bits of her heart seemed to click against each other, lighting up the silence with the sound of her chest collapsing in on itself.

  The man who had been living in her home, the man who had slept in her bed, and the man who had brought her such immeasurable pleasure, was a gang member and murderer. Feeling cold, then hot, she felt unsafe in her own home for the first time in her entire life. Unable to think of anything else to do, Felice picked up her phone and called the first person she could think of.

  “Felice, darling, it’s very early. Is this important?” her mother’s too-calm voice said, obviously unhappy that Felice had woken her.

  “I — ” Tears bubbled to the surface of her eyes, cutting off her air for a second. “He lied to me, I — ” It was impossible; the whole world had fallen away and left her bereft and empty. How had her mother not felt the end of the world happen?

  “Felice, I need to you take a deep breath and tell me what is wrong, okay?” Her mother sounded more awake now, as though Felice’s panic was caffeine to her bloodstream. “Breathe, Kitten.”

  Taking a deep breath in, Felice noticed the world stopped leaning to one side long enough for her to get the words out. “Pierce. He’s not who I thought he is, Mother.”

  # # #

  Pierce

  After Pierce woke and headed downstairs, he was shocked to find a very silent Felice and Dolores at the kitchen table. Both held identical mugs filled with coffee they didn’t drink and identical expressions of calm that had his head reeling. Something bad had happened.

  More than anything, Pierce wanted to protect Felice from whatever it was that had put that expression on her face, but he was pretty sure there was nothing he could do. A sick, cold feeling welled up in him as he stared at their too-calm faces.

  Tears welled in Felice’s eyes as she watched him walk down the stairs, her whole body quivering with something like fear or rage. Her whole body seemed to move away from him as he entered the room. Her emerald eyes lost their sparkle and looked flat and lifeless. And those cupid’s bow lips that always had a wicked little smile for him were turned down and unmoved by his presence.

  Pierce felt hot, then cold, his head spinning as he froze in place. As much as he wanted to go to her and comfort her, he was pretty sure that he was the source of her pain. So he did nothing at all.

  “You were on the news this morning, Pierce Normandy,” Dolores said without any preamble. “We saw your pretty face all over the national news.”

  Pierce hung his head, feeling like he’d just been punched in the gut. Swallowing, he tried to get his bearing back in a world that was reeling. “Okay. My name is Pierce Normandy, and I was once in a gang.”

  Dolores shook her head, setting her mug down on the table with enough force to spill the coffee over the edge of it. She didn’t seem to notice, but Felice did. She stared at the spill, looking like she might cry over it. “I knew that already, boy. I had someone pull up your record. But it features a few stolen property charges and some reckless driving tickets. It didn’t say a fucking thing about murder.”

  Pierce opened his mouth, but paused when Felice picked up her head. “You checked Pierce’s background?”

  “Yes,” Dolores said, dismissively, waving a hand at her daughter. “But the murder rap was too new to show up properly, wasn’t it, Pierce? Who were you running from?”

  He cleared his throat painfully, staring down the Domiano matron with fiery eyes. “Gunner,” he said, the name bringing up all sorts of angry thoughts he fought to keep under control. “He — I watched him kill Snake Eyes. But he wasn’t planning on taking the fall for it. He set me up. So I ran. It was all he wanted; he hasn’t sent any pursuit here, which just means he wanted my turf. So, he has it, and I was supposed to disappear; I have a buddy in California that promised to get me out of the country if I ever needed it.”

  There was silence in the room, and Pierce crossed his arms over his chest, standing in a defensive position unconsciously. “I left with the intention of sailing straight through as quickly as possible, but I got held up by a lady who offered me more money that I’d ever had at one time.” Sighing through his nose, he met Dolores’ eyes with his own, both of them unflinching. “But then I spent some time with you daughter and ended up caring for her deeply. I should have left before I hurt you, Felice. I — I’m sorry.”

  Dolores was watching him with eyes burning with anger, but as he spoke, her demeanor shifted, changing from anger to something more thoughtful. Staring at him for a long time, Dolores seemed to be searching every inch of his soul for something that Pierce was pretty sure she wouldn’t find. After his life of crime, he was pretty sure he didn’t have a soul anymore. Never in his life had he ever regretted those decisions that lead him to become a criminal until right this very second.

  Seeing Felice’s distraught face, he wanted to take every second of it back.

  Finally, after an eternity of silence, Dolores finally turned to her daughter, her expression much softer than Pierce had ever seen it. “Felice, darling, I need you to call up that slimy Kenneth Vanderbilt man to give our Pierce ‘Smith’ a believable background story. We need to make him as reputable looking as possible for tonight, and take great pains that all of his tattoos are covered.”

  Felice looked up at her mother, her mouth agape. Pierce didn’t notice as he was giving Dolores a very similar expression. Suddenly, Pierce realized what had happened; Dolores saw past all of his bad-guy posturing and down to the core of him.

  She knew he was falling hard for Felice, and not a thing in the world could stop it.

  Wincing, Pierce realized that she was going to milk that for all it was worth. And in the next second, he realized he didn’t care at all, just so long as it meant he could steal a little more time with Felice.

  That was all that mattered.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Felice

  Lucky for everyone involved, Kenneth Vanderbilt was free that morning, and was willing to make the thirty-mile hike out to Felice’s home in the desert. Felice didn’t really know how to feel about any of it, the flurry of emotions just under her skin made her feel like she was lost at sea.

  Feeling empty and listless, she called the only person in the world that could make her feel better and could keep a secret: Jenny. Her best friend would show up to help, no questions asked.

  Jenny flew in the door without even knocking after only about ten minutes, looking like she’d just poured herself out of bed, into some shoes, and come right over. She had a little leftover makeup from the night before, and her pretty, super-long hair was up in the messiest of messy buns. She still managed to look cute as hell though, with made Felice a little jealous. But she instantly felt better with her BFF by her side.

  All in an instant, she realized she completely forgiven her best buddy for any error she may have made with Clay. It was all water under the bridge, and Jenny would always be her best friend, no matter what.

  It took the whole rest of the thirty minutes they had remaining to catch Jenny up on the news of the morning. She took it better than expected and was the shoulder Felice needed more than anything to cry on. Pierce smartly made himself scarce and even Dolores found somewhere else to be. Felice told Jenny everything, her speech only interrupted a few times by Dolores yelling at the TV remotes for not working how hers worked at home.

  She was ready to face the world by the time Kenneth arrived. It was a good thing, too, because Kenneth came with a world of bad news.

  “I feel for yah, girly,” Kenneth said, pilfering a cup of coffee and a plate of snacks off of the table. He’d managed to drain two pots of coffee, a whole plate of cookies, and a floral arrangement made out of flower-shaped pieces of fruit, and he still looked around for more to stuff into his ugly maw. “Unfortunately, I can no longer h
elp you.”

  Felice never liked Kenneth; he was a slime ball and worked with circles of people she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but sometimes, a celebutante needed a slimy man like him to keep the dirt from getting on her own Dior pumps. “What do you mean you can no longer help us?” Dolores asked, slamming her hands down onto the table.

  “I gotta work on the right side of the law for a bit; have some law men watching me a little too tightly right now. So I’m 100% clean as soap until the vultures find a different corpse to circle,” Kenneth said, picking his yellowed teeth with his fingers. “So, as much as I want to, I can’t get your young man a new social security number or passport or anything. I can’t even refer yah to someone else without making some problems for my friends, yah see? And probably problems for you all, too.”

  Felice couldn’t seem to keep her head above water long enough to catch all of his words. Everything seemed to blur in and out of focus. Why were they doing this? Pierce had to tell the police everything. They shouldn’t be covering this up. She didn’t even care about the half a million dollars or Clay or anything else anymore. Forget pride. No, this was far more important.

  But she couldn’t seem to formulate a proper argument, so she kept her mouth shut, letting the others speak instead. She was too tired to argue with anyone, anyway. So while Pierce, Jenny, Dolores, and Kenneth argued over their next step, Felice just walked away from the table and found a quiet corner of the TV room to be alone.

  How had everything gone so completely wrong so quickly?

  # # #

  Pierce

  “I don’t think you understand what you’re saying, Felice,” Pierce said, trying to keep his voice even. He was careful not to interrupt her when she spoke; she got enough of that from her mother without getting it from him, too. But it was incredibly difficult to keep himself in check when she was spouting nonsense.

  Jenny was watching the two of them with curious eyes, but she didn’t interject. Thankfully, Kenneth and Dolores had already left, finally bringing a modicum of peace back to the white house in the desert.

  “Then explain it to me,” she whispered, her face a map of anger and strain. “Please.”

  “I can’t go to jail; police won’t take my word. They won’t trust me. I’ve seen it before. It’s why it’s so easy to set one of us up if you want his place. They don’t care which one of us actually did it. They just want someone to serve the time. In jail, I won’t be able to do anything.” Pierce sat back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest to keep from taking Felice’s hands. “If I don’t find evidence for what Gunner has done, I can’t go to the police.”

  “But if you go back to Boston, Gunner could kill you.” Felice was clutching a bunch of tissues like a lifeline, her eyes clear of tears. She just seemed to be holding them just in case. Either that or she desperately needed something to hold onto.

  “But if I go back, maybe I can clear my name and clean things up instead of hiding. I’ve never been good at hiding, and maybe if I do the right thing, then I can get my life back.”

  Felice’s head snapped up, her emerald eyes searching his own. “What do you mean the right thing? The right thing would be to go to the police and tell them — ” She was nearly hysterical, ready to start screaming. He was close to that point, too, and he fought to keep his head on.

  “Felice, please. This is my life we’re talking about here. We can’t just — ”

  Standing up, Felice nearly knocked her kitchen chair over. Jenny’s eyes narrowed as she watched the two of them in careful silence. Pierce couldn’t blame her. But he wanted to defuse this situation and move onto a planning stage, but Felice seemed to refuse to take a deep breath.

  Her beautiful, terrified body was hyperventilating, and he couldn’t do anything.

  “You’re wrong!” she was screaming. “You need to go to the police. You can’t leave them chasing you; it’ll be even worse if they catch you on the run!”

  “I’m already on the run,” Pierce snapped, finally losing his temper. Why wouldn’t she listen to him? “No matter what I do now, I’m screwed unless I find some evidence to defend myself with, as soon as possible. And that means finding Gunner and figuring out why he did this to me.”

  Felice’s tiny fists beat against his chest. It barely even hurt, but it hurt more than she would hit him. “You’re wrong, goddammit, listen to yourself!”

  “Felice! Pierce! Please stop.” Jennifer finally cut in, her voice ragged and unhappy. “This is literally getting us nowhere. How about instead of jumping in feet first, we make a damn plan?”

  Felice turned to her friend, her body quivering like a rabbit’s. She took a deep breath, then another with her eyes locked on Jennifer’s. Once again, Pierce was blown away by the depth of their friendship. All Felice needed was Jenn by her side and she could handle anything. Even if that thing was the man she’d been sleeping with wanted by the police for a murder he didn’t commit.

  It made Pierce want to punch Clay in his stupid face all the more. “Look at what he almost ruined; one of the best relationships I’ve ever seen between two people.” Pierce wished he had someone back home that he could trust so completely.

  Jenny rubbed her hands over Felice’s arms as though she were warming her up. “See? Deep breaths. Now, Pierce. You can’t go just running back home without a plan. And Felice, you can’t just send him to the police without a plan.” Jennifer looked back and forth between them for a long moment, her nose crinkling as she thought it through. Suddenly, her face lit up and she snapped her fingers at Felice. “That private investigator your mom has on speed dial for her boyfriends, you think he might have contacts on the east coast?”

  Felice sniffed exaggeratedly, her chest heaving with the depths of her breaths. “Maybe. I could ask. Why?”

  Jennifer smiled at her friend, obviously happy that she was starting to calm down. Pierce was pretty happy about it, too, to be honest. “Now, here’s my idea…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Felice

  Jennifer was like the piece of wood that saved Kate Winslet in the movie Titanic. She was Felice’s Superman, her knight in shining armor. Nothing was too big for Jenny to tackle, and nothing in the world could change that. And Felice was more glad for that now than she ever had been in her whole life.

  Taking a deep breath, Felice released her frightened, crazy anger. She breathed in Jennifer’s calming words, feeding off of her calm tone. And she managed to finally chill out long enough to really listen to what her friend was proposing.

  “So here’s the plan,” Jennifer said, starting to write down ideas on a piece of paper. “We contact your mom’s private investigator and figure out if he has any friends on the east coast. We track down some people who can sniff around the murder without raising too much suspicion, and we find a way to clear Pierce’s name. Does anyone else have any ideas that they would like to share?”

  Pierce pondered the question for a moment, his perfect eyebrows furrowing. “I don’t care how we do it, but I want Gunner to pay for what he’s done,” he answered, finally, his voice filled with a kind of determination that Felice had never heard in him before. “If this investigator thing doesn’t work out, I will have to head back home and fix this. I never should have left in the first place. I can’t go back in time, but I will do whatever I have to make sure that Gunner pays and I get my people back.”

  Felice wanted to argue with him. “But, if you hadn’t come out here, we never would have met.” That thought bounced around inside of her skull like a pinball, blocking out the sound of Pierce’s and Jenny’s voices. A pain started in her chest, spreading out until every inch of her body seemed to hurt.

  So instead of pretending to listen, Felice got up from her chair and walked away. She left the dining room, dragging her feet through the hallway and the living room. She found herself in the kitchen, and began brewing a pot of coffee without even thinking about it. It was cathartic, watching as the earthy, bitter l
iquid spilled out of the machine, as the scent of freshly ground beans filled the whole house.

  Felice stared out of the kitchen window, watching as the sun continued to rise in the sky. This day had felt so long already that Felice was sure it must be at least dusk, but it wasn’t even noon.

  “You okay?”

  Felice turned around at the sound of Jennifer’s voice. “Yes,” she answered. But her hands shook as she took the carafe out of her machine and tried to pour herself some coffee into her favorite mug.

  Jenny ended up taking the cup and the carafe away from her before she broke something. She poured the coffee herself, mixing in a little cream and some sugar, just the way Felice liked her coffee before handing it to her. Then Jenn poured herself a mugful, too. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Felice.”

  “Where is Pierce?” she asked, not really wanting to talk about it anymore. The subject was exhausting, and she wasn’t sure she’d make it through another round of interrogation.