by Cox, Paula
“Take half,” Michael said. “Use it to make a fresh start.”
When Ken hesitated, Michael shook his head and clasped his shoulders.
“I’m going with Lily, and you need to keep everything else up and running. Think of it as a parting gift.”
Ken started to protest when Sophia nudged his ribs. “Don’t you know what to do with a gift horse?” she asked. “Come on now.”
Silently agreeing to Michael’s terms, Ken pocketed the bills and slapped Michael’s back. “And you’re really going to be okay?”
Smiling down at Lily, Michael winked as he spoke. “Don’t see how I—”
“What the fuck?”
Brendan’s voice pierced the air as the group shot up straighter and regarded one another with wary stares. Leading the charge, Ken drew his gun as Michael had his back.
“What’s happening?” Lily asked.
“Damned if I know,” Sophia answered.
Stepping slowly, Sally still under her arm, Lily’s eyes went wide at the sight of the Mad Angels back in full force. But for the first time, they didn’t scare her. All they wanted was the reward, and now it was off the table.
“You’re too late!” Lily said. “We’re going. We—”
Lily’s speech stopped short at the sight of a familiar frame poking into view.
“Bates?”
What was he here? He was on her side. Maybe the man just needed more proof to be sure of her side of the story. But then why had Noel and—
“There she is.”
Bates pointed past Lily and fixed his stared on Sally.
“Heard that you were up for sale,” Bates said. “Can’t say I liked the thought of it, little girl.”
Sally started to scream as she cowered into his shoulder. Why was the cop saying…?
Have a daughter myself. I know what it is to worry.
“Oh no…”
Bates stepped closer, and Ken moved to stop him when Noel cocked his trigger and aimed at Sally in Lily’s arms.
“No!” Sally screamed. “No! I won’t go back! Not with you!”
Folding Sally into her arms, Lily fell to the sand and covered Sally with her body. Trying to calm Sally with her whisper, she looked up the see Bates staring Michael down as he smirked.
“Thanks so much,” he said. “Been looking for my little girl. Who would’ve thought that you’d be my ticket to the truth?”
Michael moved to strike him when Noel fired a shot into the air. The Diesel Devils fell silent as Noel turned his gun back on Sally, and no one made a move as Bates stepped closer.
“So this is where you end up,” he started. “Some biker’s whore. Sweetheart…”
Sally cringed as Bates leaned closer and tried to touch her. Knowing enough, knowing too much, Lily pushed Sally behind her back and glared at Bates.
“I thought I could trust you,” she hissed.
“You can,” he said. “You and this…”
Bates smirked at Michael before turning his eyes back to Lily.
“You can play the old lady for as long as you want,” he continued. “Shit. Even your mom seems down with that. Guess it’s just her parenting style.”
He smirked at Sally and touched his fingers to her trembling chin. “But I keep my little girl close,” he said. “You’re going to come back and be a good. And this time, I’m never letting you out of my sight.”
Sally flinched, and Lily longed to tear his heart out as Ken tried to charge forward.
“I wouldn’t,” Noel cautioned. “I really wouldn’t.”
His gun was still poised to take Sally down where she lay, and Lily turned her eyes to Michael. She saw him seething through his skin, but he held back as Bates stretched to his feet and suddenly held court.
“This is how it’s going to go down, boys,” he started. “I take my girl and go. You tools can skulk off and no one will ever hear from you again.”
He smirked at Noel, wrinkles expanding across his face as he tweaked the Mad Angel’s nose. “And I give you boys all the protection you need.”
Bates was playing all sides against the middle, and Lily had given him the opening that he needed to make this vile play. She had trusted him and spoke out of turn when she thought that he was one of the good guys.
Like his own squad was going to take my word over his.
How could she be so blind as to trust any cop when this was how they were? Bates reached for Sally when Lily smacked his hand back with a cold glare.
“Don’t you fucking touch her!”
“What are you gonna do about it, princess?” Bates asked. “You’re just a freak in need of a fix. Maybe you’re sweet mom buys that line and thinks it’s a kind of normal. But I take care of my daughter.”
Even as Lily kicked and screamed, Bates pried Sally from her arms.
“Leave her alone!” Ken screamed. “Don’t you fucking touch—”
In the same instant that he fell silent under the weight of Noel’s gun, Lily’s hand wrapped around a stray stone. Wielding it like the most lethal weapon, Lily lowered the rock to the back of Bates’s head.
“Wrong move,” Noel said. He fired at Lily’s feet.
“Don’t you fucking dare!”
Michael wrestled Noel to the ground as another set of arms pushed Lily away from path of the oncoming bullet. As she fell into the sand, Lily looked up and saw Brendan starting down at her. Her breath was hard as he helped her to her feet and smoothed his hands down the side of her skirt.
“So now I’m forgiven?” Lily asked.
“Guess we’re on the same side,” Brendan said.
They shared a smile, and as Bates struggled to his knees, Michael charged forward and stared the cop down.
“You are not getting her back,” Michael spat.
“That a fact? Maybe I’ll take the rich girl as reparation. Sort of like the ideas of both of being inside both of them.”
His laughter caused Lily to cringe, and Ken rolled away from another bullet and took Sally into his arms.
“It’s not happening,” Michael promised.
“Let’s just put a fucking point on this.” Bates was on his feet with a fresh smirk. “I’m getting my daughter out of this hellhole and taking her home.”
“She is home!” Ken challenged. “Here, away from you!”
Bates waved his fingers in the air, and Noel was ready to fire again when the cop spoke slowly.
“She comes back,” Bates said as he turned his smirk to Noel. “I can count on you boys to make that happen, right?”
Noel nodded, and Lily’s eyes darted in every direction. Sophia was without her shotgun, and Michael’s charging fists were stopped short by another Mad Angel’s sharp blow. Spying Ken’s gun laying in the sand, Lily considered making a play for the weapon and hoping that she could hit him right between his eyes. But she hadn’t had a moment’s worth of practice, and the rock was far from her grasp.
But there was something else…
“Here!” she cried. “Take this.”
Collecting the bills from the sand, Lily pressed the bills to Noel’s feet and snapped her fingers to Michael’s face.
“Lily? What the hell do you think you’re—?”
“Give him the rest of it!” she cried. “Give him all of it.”
Michael stayed still when Lily shot him a quick stare, her eyes pleading and knowing as she begged him to just make the move. Trust me. Like I trusted you.
Pushing his hand into his jeans, Michael flung the rest of the reward to the sand and stood back as Lily gathered the bills into her hands and pushed them toward Noel’s eyes.
“This is yours,” she whispered. “All this money.”
Noel appeared intrigued by the green poking through her fingers. Money talked, and Noel would listen. His hands were nearly on the bills when Lily brought the money back to her chest and curled her lips into a smirk.
“But you have to take out the trash first,” Lily said.
Noel cocked his
head as he returned the point of his gun to the space between her eyes.
“Now why would I want to that?” Noel asked. “Cop here says that he’ll look out for us. So there’s a lot more where—”
“And when the word on the street is that Mad Angels are in bed with the law,” Lily said. “Think about it, Noel. When he’s tired of you, he’ll sell you out and do you dirty, too.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Bates said. “This one just needs a lesson.”
Michael charged forward, and Lily reached up for his arm as she kept her gaze of Noel. “But we’ll all go,” she continued. “And you can consider this payment for the men that you’ve lost. And I have it on good authority that there’s another cop called Nick that wants a mole.”
Bates started to his feet and clenched his fists. “Don’t you even try to turn this to your—”
“And you won’t be in his pocket,” Lily said. “You can play him like a fiddle, take the cash, and—”
Bates started to reach for his daughter again when Noel made his decision. Firing a single bullet into the back of his head, Bates’s face registered total shock before he fell into a pool of blood.
“Deal,” Noel said. “You fucks have thirty minutes.”
Sally’s fingers touched the edge of the bleeding as Brendan and Wesley dragged the body away for a swift burial.
“Come on, Sally,” Ken said. “It’s over now.”
Lily watched her tense body finally relax in his arms as Sophia helped them off to make their getaway.
“Nice play,” Michael said as he gathered Lily in her arms and kissed her cheeks.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I didn’t. I took a chance. Guess it worked, huh?” He kissed her quickly, and as his mouth melted around hers, Lily wanted nothing more than to be alone with him a place where they didn’t have to worry about the other shoe dropping. “So do you want me to take you home now?”
Turning her eyes towards the crew as they prepared to take off, Lily felt the wind in her hair, and het soul buzzed at the promise of the unknown. It was who he was, who he always would be.
And she was not about to take that away from him.
“How about I just go with you?” she asked.
Michael started back and slowly shook his head. “We’ve covered that,” he said. “I’ll go wherever you want—”
“I know,” Lily whispered as she stretched to the tips of her toes and lightly kissed his lips. “And I want to go with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE “It was really great to see you.”
“Honey, the feeling was more than mutual.”
Lily hummed happily at the sound of her mother’s voice pouring through the phone. From the other room, she heard bottles cracking and glass clinking on glass.
“Sounds like a party out there,” Quin chimed in. “So you waited for me to hop out on a plane before breaking out the good stuff, huh?”
“Mom, it’s not like that,” Lily said. “Just a little celebration.”
“Oh? And what’s the big occasion.”
“I’m not quite sure yet,” Lily said as she peeked around the doorframe of the converted warehouse, the Diesel Devils’ new home base. Sophia said a clubhouse was top priority as soon as the bikes crossed over the California border. Best to get the lay of the land, scope out the territory. Not that they would step on any toes. Not in the beginning at least. And as luck would have it, they chanced upon a corner of sidewalk with its share of pushers and pimps. But no clubs or crews, and the Diesel Devils offered protection in exchange for favors that lead to a wary but mutually beneficial arrangement where no one was chasing them anymore.
And for so many reasons, Lily prayed that the peace would hold out forever.
“Well, have your fun I suppose,” Corinne teased. “Guess I’ll just have to make do with my feet up and a chilled bottle of chardonnay.”
The thought of her mother alone in the wake of her divorce tugged at Lily’s heart. “I’m sorry again, mom,” she said.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” Corinne asked.
“I just… I mean if I hadn’t gone off… maybe things wouldn’t have gone south so fast for you and Dad.”
“Lily, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It had nothing to do with you.” Corinne said as much when she’d visited. When Lily was able to see the light in her eyes and failed to detect any hint of a lie, Lily took her mother’s words to be fact.
“And you’re really okay with it?” Lily asked. “Because… because you know if you want to come out here for keeps, I can talk to Michael—”
“Almost ready, babe?”
Lily shot up straighter at the sound of another voice from the other end of the line. Answering in a muffled tone, Corinne said something that sounded like two shakes, tiger , and when she tried to resume their conversation as if a huge bombshell had not been dropped, Lily cut her mother off at the pass.
“Alone with your wine?” Lily challenged. “Who’s there with you?”
Sighing happily, Corinne held her daughter in suspense for several seconds before ripping the curtain away.
“Jesse,” she murmured. “I think I might have mentioned him.”
“Yeah. You said he was your yoga instructor.”
“He is,” Corinne continued. “And take it from me. All those… positions are coming in quite handy.”
Lily’s jaw dropped in amazement as she quickly connected the dots in her mind. “Mother! You said he was like my age.”
“He’s twenty-six, Lily. Worlds away from twenty-two.”
She wasn’t sure about that, and the thought of her mother writhing around in bed with some young man striking the downward facing dog between her legs initially made Lily shudder. A woman of Corinne’s age shouldn’t act like that. At least not with a man of Jesse’s age. She started to challenge the revealed relationship when she caught Michael out of the corner of her eye. Gripping the neck of a bottle of beer, he returned her gaze with a sharp wink and a bright smile. Returning his grin, Lily felt her body buzz at the sight of him.
Your man, your choice.
Turning her attention back to the call, Lily tapped her fingers to a nearby table and nodded her head.
“Are you happy, Mom?” Lily asked.
“Ecstatic is more like it,” Corinne said. “Sort of like you.”
As they agreed in silence, Sophia poked her head in the room and beckoned Lily forward with a wave of her hand.
“Hurry up!” she insisted. “Party won’t keep all night.”
“One sec.”
Sophia’s heels clicked against the concrete as she sashayed back to the club in a leopard print skirt and gold halter top, making no effort to conceal her curves as she started to gather the group together for the purpose of the party.
“Stay ecstatic, Mom,” Lily said. “I know for a fact that it’s the very best place to be.”
“Wait three months,” Corinne teased. “You’ll be happier still.”
Lily threw her head back with a laugh and ran her fingers through her loose air.
“I’ll see you then.” Lily promised. “And feel free to bring Jesse along for the ride.”
“I will,” Corinne says. “And who knows? Maybe he and your boy will hit it off.”
As Lily ended the call, she wasn’t completely on board with that. Any man that stretched and contorted in tight pants for a living would most definitely not be his cup of tea. But Lily knew with utter certainty that he would put up a brave front if it made her happy.
Riding the wave of this blissful thought, she stepped into the thick of the party just getting underway. Lily was barely at his side when Michael wrapped her in his arms and held her close.
“All good with your mom?”
“A bit of a surprise,” Lily confessed. “But yes. She’s happy.”
“She’s not the only one.”
He lightly kissed the top of her head as his hands ran down her back. Sophia quickly clapped h
ands and brought the room to a hush in less than an instant. “Okay, boys and girls. A lot has changed this past year. And more than just the scenery. New digs. New threads.”
She proudly modeled her sexy ensemble and basked in the good-natured catcalls emanating from the Diesel Devils.
