by Addison Jane
Tears bloomed in her eyes, and she furiously blinked them back. “I told her I couldn’t even look at her,” she whispered, her voice catching, but her face scrunched up in anger. “I was so fucking mad at her. She kept that information from me. She made me think there was nothing she could do to help me find him, but she knew the whole damn time that she could.”
I grabbed her face in my hands and pulled her mouth to mine licking my lips when I pulled back savoring the taste of her tears. “Go. Talk to her. Listen to what she has to say. You don’t have to forget, but if you truly want her to start seeing you as more than just a little girl she constantly has to protect and control, you need to show your mom that you’re ready to hear what she has to tell you… good or bad.”
I brushed away the tears from her cheeks with my thumbs before sweeping her hair back from her face. She licked her lips. I could tell she was nervous. “What about your family. Are you gonna go and talk to them?”
My body tightened, and I tried to play stupid. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She scoffed not buying my bullshit for a minute and calling me out on it. “You said you had people out there who were your blood.”
My heart thumped against my chest as if it were screaming ‘let me get the fuck out of here!’ It knew that every single time I talked about my brother and sister, it hurt more than any pain I’d ever experienced in my life—more than a stupid tattoo, more than being shot or stabbed or kicked in the nuts.
“They were a lot younger when our parents died,” I rasped, my voice threatening to crack. I coughed, trying to clear it, so I could speak properly and not break down. “Romeo was sixteen, and Ophelia was twelve. The foster system took them and wouldn’t grant me custody. I don’t even know why. I was a good kid. I never got into trouble. They just fucking refused.”
Meyah shook her head. “That must have been horrible. When’s the last time you saw them?”
My gut twisted. I could feel it clenching like it was preparing to throw the contents of my stomach up all over the bed. I choked it back. “I saw Romeo yesterday, down in Nevada… in a prison visitor’s room. I’m trying to convince him to come to Athens. He got himself into shit… shit I could have prevented and that could come back to haunt him.”
“Wow,” she whispered in awe, falling forward and bracing her hands on either side of my body. My eyes instantly went to her breasts, my hand twitching as I fought to stop myself from reaching out and touching them. “And your sister?”
I hefted my body up into a sitting position moving so my back was against the wall behind my bed. I huffed out a laugh. “Honestly? I think I might actually be more scared of seeing Phee again than I was seeing Romeo. That bastard can look after himself. I wished I’d been there for him, so he didn’t have to go through hell. But in the end, he could fight his own battles. Phee is my little sister. She shouldn’t have to. She should have two big asshole brothers beating up boys who get too close and pretending that she isn’t growing up. She was always a fighter, but she should have never had to be.”
“She will forgive you.”
I closed my eyes and took a long breath in before opening them again. “I don’t care if she forgives me, I just want to have her in my life.”
“That’s great,” she said enthusiastically, but when I didn’t mirror the excitement, her face fell. “Isn’t it?”
I cleared my throat, the emotion choking me up. This wasn’t meant to be about me, and I hadn’t prepared myself for this talk. Sharing this part of me was something I’d managed to avoid for a long time because it fucking sucked. “I know my little brother well enough to know it’ll be hard to get him to trust me again. But he’s my brother, and I’ll fight ‘til forever in hopes that he does. Phee already made it pretty clear where she stood four years ago when I finally found the group home she was in. She appeared at the door, and she told the attendees I was a stranger, and she didn’t know who I was.”
There was very little emotion in my voice as I recalled my sister staring at me blankly as if she had no idea who I was. It fucking hurt because it was bullshit.
“You think she’ll turn you away again?” At least I didn’t have to say the words, but honestly, it didn’t make them hurt any less. “You don’t really believe that do you?”
Meyah sat up tall looking at me with a world of determination on her face which told me there was no doubt in her mind that those kinds of thoughts I was having were all wrong. I had to smile. While I’d seen Meyah grow and mature and become a young woman who saw the world for what it was, there was still an innocence in her eyes, one I hoped she never lost. It gave her this unguarded passion and spirit.
“I’m scared if I go looking, I’ll find someone who doesn’t want anything to fucking do with me. Despite the fact that I’ve imagined having them back in my life since they left,” I told her, my voice quiet and unsure. “Rejection is a fucking bitch.”
I was still having my doubts whether either of them would accept me back with open arms, even with the time I’d spent with Romeo yesterday and the way he’d opened up about what he’d been forced to live through the past few years.
Meyah slipped forward, her naked breasts pressed against my chest, her pussy pressed against my growing cock. I was already finding it hard to concentrate, but now it was just fucking torture.
“You’re being an idiot,” she stated, surprising me.
I looked up into her eyes and raised my eyebrows. “Oh, really, how?”
Her fingers dragged my hair back from my face, and she pressed her forehead to mine while her nails massaged at the back of my skull.
This fucking woman, holy shit.
“You’ve dreamed of having them back in your life for so long. It’s what will make you feel complete again.” Her eyes drifted to my tattoos. This young girl could already see I was trying to fill the space that’s missing with my siblings gone from my life, and trying to make it feel like they’re there, without them actually being there.
“Why the hell would you not go after that? Wouldn’t anything be worth the chance to have them with you again, even if it meant facing your fears?”
I couldn’t help but grin and grab her face with both my hands pulling her lips against mine.
She fucking got it, and suddenly, I was wondering why the hell I’d waited so long to let her in. She ground down against me, and in one swift move, I grabbed her wrists and rolled to the side falling on top of her and pinning her hands above her head while our mouths continued fighting and dueling. She hooked her legs behind me as I pulled back, grinning as I held her captive and nuzzled her neck with my nose.
“You know that saying about taking your own advice?” I asked smugly, sneaking a peek at her face and chuckling when understanding crossed her features.
She groaned. “I’m gonna have to go talk to my mom, aren’t I?”
“I’ll take the info Wrench gave me and go after Phee… if you go and see your mom,” I bargained, feeling sick the instant I said the words, but willing to hurt myself if it means she’ll get the answers she needed.
And Leo would get the answers he needed.
I blocked the last thought out.
“Okay,” she whispered, surprising me a little.
“Okay?”
Her head bobbed nervously. “Okay. I’ll go see her tomorrow,” she whispered. She ground her hips down against my growing cock. “But I have something else I need to ask you.”
I released her hands and grabbed her hips digging in my fingers to try and control her movements, but she wasn’t having any of it. She was determined to wind me up and drive me fucking nuts as she continued to tease me with her wet folds.
“What’s that?” I groaned. Moving one of my hands forward, I slipped it over the light brush of hair and through her silky lips until I found that perfect hole which had driven me so fucking crazy earlier. One dip of my finger, and suddenly, she was singing a different tune, her teasing laughter soon transformed into a deep
pleasure filled moan, and she pressed her hips down on my finger seeking more.
She hummed softly, her body wiggling beneath me. “Come to my senior prom with me this weekend,” she whispered as she writhed underneath me.
Dressing up in a suit and going to some teenage fucking dance was the last thing I wanted to do. It’d been a long time since I was in high school, and the memories of my senior year were not exactly fucking pleasant—the exact opposite actually.
“Please,” she pleaded. “I didn’t even want to go, but I do now. I don’t want to hide. You give me strength.”
She was trying to be brave, show the kids at school this new power she’d discovered inside her, and I couldn’t help but find myself agreeing. Knowing how much it meant to her to prove to all these people who’d spent years watching from the sidelines as she was picked on by a fucking little asshole, and to show them just how much it hadn’t broken her down.
How could I not stand by her side and watch in pride as she throws that huge fuck you?
I growled deep in my throat. “Okay.”
“Promise?” she asked excitedly.
“Promise.”
All these promises were about to make the next few days fucking interesting.
Lord help me.
My fingers tapped impatiently on the table as I waited for Optimus to go through all the business matters for church. Then it would be my chance to speak, my opportunity to plead my case and hope that my brothers would have my back with what I was about to propose.
“Shake, you’ve got the floor,” Op finally announced, nodding for me to start. It was still strange to hear my brothers use my road name. A lot of them still called me Ham, and honestly, it didn’t worry me that they did.
Pushing my chair back, I stood on two unsteady legs and braced my hands on the table. “I don’t know how many of you have heard my story, but here’s the short version. My parents were killed when I was eighteen. My brother and sister were only twelve and sixteen, and the courts wouldn’t let me take them. They refused to give me custody, and we didn’t have a lot of family, and the ones who were around had priors.”
My breathing became heavy as I recounted the different ways in which I tried to fight for my family. How I’d spent every single cent that my parents had saved. How I was still paying back lawyer’s fees and debts that I’d gathered all those years ago.
“With Wrench’s help, I finally found my brother and sister,” I told my brothers, before taking a deep breath. “Romeo is in High Desert State Prison, Nevada, and Ophelia is in Cali in a new boarding house for homeless teens.”
“Your parents really went all out with the Shakespeare shit, didn’t they?” Dice commented, leaning back in his chair.
I rolled my eyes ignoring the comment that I’d heard more times than I could count. Yes, my parents were a little obsessed with Shakespeare and his work. I still think Romeo lucked out with the most normal name. I couldn’t say I’d met another Hamlet or Ophelia.
Blizzard leaned forward cupping his hands together on the large table. It was an incredibly impressive slab of wood, but it was the club logo which was carved into the center that made the piece completely priceless and meaningful. “I don’t know if I’m sure what you’re looking for here, kid.”
The term kid had once bugged me, especially when I was here trying to prove myself as a man—someone who could handle his shit, someone stronger than I was before. Now, though, it was almost comforting like a reminder that these guys were my family. And while I wasn’t that much younger than a lot them, they treated me like I was a brother or a son.
“I managed to go down and visit with him a few days ago,” I explained. I was still exhausted. “The crap he’s been through since our parents died has been shit, and I wasn’t there to help him through it like I should have been…” I looked up to the ceiling, “… like a real fucking brother should have been. So I’m asking for you guys to help me now be the brother I should have been back then.”
“He in some kind of trouble?” Blizzard asked, leaning back in his seat and listening intently.
I took a deep breath as I tried to recall the details of my visit with Romeo to my brothers.
“So, you really made a name for yourself, huh,” I commented after listening to Romeo explain the way he worked.
He was the middle man I guess you could say. He hooked suppliers up with buyers. You had something you wanted to sell, Romeo knew someone who would buy it. And I wasn’t talking about cars or boats or pieces of land. No, we were talking guns, drugs, and sometimes even people.
It made me cringe to think that my little brother—the same little brother who used to beg me to read to him at night, or who I taught how to hit a baseball—could be capable of doing this kind of thing. I often thought of people who had a hand in the trafficking trade were born without a conscience or had something so horrific happen to them that they just stopped believing in the idea of right and wrong.
I wanted to ask, to know about Romeo’s foster family, to know where he went after he turned eighteen and how the hell he stepped into this kind of work.
The Brothers by Blood, we weren’t exactly angels. We were guilty of putting drugs and guns out there that had no doubt had an effect on different people and families. Maybe even damaged someone’s life, but there was one thing we never stood for—human trafficking.
“I tried to block it out,” he reasoned with a clenched jaw, trying to keep his voice down to a whisper. “Man, you don’t know what it’s like to be in that situation at eighteen, where this guy drags a young girl out of the trunk of a car, demanding you find him a buyer for her. You’re suddenly an accessory. He knows if the police find out, that it was me who told, and if I say no, I’m dead within seconds.”
I heard him, I understood, but it was still like a kick in the gut to know he had to be a part of that. “So, what? You walk out of here, you’re straight back shipping in redheads from Scotland for some rich businessman? Or maybe delivering that ice to the pimp downtown who uses it to keep his girls in line.”
I was trying to be fucking understanding, but it all left a sour taste in my mouth, and I kept wondering why he’d let it get this far if he hated it so much.
Romeo’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, the chains around his hands tinkling against the metal table. “You seriously think this is what I imagined myself doing at sixteen? You think I don’t wonder every damn day whether Mom and Dad would be ashamed of me. Whether if they were still alive if I would still be here?” He looked around, his eyes moving about at a fast pace, checking to make sure no one was listening in or too interested in our conversation. When he turned back to me, suddenly Romeo’s hard shell had a crack, and looking back at me was the sixteen-year-old that had screamed at me to help him as CPS dragged him away. “I know you probably think I’m a waste of air. I’m not fucking proud of the shit I’ve done, Hamlet, but I did what I had to do to survive.”
I wish he’d just punch me in the face.
That’s how fucking shit I felt about the fact I could have possibly done something to protect him from all of this. I could have gone looking for him sooner. I could have just taken him from the foster home and run.
I could have…
Those words didn’t mean shit now.
All that mattered was how far I’d go to do what I should have done back then to keep my little brother from having to go through any more fucking bullshit.
“You don’t have to do this anymore,” I told him, holding his eyes and feeling the pain coursing through them and into me.
He laughed and shook his head like I was some small child who’d just told him Santa wasn’t real. “You don’t get it, big brother. You don’t just walk away from this kind of thing. They don’t let you do that. I know too much about people who are essentially fucking ghosts.”
“You’re just one fucking guy, Rome. But maybe they’ll think twice if you have an entire MC at your back.”
His eyes
grew just slightly, and I could see the moment he realized he might just have an out.
Romeo was not heartless. He’s not your typical asshole who was happy to ruin people’s lives and hurt people in the name of money, or fame, or just for damn fun. He had a conscience and right now it was that which was telling him to take my offer.
He wanted out.
And I was going to make it happen with my brothers behind me or not.
“He’s a pretty big profile dealer over in Cali and Nevada. Worked for what sounds like some pretty high profile guys, who don’t believe in just walking away from this kind of job,” I explained. Hoping my new family could find it in them to do this for me because if they said no, I wasn’t sure what my next step would be.
I’d already explained the situation to Op, and he’d confirmed what I suspected—because of the nature of Romeo’s past, this needed to go to a club vote.
“So are we talking about him walking away here?” Leo asked, and I turned to him, taking a deep breath, knowing that the question would come eventually.
“This isn’t him,” I said briefly. “He’s not doing this because it’s fun. He didn’t say, but I suspect someone’s holding something over him keeping him in line. So if he walks away, they’re gonna try and use that against him, and things could get ugly.”
The room was quiet, and I could tell they were beginning to understand my brother’s need to get the hell out of that situation. Nobody walked away that easily after being so closely connected with high profile criminals like Romeo was. They needed to keep him in line, and what’s the best way to do that? Control him with his emotions.
