She reached inside her bag and pulled out a letter. Handing it over to Luca, she watched while he read his name on the envelope. When he ripped open the envelope and read the letter, she watched his expression change from a slight frown to a dangerous growl.
“That stupid bitch,” he swore under his breath. He raised his eyes to Grace and glared at her. “Do you know what she told me in this letter?”
Grace shook her head. “No but I imagine if its anything like the letter she left at our office it says that she can’t take care of her daughter any longer. That she’s only twenty four and she wants to enjoy her life without being saddled down by a whiney brat any longer. She said to tell you it’s your turn now. She said something about having a new man in her life now and that he didn’t want any kids hanging around spoiling his freedom.”
Luca’s lips tightened. That’s what his letter said almost word for word. He couldn’t believe it. He had a kid. He’d been with Frannie for a few months what seems like a lifetime ago. When he was with her, he never expected anything but a good time and when he walked away she had begged him to stay but he never thought about something like this. He had to wonder if she’d know about the baby before he left. Then he thought if she had known she would have stopped him by telling him she was pregnant. That was all she would have had to do. Instead, she let him leave.
Now six years later she had left their child behind. He didn’t know whether to strangle her for her stupidity or hunt her down and thank her.
“You do realize don’t you that you will have to prove to Social Services that you can take care of your daughter. By that, I mean we know you just got out of prison today, you will have to get job and place to live and be able to provide for yourself and your daughter. Do you understand that?”
Luca nodded almost absently. “I have a job interview tomorrow morning and I already have a house. My brother has been living there while I was incarcerated.”
“When do you meet with your parole officer?” Grace asked.
“First thing in the morning.”
“Then I’ll be by to do a well check on Bella tomorrow afternoon.” Grace paused then glared at him. “You have one chance at this and if I find that you cannot meet the requirements I’ll take Bella away from you and she’ll go into foster care. I don’t want to do that because quite frankly foster care sucks. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone let alone a small child but that’s all we have for situations like this one.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to dangle my daughter over me like a fuckin carrot and threaten to take her away again. She’s mine and I’m going to step up and keep her now that I know about her. She’ll have a good home with me and mine and I won’t let anything or anybody hurt her.”
Grace took another step closer to him and she glared at him for a moment, “Neither will I, Mr. Thomas. Neither will I,” she all but snarled at him. “If I think for one moment that she isn’t safe around you I will take her back and you’ll never see her again.”
“Don’t threaten me Miss Ricco.” Luca growled. “You won’t like it when I snap back.”
She turned and walked back to her car. Opening up the back door, she reached inside and grabbed a small suitcase. Bringing it over to the two men, she dropped it on the ground in front of Luca then she turned and walked back to her car. A moment or so later she dug her tires in the loose gravel and sped away.
Luca turned to look at his brother. Aiden looked confused for a moment then he met his brother’s eyes and asked, “What the fuck are we gonna do with a little girl? Neither of us know anything about kids.”
“Damned if I know but I think we’re about to find out.” Luca reached down and grabbed the suitcase. He walked over to his bike and put it on the seat. He didn’t know how the hell he would get her home with him but it would be interesting to find out.
He turned and walked back inside the clubhouse to find his daughter.
Aiden looked worried for a moment. He’d been hoping to have time to explain the way things were now to his brother. He knew Luca wouldn’t understand what he’d done but he was hoping he could convince him things weren’t that bad. But that had been before all this came up.
He reached down and began to scratch his left arm. Through the material of his shirt, he could feel every mark, every scar he wore on his arm. His scars were nothing he was proud of, nothing his brother would even understand. They were something Aiden had kept hidden from everyone else in the MC. He knew almost before he took his first hit that what he was doing was wrong but Aiden had been weak.
When Luca went to prison, he’d fallen into a deep hole. Bowie tried to get him to man up but Aiden wasn’t strong enough to cope with being alone. He was twenty eight years old and a failure. He was more his mother’s child than his father’s and that scared the devil out of him. He could only pray that Luca would forgive him for what he’d done.
Chapter Two
Luca found Bella sitting with Sunshine and some of the other women when he went back inside. He just stared at her for a moment then felt someone come up behind him. He stiffened without turning around, a habit he’d obtained in prison. In that hellhole you didn’t turn around too fast, the person behind you might have a shiv he wanted to plant in your soft belly. You also learned to sense someone behind you long before he got close enough to stick a shiv in your back. Luca felt whoever was behind him long before he got close. You had to learn to defend yourself from anything in that hellhole. Luca’s hands curled into fists and he was about ready to turn and beat down whoever was behind him.
Then he recognized the scent of Bowie. The older man always smelled like tobacco and whiskey. Luca relaxed. “So you got yourself a kid huh? What the fuck are you gonna do with her?”
Luca scrubbed his face with his hands. “Damn if I know.” He admitted. “I don’t know the first thing about kids and if I fuck this up that fuckin social worker will take her away so fuckin fast I won’t even know it.”
“Then don’t fuck this up.” Bowie told him.
Luca turned to stare at the man. “You know I have to appear legit right? I can’t have any illegal ties to the club and I have to get and keep a good job. I have to provide a home for myself and my kid.”
Bowie nodded and reached up to scratch his earlobe. “Yeah about that…”
Luca closed his eyes and groaned. “What?”
“Well hell kid, you know the Sheriff back in White Rock is going to make trouble for you.” Bowie warned him. “The kid Doc killed that night was his son Cody.” He hesitated then added, “White Rock ain’t that damn far away from Santa Fe. We did some checking when we knew you were getting out and Peterson has a lot of good old buddies here. Hell most of the fuckin cops here are real good friends of his.”
Luca nodded. “I know all that. It came out in the trial.”
“Yeah but what didn’t come out at the trial was the fact that Cody was a rat bastard working for his daddy. He was looking for anything he could find that would destroy the club. Adam Peterson was looking to clean up the town of White Rock for his run for Governor. He lost out then and now he wants a second go at the office.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Luca asked with a frown.
“Sheriff Peterson has been busting our members for the last few weeks. He wants to show the town of White Rock he has the means to get rid of us like he did with the Lobos.”
“That’s some fucking bullshit. The Steel Veins got rid of Los Lobos.” Luca objected, crossing his arms.
“That’s not the story he convinced White Rock of. He’s a goddamn hero back home. It didn’t help that the Veins back then weren’t saints either.” Bowie threw up his hands in a what-can-you-do shrug, then continued. “We’ve cleaned up our act over the last several years, meaning we don’t run guns no more and we’re getting out of the drug business slowly but surely. The guys decided they wanted to clean up the club and go legit. We’ve been buying property and businesses since we moved over here a
nd Peterson doesn’t like it.”
Luca nodded slowly. “I don’t imagine he’ll like the fact that I got out today then either. I know he showed up at my last parole hearing and told the board a bunch of lies about what happened the night Cody died. The board listened to his story and then proceeded to tear it apart. They were familiar with the trial and they all knew the truth. They told the man to let it go.”
Bowie frowned. “And how did he take that news?”
Luca snorted. “About as well as you would expect. He turned to me and told me flat out if I came back to White Rock I was a dead man.”
Bowie’s eyebrows went up. “And the parole board let that happen?”
Luca shrugged. “There was really nothing they could do. All he did was threaten me. He made no other acts of violence against me. He just walked out of the room. The entire board warned me that maybe I should think about relocating and to avoid running afoul of the law if I did come back here.” Then he turned to look at Bella again. “Maybe now that the club is here in Santa Fe I should think about relocating too.”
“What are you going to do?” Bowie asked. “Most of us live somewhere between here and there. We just got tired of Peterson making things hard for the club.”
Luca turned back to glare at his president. “I’m sure as hell not running. Running is for losers and fools. If I can stand up to my old man then I can deal with Adam Peterson.”
Chapter Three
“Home sweet home,” Luca quietly whispered as he walked up to the front door of his one-level home cradling his sleeping daughter in his arms. The drive to get here had knocked her out. It was only thirty minutes but she’d fallen asleep anyway.
My daughter…
The realization that he was a father came in waves and each time it crashed was devastating. Of the countless hours Luca had stared into the bottom of the bunk above him in prison and dreamed about his first night as a free man, he never imagined he’d be looking down at a sleeping six year old kid.
Standing there on his front patio, he was completely captivated by her. She breathed quietly, all tuckered out from playing with the other members kids at his party. Although he spent most of his party confoundedly staring at her as she played, Luca was still awed by her. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.
Luca quietly closed his bedroom door, then turned on lights and toured the rest of his house. As he walked from empty room to empty room the rising heat of frustration boiled away the mixture of clashing emotions from the day and left only the brackish residue of anger. Of the many, many questions Luca had since getting out of prison and Bella Donna showing up in his life —throwing all his plans out the window— the most straightforward and irritating one was simply, where the fuck was all my goddamn shit?
Had he been robbed?
That didn’t make sense. He lived in a quiet area at the end of a peaceful cul-de-sac that wasn’t known for this kind of crime. There was also the matter that not everything had been stolen. His flat-screen TV, nice recliner, guitars and kitchen table were gone, but not most of the stuff in his bedroom.
“Oh, come the fuck on!” Luca dragged a heavy palm over his tired eyes when he got into the kitchen. “Who the hell steals a refrigerator and a stove?”
The room’s lone appliance was one sad-looking microwave, and not even the one he had when he went to prison! Luca walked up to it, opened it and closed it, then checked the cord to make sure it wasn’t a fire hazard. After closer inspection, this model was a cheaper, smaller and ten years ago, it would’ve been considered long in the tooth. Luca wondered if the damn microwave worked at all but was too disgusted with everything to turn it on.
I’ve survived six years in prison only to be killed by an exploding microwave? He mused angrily, jerking the cord out of wall, then calling his brother. Of all the stupid ways to go.
Aiden was hammered to the point that it was miracle he was able to pick up the phone in the first place. After a short, fruitless exchange Luca hung up resigned to get answers out of him in the morning, even if that meant beating them out of him.
That social worker, Grace Ricco, was going to be here tomorrow. How the hell was he going to prove to her that he could take care of Bella if he didn’t even have a refrigerator? Thinking that far ahead exhausted Luca even more. He foolishly thought his problems would be over once he got out of prison, oh how wrong he’d been…
Finally making his way to the house’s only bed, Luca’s mood immediately changed when he saw his sleeping princess. Bella frowned and flopped over the same way her mother used to when she slept. Back then Luca thought that habit of Frannie’s was extremely annoying, now though seeing Bella do it was about the most adorable thing he’d ever seen.
Luca chuckled softly to himself and watched her sleep for what felt like hours. In the quiet early hours of the morning without the distractions of the rest of his club, the realization fully set in that this pretty little monster was his responsibility. Any glimmer of interest he had in rejoining Steel Veins evaporated completely.
Luca decided that he was going to be the best, most supportive and protective father that ever existed. He refused to ever stumble into the footsteps of his own deadbeat parents. No matter what it took, he was determined to do right by Bella. She was his whole world now.
Luca woke up the following morning to the sound of Bella playing with his bike keys. He instinctively reached over to the bedside table that wasn’t there to stop an alarm he no longer had. Luca fished around the comforter and the sheets for his phone, then groaned and forced himself upright in bed.
“Hey, Bella-banana. What’chu doin?” Luca’s groggy words came out in such a tired jumble that he barely understood what he’d just said. Clearing his throat, and rubbing some of the haziness from his eyes, he asked, “You sleep OK?”
Bella ignored Luca and just moved the keys around on the floor. Undeterred, Luca threw some clothes on, grabbed his wallet, and sat on the floor next to her. He began to move the hunk of leather around in big circles similar to what Bella was doing, and made racecar noises with his mouth. Bella smiled, but was still too shy to say anything to him.
In fact, she hadn’t said anything to anyone yesterday at all.
They played together, making silly noises and gestures for nearly an hour. Luca had gotten her to laugh but not to speak to him yet. He resolved to tread lightly with her and to be as patient as possible. The girl was obviously scared, not of him, or even his house, but of something, a six-year-old couldn’t possibly put into words. She’d just been abandoned by the only family she’d ever known. Bella probably felt like the loneliest girl in the world. Luca was far too familiar with that particular feeling…
Rage filled Luca’s heart. How the fuck could that stupid cunt, do something so awful to such a sweet little girl? He quickly buried the anger under some deep breaths. There was no reason to frighten Bella by going off the handle about her mom.
“C’mon, Banana.” Luca smiled warmly, then planted a massive hand over the top of Bella’s head. He let her squirm under the weight of it, then mussed her hair and picked her up. “Let’s get you some grub.”
Luca carried Bella past the loveseat that Aiden was curled up and passed out on. He fought the urge to kick the back of the chair and wake his brother up. Before he went to prison, he wouldn’t have been able to curb that fiery temper of his. Funny how six years in a cage can temper a man, he frowned at Aiden then took Bella into the kitchen.
“All right, let see what uncle Aiden has for food in this place.” Luca set Bella down and started the search. Opening all the cabinets and drawers, he set out three boxes of mac and cheese that lacked literally everything necessary to be cooked, a can of creamed corn with no can opener, an empty box of microwavable popcorn and finally five granola bars.
Luca exhaled with a wide mouth that bordered on a smile. He had to smile. It was the only thing keeping him from putting his fist through the wall. After giving Bella a granola bar
to munch on, he made his way back to his snoring brother.
“Wake the fuck up,” Luca growled softly, but firmly at his brother. He kept his voice down, but couldn’t refrain from jerking the sleeping man up into a sitting up position.
“Whoa! What? Luca? What’s going on?” Aiden startled awake, but was so hungover that keeping his eyes open took all his effort. Ever since they were kids whenever Aiden was surprised, nervous or in over his head he just started talking. Looking at his hard, dark eyes of his very angry older brother, Aiden was all three of those things. “Hey, big bro. What’s…What’s going on? Good morning.”
“Where is all my shit, Aiden?” Luca spoke calmly and softly, but articulated each word with the hard, definitiveness of an old typewriter.
“I lost my job a while back. I’m sorry, man. I had to pawn everything to pay your mortgage, taxes and utilities.” Aiden leaned back, rubbing his face to keep his sleepy eyes open. The undeniable sincerity shook his tone, causing Aiden to slump and struggle to meet his older brother’s glare.
Luca let him go then shoved him over on the loveseat and sat down. Luca could tell that his brother was indeed remorseful, but he couldn’t tell what exactly he was remorseful for.
“So you sold my oven to help pay for the mortgage?” Luca asked, glancing back to his brother trying to get a read on the man. “You visited me every week while I was inside. Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were having so much trouble?”
“I guess I didn’t want you to see what a big fuck up I was. You trusted me to watch your house and I let you down.” Aiden scratched his light, blond beard and looked at the floor. Before he started speaking again, he glanced toward the kitchen. “I was trying to replace everything before you got back I just ran out of time.”
Luca knew he meant that shitty, old microwave. As frustrating as Aiden could be, he’d proved time and again that he always had the biggest heart in the room. In fact, most of the scrapes Luca pulled his brother out of were because Aiden was trying to help someone and it inevitably went horribly wrong.
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