by Ali Parker
“Look who decided to show up.” Kent’s voice was as dark and mean as I remembered. A chill wove down my spine, and I could taste my own fear in the back of my throat. “Mother of the fucking year.”
“What are you doing here?” I wanted my voice to sound strong and assertive. Instead, it came out in a weak whisper.
Kent laughed at me. “I’m here to get my son, you bitch. What do you think I’m here for?”
“Leave.”
He laughed again. “I don’t think so. Kim and I are just catching up. And Luke has been telling me all about the time he and his auntie have been spending together. Imagine my relief at finding out my son is being raised by your self-absorbed sister instead of you.”
“I’m not self-absorbed,” Kim said venomously.
Kent’s head swung to her. “All the fancy shit in this place and your thick face of makeup would suggest otherwise.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “That’s called successful. Do you need a definition?”
“Kim, stop it,” I said, sensing the anger radiating off Luke’s father as he glared daggers at my sister.
“Mommy,” Luke said nervously from his bed.
“It’s all right, Luke.” I lifted my chin but never took my eyes off Kent. He was unpredictable, and if history was any indication, he was drunk. “The adults are just talking. Everything is okay.”
Kent got to his feet. I had almost forgotten how big he was. With thick arms and a wide frame, he towered over me as he approached. When he was in front of me, he peered down the length of his crooked nose, broken from several altercations in bars and at work as a bounty hunter, and sneered at me. “We’re just talking, huh?”
“Back up,” I said stiffly.
Kent snorted, and I smelled the booze on him. “Give me a fucking break, Holly. You think you can tell me what to do? Get your shit. We’re going back to Philadelphia.”
Fuck that. And fuck him. I wasn’t going anywhere with him ever again. I was home finally, and I was going to fight to stay here.
Slowly, I clasped my hands behind my back. I found my phone jutting out of the top of my back pocket and worked at sliding it out without Kent noticing.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Neither is Luke.”
“Like hell you’re not.”
“I mean it,” I said, retreating a step back from him. “I’m sorry I left without saying anything, but I knew you would never let me go if I tried to talk it out with you. I was miserable, Kent. We both were. And that’s not fair to our son. He deserves more than parents who fight all the time and a father who comes home drunk every day. Please tell me you understand where I’m coming from.”
I knew he wouldn’t understand. I knew it was like talking to a wall. But that didn’t matter. My words had bought me enough time to try to send a message to the only person who could help me and my family right now.
I had no clue if what I had typed out made sense. I didn’t even know if I had successfully sent it. But I needed to get word to Jax somehow that I was in trouble, and I hoped he would see it sooner rather than later.
“Luke is my boy, and you’re my woman,” Kent said, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “You don’t get to just up and walk away from me and come live here.” He spun around, gesturing at the extravagance of Luke’s new bedroom. “Your sister was always trying to get between us and break us up. You know that as much as I do. She doesn’t want what’s best for you, baby. She’s just jealous. Come home with me. I can take care of you both. You know I can. Just give me another chance.”
I internally pleaded with Kim not to say anything. She would only make it worse. I had to handle this on my own. I was the only person in the room who had any chance of keeping him calm.
“This isn’t about Kim. I made the decision to leave all on my own. She didn’t even know I left until I called her when I was already in New York City.”
Kent’s upper lip peeled away from his yellowed, liquor-stained teeth. “Oh?”
His anger pulsed in the air around us like a ticking time bomb.
“Listen to me,” I said calmly, “I want to work this out with you. Luke still needs his father in his life, and I don’t want to exile you. Why don’t you go and get a hotel for the night and sleep this off? We can go for coffee in the morning or something and make some arrangements for you to spend time with Luke. This doesn’t have to be a battle, Kent. We can stop this right now from getting out of hand. Meet me halfway here. Please?”
“Halfway?” Kent hissed. “You missed your chance for that bullshit, sweetheart. You shouldn’t have run from me. You shouldn’t have taken my son from me. And no, we won’t talk this out over coffee. Fuck that.”
“Kent, please.”
“No!” He roared, my imagination making the floors and walls vibrate around me.
I hated that I screamed and covered my ears. I hated that I cowered from him and pressed myself against the wall.
I hated that everything felt exactly as it had in Philadelphia.
Chapter 17
Jax
I had been pacing for almost an hour. Ryder was watching me from his spot on his sofa, and the television in the corner was playing the early morning news.
“How has she not come back with anything yet?” I growled. “It’s six in the fucking morning.”
“The department is busy.” Ryder shrugged. “She has her hands full with all this Black Hearts nonsense. Not to mention she’s trying to keep this as under the radar as she can. You want a bunch of cops knocking on your door asking you for information about the Zenvo?”
“No,” I said, and I heard how whiny I sounded. “No,” I said more firmly.
“Then we wait.”
We only had to wait another fifteen minutes before Dani finally called. Ryder tossed his phone to me without answering, understanding how impatient I was. “Dani, hey, it’s Jax.”
“Hey Jax,” Dani said, sounding a bit out of breath. “Sorry it took me so long to call you back. I had to get away from everyone for a second. I don’t have much time, but I got the report back on the plate. The car that went after you belongs to a guy named Spencer McKay. You know him?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Nobody at the precinct has, either. Does the name sound familiar to Johnny?”
I asked Ryder if he’d ever heard the name before, and he shook his head. “No, he doesn’t know him either.”
“Shoot. Okay. That’s fine. I was just hoping we could have a bit more leverage if one of us knew him. You were right, Jax, Spencer is a Black Hearts member. Has been for at least seven years. We have teams out looking for him now to bring him in for trying to kill you with his damn car. If I can get some time alone with him in an interrogation room, I can ask him about what went down at the mansion the other week.”
“All right. Just tell your guys not to get too close to him. The guy is fucking crazy.”
“I know. Don’t worry. We’ll be safe.”
I tossed the phone back to Ryder, who chatted with his woman for only a couple of minutes before hanging up and giving me his attention. “She’ll do her best, man. And her best usually works.”
“Yeah. I trust her. She’s a good cop.” I made for his front door. “I’m going to head home. Pass this shit on to the others, all right? Tell them to keep their eyes peeled for a matte black Zenvo and to call me if they see it.”
“Consider it done.”
I nodded and opened the front door.
“Hey, Jax?”
I paused and looked back at Johnny, whose expression was serious. “You’re good at this whole giving orders thing.”
“Sorry, Boss.”
“Don’t be.”
I closed Ryder’s front door behind me and hopped down his front porch steps. As I crossed the driveway and got to my bike, I checked my phone.
I had nearly a dozen text messages from Holly, all sent around one in the morning.
I opened them up, a sense of unease unfurling inside my gut, and stared
down at the thread of incoherent messages. All of them were nothing but jumbled letters and spaces and symbols but had all been sent within the same one minute window.
Either she was plastered last night and had drunk texted me, or something was seriously wrong.
I wasn’t going to waste any time figuring out which was the case. I got on my bike and tore out of Ryder’s driveway. The engine roared and the tires squealed, and I knew Ryder would give me a piece of his mind for leaving in such a raucous and disturbing his neighbors in the early morning hours.
But his neighbors be damned.
Holly needed me.
I pulled up out front of her apartment fifteen minutes later. I left the bike on the street and ran up to the front doors, which I pounded on mercilessly until a middle-aged man in a bathrobe emerged from one of the bottom floor units.
He squinted against the sunlight streaming through the glass door as he approached, using his hand as a visor. He looked me up and down and decided I was not the sort of man he would be letting into his building.
“I’m not letting you in,” he said somewhat timidly.
I pressed my forefinger against the glass, pointing at his chest. “If you don’t open this fucking door, I’m going to break it. My girl is in trouble, and if you stand between me getting to her, I’m going to use your face as a fucking punching bag. You hear me?”
The man’s eyes widened briefly, and he shuffled closer to the door. “I could get in a lot of trouble for letting you in. I’m not supposed to—”
“No one will know you let me in if you open this door in five seconds.”
“I don’t think—”
“Five.”
“Sir, please. Can’t you just wait for her to come down?”
“Four.”
The man stomped his foot in distress. A grown ass man actually stomped his foot.
“Three.”
“All right, all right! Fine.” He threw up his hands before unlocking and opening the door.
I blew past him, my shoulder clipping his, and sent him reeling sideways. “Sorry,” I called over my shoulder as I raced to the door to the stairs.
“Don’t make me regret this!” I heard him yell after me as I took the stairs two at a time.
I emerged on the third floor and pounded on the first door I came to. I had no clue which unit was Kim’s, and I wasn’t going to go around breaking everyone’s door down.
At least, I wasn’t going to start like that. As a last resort, I knew I would do whatever it took.
No one answered the first door, so I moved to the second and pounded on it like a madman. A woman yelled that she was coming, and I gave her maybe fifteen seconds before knocking again.
When she tore open the door, she stared up at me furiously, frizzy strands of red hair sticking up in every direction. She was an attractive middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and a square jaw. “What the fuck do you want?” she asked, her eyes giving me a sweeping up down. She looked back up at my face and narrowed her eyes. “I suggest you get the hell out of here before I call the police.”
“I’m looking for Kimberly Whitton’s apartment. She’s in trouble. I know you have no reason to believe me, but please. I’m begging you. Do you know which unit she’s in?” I wasn’t above begging. Not right now.
One of her red eyebrows arched. “Kimberly is in trouble?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“What sort of trouble?”
I bit back a smart-ass remark along the lines of, “the same kind of trouble you’ll be in if you make me stand here any longer,” and took a deep breath. “I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m here.”
“Young man, I’m going to call the police as soon as you leave my doorstep.”
“That’s fine.” I told myself that this was the kind of neighbor Kim should have. She was looking out for her own.
“She’s in unit three eleven. Around that corner there, third door on the right.”
“Thank you,” I said, already jogging away from her and down the hall.
“Don’t you dare hurt those girls!” she shouted after me.
I needed to work on my appearance, apparently. It definitely wasn’t doing me any favors right now.
I rounded the corner and found unit three eleven. I pressed my ear to the door first and forced myself to steady my breathing so I could listen for any potential danger on the other side.
Silence.
I knocked—or rather, I pounded—on the door hard enough for it to rattle on its hinges. “Holly? Open the damn door!”
Nothing. Silence hung around me like a thick fog. I tried the handle and wasn’t surprised to find it locked.
“I’m coming in!” I shouted, taking a step back.
“If you break that door down, boy, you’ll be paying for it!”
I looked down the hall to find the red-headed woman watching me. She had her cell phone in her right hand and was gripping it tightly.
I rammed my shoulder into the door. I ignored the neighbor as she took a picture of me. On the second hit, the padlock broke and the door shifted inward a couple inches. By the time I hit it a third time, it burst open, and I had an audience out in the hallway. All the other neighbors were peeking around their doorframes to get a slice of the drama.
I stepped over the rubble of the door and found myself in a neat little entranceway. Holly’s jacket hung on the hook and so did her work bag. So, she was home.
At least, I hoped she was.
“Holly?” I called as I walked down the hallway.
I emerged in a kitchen, and then the rest of the apartment.
I didn’t like what I saw.
Holly was sitting on the sofa. Beside her, in the middle seat, was a blond-haired, green-eyed boy. He was staring at me over the back of the couch, and he was only visible from the nose up. His little fingers were wrapped around the top of the sofa cushions, and his grip on them tightened when I met his eyes.
On the other side of the boy was Kim. She looked older than I remembered but still quite pretty. The mascara smudged under her eyes was a telltale sign that she had been crying. Holly’s eyes were red, and her nose was pink. It would appear she had also been crying.
Across from them, sitting at the dining room table, was Kent.
Seeing him made my blood boil.
He had his muddy boots up on the dining table, which was littered with more than a dozen empty beer cans. The whole place reeked of the stuff, and Kent belched loudly as he clasped his hands behind his head and regarded me with a cool, drunken gaze.
“Well, hello there, Bryan Roberts. I hear you’ve got a thing for my woman?” Kent’s words were slurred and thick, but his eyes were focused. He was staring right at me, and the rage in my gut matched the fury in his eyes.
I looked away from the drunk asshole and met Holly’s eye. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head as her bottom lip trembled.
Kent got to his feet. “You think I’d hurt my own woman?” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “She’s mine, you fucking criminal. Get the fuck out of here.”
I ignored her. “Kim, you all right?”
Kim nodded but never took her eyes off Kent, who was becoming more and more furious by the second.
“Hey, I’m talking to you, asshole!”
I turned slowly back to Kent and considered how I should handle the situation. If Luke wasn’t watching, I would have already broken several of Kent’s bones and had him on the floor. But the boy was watching, and regardless of how big an ass his father was, I wasn’t going to let him see such violence.
I was better than that.
Wasn’t I?
Kent tempted fate by stepping up close to me and prodding me in the chest. He was nearly of equal height to me, and I could smell his foul breath when he spoke.
“Get the hell out. You’re no good for my Holly. She’s coming home with me, whether she wants to or not, and you’re gonna forget all about her. You hear me?”
&nb
sp; My fists tightened at my sides. It would feel so good to crack my knuckles against the side of his skull. It would be over before he even knew what was happening.
“I said, do you hear me?” Kent hissed, spittle spraying my jaw.
I wiped it away with the back of my hand. “Oh, I hear you all right. Get the fuck out.”
Chapter 18
Holly
Jax was nose to nose with Kent, who was so furious he was practically foaming at the mouth. I pulled Luke up against me and wrapped my arms around him as he started to cry.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, trying to sound brave for him, “It’s okay. I promise.”
Kim slid across the couch to hold on to both of us, and we all stared at the two men, waiting for the inevitable violence to begin.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kent spat, turning away from Jax and falling back down into the dining room chair. He kicked his feet up on the table, and the beer cans bounced upon the wood. “I’m staying right here with my woman and my son. You’re the one who’s gonna get the fuck out.”
“She’s not your woman,” Jax said.
“You bet your fucking ass she is, Bryan. She’s always been mine. I know the shit the two of you used to pull behind my back. I’m not a moron. But she chose me. She followed me to Philadelphia. She left your sorry ass here to rot with your fucking MC buddies. She didn’t want to get caught up with a bunch of criminals. She’s always been better than you.”
I wanted to tell Kent how wrong he was, but my voice was caught in my throat. His words, however, seemed to have no impact on Jax, who remained where he was, expression unchanged.
“Get up,” Jax said.
“No.”
Jax moved faster than I’d ever seen anyone move. Before any of us had any idea what was happening, Jax had the front of Kent’s shirt in his fist and was hauling him to his feet. Kent was a drunken, stumbling mess, and Jax used it to his advantage as he dragged Kent out of the dining room and into the hall.
“Holly,” Jax called, “Stay where you are. I won’t be long.”
I listened to something break in the hall as Jax shoved Kent out the front door. A woman somewhere out in the hall yelped in surprise.
