Satan's Sons MC Romance Series Book 4: Forbidden

by Simone Elise

  Was that what was really scaring her away? That I might be able to break down her walls? That I might be the guy to get her to give more than just sex? My hopes went up. If she was scared of that happening and considering that it could happen then my chances were high of that happening.

  “You really want to go?” I asked, hoping she would give in and stay. “Whether you go now or not, I’m still not going to see Carrie.” I felt like I had to tell her that—like it would make a difference.

  She smiled. “You don’t have to do that for me.” Her phone started ringing and this time she turned around and answered it. Her phone didn’t make a normal ringing tone; it was personalized so she would know who was calling.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said into the phone. She sounded somewhat guarded. “Yeah, like I messaged you, it all went to plan.”

  I watched her go tense. “What do you mean early release! WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU CALL ME AND TELL ME THAT!” she screamed into the phone. “Cyrus, you know what that means. How the hell could you tell me this over the phone like it isn’t a big deal?!”

  Whatever her dad told her had really upset her. I frowned slightly. She had called him Cyrus again. I never called Dad ‘Reaper’. But that was the second time she had done it.

  She scoffed loudly. “No fucking joking! I can’t believe you would put me in this position.”

  I didn’t know if it would be okay, but I stepped toward her and planted my hands on her hips. She seemed really upset and I wanted to calm her down. Would she mind if I touched her?

  “Does he know? Like, does he know our address?” She sounded so panicked. Like her dad had just confirmed her worst nightmare. “God, Cyrus if he knows where I am…” She ran a hand over her cheek, sounding panicked.

  Who was she talking about? An ex-boyfriend maybe? Though she said she didn’t do relationships. Who could cause Layla to react like this?

  “You going there won’t solve my problems. You know him. You read what he keeps sending me! He won’t stop till he sees me!”

  My expression hardened when I heard that. I didn’t understand.

  “You can say that over and over. But it isn’t true and you know that.” Layla started to nervously move her weight from foot to foot. “He doesn’t follow the rules!” For the first time ever, I heard fear in Layla’s voice. “I think it’s best if I leave. Like we planned if this day came. We can talk about it when I get home.”

  I turned her around, needing to see her expression, because she sounded like she was a second from crying.

  It shocked me to see the fear in her eyes and the tears building up. She was so scared of whatever Cyrus had told her it was bringing tears to her eyes.

  “I’m heading home. We can talk about where I’m going or what we do soon.” She pulled the phone from her ear and hung up. She didn’t even say goodbye. I watched her pick up her heels.

  “What was that about?” I asked her, knowing very well that she had just had a serious conversation with her dad and it was serious enough to bring out the emotions that she normally kept hidden.

  I’d never seen her scared. I’d never seen her upset. I know I hadn’t known her for long but the impression she gave the world was she didn’t let others see her emotions. Well, she didn’t let anyone see her fear or tears. She did show happiness—it was the only emotion I had seen her express.

  “Nothing.” She gave me a one-word answer. “I have to go, Tyson. Can you show me the way out?”

  “You’re panicked, you’re scared, you’re close to tears and you expect me to let you go?” I said. She didn’t actually think I’d let that happen, did she? That I would let her leave when her emotions were out of control?

  “I just need to get home and talk to Dad.” She put her heels on. “There is nothing you can do for me right now.”

  I arched my eyebrows at her. “We could talk about it. Whatever has you this upset.”

  She shook her head and a tear fell from the corner of her eye. “Nope. Like I said, nothing you can do. But you can show me the way out.”

  I didn’t want her leaving like this, but it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to stop her.

  “Well, can I have your number before you disappear and that way I can check on you tonight?” I asked, trying to sound casual and not let desperation seep into my voice.

  Her head snapped up. “You actually want to check on me? To see if I’m alright?” She sounded stunned and the fear that had covered her face a minute ago was replaced with shock.

  “Yeah.” I put my hands in pockets. “If that is okay?”

  She looked at me like I was puzzle she couldn’t put together. I watched her have a debate over it as she summed up the pro and cons.

  I reached around her and picked up my phone and handed it to her, hoping she would take it.

  I smiled when she sighed and did take it.

  “This does not mean I’m expecting you to check up on me.” She finished putting her number in my phone and handed it back to me. Layla was the type of girl that didn’t count on anyone, so I knew she meant it when she wasn’t expecting me to check up on her.

  “I’ll show you the way out.” As much as I didn’t want to, I could see the panic on her face telling me she had to get home and sort out whatever was happening. I opened my bedroom door and she followed. I glanced over my shoulder. “You can still come back for tea if you want.”

  I hoping there was a chance she would come back.

  We came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs and she hadn’t given me an indication if she was going to come back for tea or not. I knew my chances were low, but there was still a chance, wasn’t there?

  She turned around, her back to the front door, and gave me a smile, even though you could tell with one look at her it looked like her world was falling to pieces.

  “You’re actually an alright type of guy, Tyson. You have a great family.” She was saying that like she was saying a final goodbye to me or something.

  I frowned at her words, and took a step closer to her even though I knew she wanted distance. “Is everything alright, Layla?” I saw a sad smile appear on her face.

  “Yeah…” she forced out, lying to me. “I’ll be okay.” Her hand landed on the doorknob. “Can I give you some advice?”

  I arched my eyebrows at that. “You actually want to share something with me?” She hadn’t exactly shared much with me, she was too guarded. “Well, go on then.” I nodded for her to continue.

  “If you find a girl that you really like, don’t change your life for her. Get her to fit into the life you have. She has to accept what you stand for and who you are. If you change for her, it won’t last.” The sweetest smile crept across her lips. “You deserve a woman that will stand beside you, not hold you back.”

  There was no normal woman on this planet that would accept my lifestyle. I knew that. But she was talking like there was a normal woman out there for me who would be all the things I needed. She was wrong though. The woman that would stand beside me, that I would protect with my life, well, she had to special. She’d have to have a heart of gold, but the armor of a warrior. I think Layla was right. There was a woman out there that would accept me, and I was looking directly at her.

  Layla stepped outside and started walking to her car. Why did I get a feeling like those were her last words to me?

  I quickly pushed the door open wider and took off after her. Something was off, I could feel it.

  “Layla?”

  She had just opened her car door and she turned back to look at me.

  “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, won’t I?” I had a feeling like I wouldn’t for some reason. Like she was about to disappear.

  She smiled. “Yeah, of course.” And with that said she got in the car. She closed the door and wouldn’t look at me.

  I had one question going through my head: had she just lied to me?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Layla
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br />   I knew this day would come, but I thought I’d be in my twenties or thirties. And over those years I would gain strength, wisdom and have a life that he would never know of. I knew that, according to his sentence, he would never be walking around a free man again, so really even that fear of him getting out shouldn’t have been there.

  And then this happens.

  “We can’t stay here, Cyrus!” Mum lit up another cigarette. She was chain-smoking and her stress showing. “If Rex knows where she is, he will come for her.”

  Cyrus’s face tightened. “You really think I’d let him take Layla?”

  Mum got up abruptly. “You don’t understand! Rex will take her! He cares about one thing in this world and that’s Layla! He doesn’t have feelings for anything else. Just one person. That he loves. That he wants.” Mum inhaled sharply on the cigarette, panicking. “If the police hadn’t caught him that night, Layla would be gone.”

  Rex had known he was going to prison the next day and wouldn’t be getting out. He expected a life sentence; actually, he was meant to be getting two life sentences because he killed a whole family. He was facing the charges of four murders.

  The only reason he was caught was because he went back in to save the kids. He didn’t know the children were in there. He was told it was just a man, his target. The security was tight at the house, so he’d faked being a plumber and started a gas leak.

  It was reported in all the papers.

  After he started the gas leak, he expected the man to die that night in his sleep. He thought it was an easy kill; no bullets, no blood and no link back to him. He always made sure there was no link back to him, even when it came back to brutal and bloody murders—there was never a trace back to him.

  His kills often made it in the paper, but no one linked them back to one person.

  Anyway, when he was going to drive away that night he saw the family van in the driveway. Without thinking about what he was doing—well, I assumed he wasn’t thinking—he broke into the house to get the kids out.

  But it was too late.

  The neighbors called the police, seeing him break into the house. They thought they were reporting a burglary, not a homicide.

  All four died that night.

  The night before his trial, he took me from my bed in the middle of the night and said he was going to run away with me.

  I don’t remember much of that night, apart from being surrounded by police cars.

  Mum woke up, realized what he was doing and we were caught a block away from the airport. Dad was caught with fake passports and a huge amount of cash—he had every intention of taking me that night and I would have grown up with him as a parent and never knowing I was a missing child.

  Before he was dragged away by the police, he gave me those words I lived by: judge their actions, not their image. He also said he would be back for me. And he reminded me of that promise every week when I got a letter from him. Every week for twelve years I got a letter, reminding me he was coming for me and begging me to not give up on him.

  The letters increased after I stopped visiting when I was ten. I still opened them. I was guilty of that. Over the years, he pleaded with me to write back, as he just wanted to know if I was okay. I ignored it for three years, and then, when I was fourteen, I asked Cyrus if he could tell Rex I was okay.

  After that, his letters got more direct. He stopped telling me how much he loved me, how much he missed me, how I was the thing keeping him breathing. His last letter which came last week was made up of five words: I am coming for you.

  I didn’t take him seriously. Till now. Till Cyrus was told that Rex was getting early release. An early release we weren’t to know about. Cyrus had Rex being watched by Deadly Dozen members that were in the same prison as him—maximum security—where men went to die and never saw the outside world again.

  All the Deadly Dozen members in there were sentenced to life without parole.

  And as far as I knew, the last time I checked Rex had the same conditions: life with no parole. Actually, he had two life sentences! So how the hell was he getting released?!

  “The only solution is for Layla to go. Leave. Like we planned if this happened.” Mum nervously rocked from foot to foot and looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you, Layla, but you won’t have a life if he finds you. He won’t stop till he has ruined everything you’ve become.”

  I knew that. I knew Rex would make sure my world was empty and then, when I had nothing left, he would expect me to turn to him.

  I think in his twisted mind he wanted me to follow in his footsteps.

  He wanted me to care about him, and only him—and be cold to everything else. If he did come into my life, he would turn and twist me till I was as cold as him.

  “I’ll put a hit on him. Fuck, I’ll do it myself! Layla isn’t leaving! I’m not losing my daughter!” Cyrus’s voice went up in rage. “He can come here and he can see that Layla wants nothing to do with him! And then if he doesn’t get the message I’ll put a bullet in his head.”

  Cyrus would do that. To protect me. I knew that. Mum knew that. We all knew Cyrus was being serious right now, but Cyrus was missing one fact. And as I looked at Mum, she and I both knew what it was.

  “Cyrus, he will make sure we’re dead before he even makes a move on Layla.” Mum sat back in her chair. “For Layla’s safety and ours, and we have to consider Alfie, we have to split up.”

  I frowned. “Split up? What do you mean split up?” I questioned Mum. She wasn’t saying what I thought she was saying, was she?

  She looked me in the eye. “If I’m not with Cyrus, there is a larger chance Rex will leave Cyrus and Alfie breathing. If he finds us, and it is just the two of us, then he is likely to take us back as a family.”

  Mum knew Rex better than anyone. She knew his darker points, his finer points and the things that made Rex who he was.

  “You aren’t getting back together with him,” I said firmly. That was the last thing I wanted. Mum being forced back into a relationship with him. “I am not going to pretend we are some happy family!”

  “Layla, I know your father.”

  “Yeah and I know how he treated you!” Nope. It wasn’t happening. She was not getting back together with him. She couldn’t leave the love her life to go be with a man that didn’t have a heart!

  “Layla, I’m going to tell you something that I never wanted to tell you. But I think you need to know, in order for my actions to make sense,” she said calmly, waiting for me to calm down.

  When I could take a steady breath, I nodded for her to continue.

  “Rex loves you so much that he would rather kill you than let you live a life without him. He wants you and, if you don’t go willingly, he will kill you because that is the type of man he is. He doesn’t understand love. But he would kill the only person he loves if he thought that his chance of being in your life was hopeless.” Mum looked at Cyrus and sighed. “And after he kills her, he will kill us if not the other way around.”

  “Rex won’t kill me.” I might not know my dad that well but I knew he didn’t have it in him to kill me. Because there was a day where he could have, hell, he tried. Mum didn’t know about it. It was the day that followed the night of the charges that had been laid against him. He knew he wasn’t getting off them.

  It was a sunny day, we were at a river bed and he told me how much he loved me. I didn’t understand why and then he asked me not to fight him. Again, I didn’t understand why. I saw him pull the gun from his holster and put it on the ground. I still didn’t understand what was happening as he held me under the water and I fought to get air.

  Now, as I look back, he had every intention on that day to kill me and then himself.

  I think I nearly blacked out. I was so close to death’s door when he pulled me from the water. He literally breathed air back into my lungs.

  I still remember the words that he said t
o me when I was awake and he was wrapping his jacket around me.

  He said, “No one is ever going to hurt you, not even me. I promise you that, Layla”. And then he kissed my forehead like that sealed his promise.

  His plan of killing us failed because he couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t know that when I was six. I didn’t know he tried to kill me. I realized when I was older.

  His second plan kicked into gear then, which was escaping with me overseas.

  It nearly worked, too.

  I knew I should run. I knew I should head overseas. I knew for my own safety and my family’s that I was better off far far away from them.

  From everyone that knew me.

  I knew that the fake passports and licenses in my fake name should start being used. I should move to another town, another country—start my life undercover and hide from my blood father.

  But there was one thing stopping me.

  And I knew then in this moment, I couldn’t run. Even though it was the only logical thing to do. As much as Mum was encouraging it and willing to put her life on the line for me.

  I couldn’t go.

  I might be signing my own death warrant by not doing it, by not running and hiding.

  But I had made a promise to someone. Someone who I had grown to love.

  And that was to Hannah. I wasn’t leaving her to face breast cancer by herself. I didn’t care if that meant Rex would find me and possibly kill me.

  I wouldn’t turn my back on Hannah. Not even the threat of Rex would make me break my promise to her.

  “I can’t go,” I said firmly and sat up in my chair. “With the threat of Rex or not, I’m not leaving.”

  Cyrus’s and Mum’s head snapped to look at me in disbelief.

  “But you always said if it happened you were gone.” Cyrus reminded me of something I had said once when I was having nightmares about Rex getting out.

  “And you said we don’t run from nightmares, we create them.” I repeated the words he said to me back to him and a slight smile spread across his face.

  “You really are my daughter,” he said proudly. “Regardless, I’m putting a hit on his head.”