by Mia Miles
I wanted to hear her story. I wanted to know what had happened that set her off like that and sent her running from me, from the life we had talked about building together. I knew it had to be something serious.
She pulled back, breaking the kiss.
“I feel like I should run away more often,” she joked, touching a dainty finger to her lips.
“I’d come get you no matter where you go. But please don’t do that ever again.” I allowed myself to laugh. I was glad to have her back. I walked her to the car and opened her door for her. We walked hand in hand until she slid into the passenger seat and I went to close the door.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, it was finally time to start talking. I looked over to her and took her hand in mine again. I wanted her to know that it was okay for her to tell me anything and everything she needed to.
“I guess you want to talk about what happened,” she murmured.
“I think it’s time. And we should get it all out in the open before we get back to the house,” I said. I gave her hand an encouraging squeeze.
“Where do I begin?” she asked, and I could tell she was talking to herself more than to me at that point.
“At the hospital. What happened to make you want to leave when you got out?”
“It’s like you know,” she said.
“Know what? Remember, I was in jail, and no one told me you were gone until I got out, so you had a pretty good head start.”
She sighed. “Okay. Eddie came to visit me in the hospital,” she said.
“Eddie,” I repeated. “Who’s Eddie?”
“Eddie is the father of my son,” she told me, dropping a bomb on me.
“It’s a boy?” I asked, nearly shouting in surprise.
“It is a boy,” she said, smiling. Her smiled warmed up the whole car, completely changing the atmosphere from cold and serious to bright and joyful.
“Does the father know?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. He would have said something if he had. He would have been more adamant, I think, if he’d known.”
“More adamant? Okay, hold up.” I was getting lost. I felt like I wasn’t getting the full picture. “What happened when Eddie came to the hospital?”
“He told me he wanted to take custody of the baby when he’s born,” she said. The fear of the situation was returning to her voice.
I squeezed her hand again. “That’s not going to happen. You’re not giving him custody of the child, right? I mean, this is supposed to be our kid. That’s going to be my son, not his.” There was a sudden surge in my possessive instinct. I wasn’t going to allow someone to come in and hijack our plans, not like that.
“It wouldn’t take much for him to be able to take our son away, Cutter,” she argued. “You’re in an MC. You’ve got a criminal record, and I don’t mean this mess that my father has obviously put you in. I may be a little naïve, but I’m not stupid. I know there’s more to your past than hanging out with your brothers in bars. With his job and my father’s support, no one will stand in his way.”
“You’re forgetting one thing. Your father doesn’t own me,” I said sternly.
“He owns enough people, as you know, to make your life hell.”
I barked out a coarse laugh. “What he doesn’t realize is I’ve still got you. Together, you and I are going to work to take him down,” I told her, confident in our ability to work together against any common threat.
“I’ll be happy to, because he poses a threat to both of us right now,” she said.
“So, what else happened? Did you just panic and leave?” I still wasn’t piecing together everything in my head.
“Yeah, I panicked. Eddie and my father are both rich, powerful men, and I know my father put him up to visiting me. The only thing that made any sense at the time was to run. I had to get away from anything that would help him if he decided to really pursue custody. At the time, his threat sounded very real and very plausible,” she explained.
“I hope you realize that he’s going to have to fight if he wants the boy. There are lawyers out there who are not in your father’s pocket. I’ve got one now, and she was able to get one of your dad’s judges to set bail and let me out. I’m sure she can help with any custody battle, or she can find someone who can,” I assured her.
“Thank you, Cutter. You’ve really been a tremendous help through all of this,” she said sweetly.
“So, how the hell did you get by Jay?” I said with a laugh.
“Oh yeah, that.” She sounded embarrassed. “Well, while he was at the front door waiting for me, I just dipped out the back.”
It sounded simple enough, but the way my house was set up, I never would have expected someone who wasn’t shady, wasn’t sneaky, to figure out there was an exit in the back. I wondered just how good Missy really was.
“Are you sure you haven’t lived this kind of life before?” I asked her, joking.
“I watch a lot of TV,” she said. She winked.
“I see that. Where were you going?”
“Wherever the road took me. That was why I stayed at the bus station. I didn’t know where to go next. My original ticket was for Albuquerque, so I could have actually stayed on the bus to stop at any of the stops on the way, or I could have gone all the way, but if I followed the ride all the way to its destination, I figured it would have been easier to track me,” she explained.
“But you used cash, so you probably didn’t have to give anyone your name. It wouldn’t have been easy to track you. You could have gone,” I argued. “I mean, I’m glad you didn’t, but you could have,” I added quickly.
“True, but my father has nearly unlimited funding and power to match. He would have found me. I’m surprised no one showed up at the terminal before you did.” She was looking out the window as she talked, watching the world roll past us.
“I guess you’re right. Well, we’ve got to figure something out to stop him. If we don’t, I’m going to prison on drug charges. Because of who I am and what I do, they’ll want to go as severe as they can on the punishment and the charges.”
She sat and stared quietly for a few moments before saying anything. She was beautiful. That anyone could have looked at her and even imagined doing her wrong boggled my mind. I couldn’t imagine doing anything to hurt her, but there were people out there who couldn’t seem to do anything but that.
“I could talk to him again,” she said finally, turning to face me.
“But what would you say?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’d have to talk him down or get him to admit what he’s doing. But if anyone can do either of those things, it’s me.”
I nodded. She was right. She was the best person for the task of talking to her father.
“Do it. But I want to hear everything. I want to hear your whole conversation with him,” I told her, insisting.
“We can arrange that,” she said thoughtfully. I could see the plan formulating in her head.
“What do you propose?” I asked.
“I’ll meet him at his house, and I’ll take my phone. I’ll either record him or let you listen in on speaker. I’ll need you to mute your end, though, so he can’t hear anything.”
Her intuitive understanding of how to do things never ceased to amaze me. Here was this young girl who grew up in the best neighborhood and went to the best schools, who had never been in any trouble before, who understood the world better than most. She was a natural. She was going to make a great old lady and a great addition to the Renegade Lions.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked her. “I don’t want to put you in harm’s way to make this work.”
“I’m fine with it. Besides, if anything goes wrong, you’ll be listening in, and you can send someone to get me,” she said. She talked like it was some big military operation.
“You don’t expect a conversation with your father to get that bad, do you?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Cutter.
He seems pretty desperate right now, and I’m not really sure why.”
“Me, either,” I agreed. “Although, if he was upset enough to kick you out of the house because he didn’t want any shame from his daughter having an illegitimate child, he might just be upset enough to do whatever it takes to make sure the world never knows about that child. I saw the neighborhood. People in places like that really care about what their neighbors think of them.”
“And you don’t?” she asked.
“To an extent I do. I want people to be a little unsettled by me. I want them to be afraid to fuck with me or with my brothers. I don’t care what they know as long as they can’t prove it in court,” I said, giving a little cough at the end for emphasis.
Missy laughed. “Of course, as long as it can’t be proven in court.”
“Right. If the court thinks it didn’t happen, or can’t prove that it did, it didn’t happen. That’s an important lesson in this life, Missy. Remember it.”
Our drive passed quickly while we talked and held hands in the car. Before I knew it, we were home, pulling up to the clubhouse, where we were both going to be staying until everything blew over. I felt safer surrounded by my brothers in the MC. No one would have argued any differently.
“We’re not going back to the house?” Missy asked cautiously.
“No way. Not while your father is trying to have me locked up. I don’t know what else he will do, so we’re staying here in the meantime, until we get this sorted. Is that okay?” I asked. I wasn’t really looking for an answer. We were going to stay there whether it was okay or not. It just made more sense.
“I guess it’ll have to be okay,” Missy said as she got out of the car.
“Hey,” I called after her. I cut the engine and got out, following her as she walked toward the clubhouse. I grabbed her arm again and turned her around.
I had expected to see anger in her face when she spun around, but I saw a kind of resolve.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Besides, if I’m going after my father for you, we’re going to need to work with the rest of the guys so they can be ready in case anything goes wrong.”
I could have kissed her again, but she turned and walked inside. I stood back and watched as the old ladies inside welcomed her home. The guys also accepted her into the group. She was one of us. There was no doubt about it.
Chapter Thirty
Missy
My father answered the door dressed in a business suit. He’d obviously taken time off of work to meet with me. As I walked into the house, he peered outside to see who had dropped me off. Luckily, Cutter had decided just to drop me at the driveway so his car wasn’t in view. I didn’t know where he had finally parked it, but he hadn’t pulled in.
The house felt colder and emptier than normal when I walked in. Of course, every surface was sterile and spotless. I had never seen my parents clean the house. It just sort of repelled dust somehow. I never put much thought in it, but as my world seemed to get dirtier and dirtier the longer I was out of the house, it became obvious that something wasn’t quite right.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked him as he closed the front door and locked it.
“I sent her out for the afternoon. I wanted to talk to you in private,” my father said shortly.
I nodded. Of course he wanted to talk in private. My mother would have been offended if she knew everything that was going on. I was fairly certain she had no idea what all he’d done since our last conversation.
He led me to the dining room, the same place where we’d talked before. The blinds in the windows along the outside wall of the dining room were raised so that we could see my parents’ beautiful yard. It was as meticulously kept as the inside of the house, and there was still never any color. It was all green all the time. Somehow they managed never to grow any flowers. I would have guessed that one of them would have wanted to see a rose or something at some point, but no.
I sat at the wooden table, taking the seat at one end, while my father sat at the other. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and set it on the table. I had called Cutter and already put it on speaker phone so that he could hear everything. The screen was off so my father couldn’t tell I was on the phone, and Cutter had muted his end of the line, as I had requested, so that there wasn’t any sound coming through to tip my father off.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” he asked, maintaining a stony expression on his face. He was unreadable.
“Eddie, Cutter, my baby, everything,” I answered. I had to fight my eyes to stay focused on him. I kept wanting to check to make sure Cutter was still on the phone, but I didn’t want to give it away.
“The father of your bastard child, your pimp, the bastard itself, and what else?” he asked, rephrasing my words back to me.
“Just ‘my child’ is fine,” I told him. “You don’t have to refer to it as a bastard.” I had to be careful not to call him a him. He was to remain an it to my father. I didn’t want that bastard knowing that I was having a boy. If he really was interested in taking the baby from me, he would have doubled his efforts knowing it was a boy.
“You’ve never had much respect for us, have you?” he asked, keeping his tone even and cool.
I was dumbfounded. I had no clue what the hell he was even talking about. I didn’t see how bad luck in my own life had anything to do with my respect for him, but in his delusional mind I had to accept that he probably thought I had done all of this shit on purpose just to hurt him.
“I don’t know what any of this has to do with how much I respect the two of you. You’re the one who kicked me out of your house, not the other way around. Next, you’re going to tell me you’re not behind sending Eddie to threaten to take custody of my child. You’re going to tell me you didn’t set Cutter up at his club so that he would be in jail and out of your way when you came after me,” I said, challenging my father. I needed to get something out of him, and I didn’t want to take too long to do it.
I was starting to feel like the whole thing had been a setup on his part as well, as if he had invited me to the house for something other than our little talk. If anything happened, Cutter already had several guys on call, ready to storm the house.
“I’m sorry to hear about your biker boyfriend,” the smug asshole said.
“Yeah, I bet you are. You’re probably sorry to hear that he got out of jail, huh?”
His eyes faltered. “I’m sorry, he what?” His voice cracked.
“You didn’t know.” I laughed. “You didn’t even know.”
“I mean, why would I have known? Has it been in the news?” he asked, his voice shaking as he tried to cover up his reaction.
“Give it up,” I told him. “You knew about it because you were behind it. I know you used your connections on the department to plant drugs on the premises. Then, you used your connections with the judge to keep him in jail.”
At first, he looked like he was going to continue playing the part, but his face dropped all pretense. He tapped the table and stood up. The game was over. I was about to be in trouble, big trouble. I could see it coming even if I didn’t have any idea yet what it was going to be.
“I’m impressed, Missy. You’re very intuitive for someone who has never had to get her hands dirty. I’ve tried to hide you from the dirt of the world, from the trash and the garbage that’s out there. I tried to send you to the best schools so you would have the best opportunities, but you’ve always wanted to see what was on the other side, haven’t you?” He walked to me, slowly, as he continued to talk.
“You don’t know how to just simply accept things at face value, do you, Missy? Like the fact that your boyfriend was arrested for possession, the intent to distribute, and whatever else they could come up with. Or the fact that your ex showed up to tell you he wanted custody of your child so it could grow up in a decent home and have a chance at a decent life. You couldn’t just accept that, could you? You should have come home then instead of hopping a bus
and running,” he said.
My heart froze. He knew I’d gotten on a bus. But if he knew that, why didn’t he know Cutter was out? Surely he knew where I went and that Cutter had picked me up. Unless, of course, I had found the limits of his reach. Whoever saw me get on the bus didn’t follow me, so they didn’t see who came to get me.
“Oh yeah, I saw all of that. But right now you’re wondering why I didn’t know about your boyfriend.” He shook his head. “I can’t see everything, unfortunately.”
“So, you’re saying you are behind the drugs at Cutter’s club?” I asked, figuring now that he was indulging in his egotistical bravado, he’d be likely to admit it.
