Crucify Thy Demons: Snakes Henchmen MC

by Grayson, Alivia

  “You fucked my brains out.”

  He laughs beside me, and I slap his chest playfully. He takes my hand in his and kisses my fingertips. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” He has nothing to thank me for.

  “For choosing me. I love you like you wouldn’t believe, Marley. I’m gonna take such good care of you that you ain’t never gonna wanna leave me.”

  I turn on my side to face him, cupping his beautiful cheek at the same time. “You already take good care of me, and I’m never going to leave you. I love you, Roman. I love you like no one before. You are everything to me.”

  The smile on his face tells me that he’s more than satisfied with my answer.

  “You have to meet with that guy and tell him that it’s over for good, Marley. I don’t want to wait any longer. I want him gone from your life.” Roman pushes the hair out of my eyes and smiles at me.

  I know he’s right, but I don’t know what I’m going to say to Marcus. I don’t want to hurt him, even though there’s no way to get around it.

  “I’ll tell him tomorrow. I know you’re right. I just want us to be together, Roman. You, me, and Romany. No one else.”

  “That’s right, baby. We belong together. Whatever happened to bring us together, happened for a reason, and that reason is so that we can love each other for the rest of our lives.”

  “I believe that, too.” I really do. “Everything I went through in my life, every bad decision made led me to you, and I can’t make myself regret any of it.”

  “It’s gonna be okay, Marley. We’re going to have the best life. We both deserve this, baby. I’m going to marry you, Marley.” My heart is pounding inside my chest, and I’m smiling like a fool. He wants to marry me!

  “You want to marry me?”

  “I want nothin’ more than to make you my wife, baby.”

  “I want that, too.”

  “Soon, baby.” He smiles. “Real soon.”

  I can do nothing but accept his kiss. He pulls me against him, my head on his chest and it isn’t a minute before I’m fast asleep in his arms. Right where I belong.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Roman

  I rock my daughter gently. Romany has just finished her bottle, and now she’s holding onto my finger while staring at me. She’s so beautiful. Yeah, Romany looks just like me, but I see so much of Marley in her little smile.

  I left Marley to sleep. After the intense and passionate session we had tonight, she needs it.

  Marley chose me. Not him. Me. Marley made me realize that no one is above me in her heart. I can’t even tell you how much I needed to hear her words tonight. Especially thinking she’d chosen him and was about to tell me that she wanted to leave.

  Ace and Red were right in what they said, all I had to do was give Marley space while letting her know I’d always be here for her.

  It didn’t matter how angry I was, how badly I wanted to take my daughter from her – I couldn’t have another man around my child – I couldn’t do it. It would’ve just driven her into his arms. By being the bigger man, I was showing Marley that I was genuine and honest from the bottom of my heart. I showed Marley without pushing her just how much I love her. I proved that she could count on me without having to fear I would want more than she could give me at that moment.

  I don’t know what the fuck they’ve been getting up to those times they’ve met up, but I do know he never touched her. Marley told me that much, and I believe her. She has no reason to lie to me. Marley isn’t a liar.

  I don’t know what she’s going to say to doctor fuck face, but I know she’s meeting him later on today. I won’t have him thinking he can take Marley from me for a second longer. Marley is mine. No one will take her from me.

  Mine!

  I’m going to make Marley, my wife. The Lord knows I am. While she’s meeting with cunt face for the last time, I’ll be sorting our surprise wedding. Marley knows nothing about it; all she knows is what I told her last night. I want to marry that girl sooner rather than later.

  I’m not a man who does things by halves, so I’ll have it sorted within the next couple weeks. I’ll have the big hog roast planned at the clubhouse, that’s what she’ll think we’re attending. We will be, but it’ll be our wedding day as well. It’ll be huge!

  I know Marley doesn’t want the big church wedding, I don’t want that either. However, I want to marry her with my whole club there, my family, and our friends. Ours because my cousin-in-law is Marley’s best friend. All the women of the club love her. She’s just the kind of woman everyone gets along with, and now she’s become friendly with everyone, it’s much easier.

  I don’t know what to do about Marley’s family, however. Of course, I’d never invite her father the man is as good as fucking dead for what he put her through. Well, he will be when I catch up with him. He sold his daughter and didn’t even bother to try and find her to let her know her mother had passed away. She told me all about that before she fell asleep. My heart hurt for her. I couldn’t imagine losing my mother. Tom Denison has a lot to answer for, though in some strange way, we both thank him. If he hadn’t done what he did, we would never have met, and we wouldn’t have Romany. Neither of us wants to think about that. This baby girl is the glue that binds us. She’s everything to the two of us.

  Looking at Romany makes me think about the past. The stupid kid that I was and what I lost because of that fact. Still, fucking hurts to this day. That’s why I try not to think about it, to push it so far to the back of my mind that it has no way of coming forward.

  However, it’s hard of late when I look at Romany, or when my mother keeps on saying the same thing. It started to make me wonder if they look alike. Do both my daughters look like me? Or is it just Romany?

  Yeah, I have another daughter. I was a stupid eighteen-year-old who thought he was God’s gift to women. Older women seemed to have a thing for me, and I just loved to show them I was better than any man twice my age. I stupidly fucked a much older woman, whom I should have known better than to sleep with. I didn’t believe her when she told me that she was having my kid. Who the hell would believe a crazy bitch who would have done anything to trap any man into claiming her? I sent her packing the day she told me. She was angry, of course, and she told me that’ I’d live to regret turning her away. I laughed and walked away like she was nothing but the whore everyone knew her to be.

  The bitch packed up and left without a word to anyone, and eighteen months later, she sent me a picture of my little girl. I was shocked because I couldn’t even deny she was mine; she was my mirror image.

  I showed my mother the picture, and she cried her heart out while placing a picture of me at the same age as my daughter was at the time next to her picture. It floored me just how much she looked like me. I didn’t even know her name, the bitch that was her mother never wrote that baby’s name on the back, just a message that told me I’d lost out because I was a cunt who denied her.

  It tore me the fuck up inside. Tore me up even more that I couldn’t find that baby. Hell, I’ve never been able to find a trace of her, and I’ve looked; in secret, of course. My daughter would be nineteen now. Nineteen and I’ve never laid eyes on her. It doesn’t mean I’ve ever stopped thinking about her or loving her, and it doesn’t mean I’ll ever turn her away should she come looking for me.

  However, somehow, I doubt that will ever happen. If I can’t find my daughter, who’s to say she’ll ever find me? Her mother is the kind of cunt who’d deliberately keep my identity from my daughter just to hurt her. That bitch should never have been a mother. Isn’t it always the way? Cunts like her get to have kids while good women never do.

  I wonder if my eldest daughter is okay out there, and I wonder if she ever thinks about me the way I think about her. My heart aches with longing, longing to hold her and tell her how much she means to me. I long to tell her how much her Daddy has always loved her.

  I pull my little Romany closer to my naked chest an
d kiss her head. “One day, you’re gonna know your big sister, Romany. I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I do know that I’ll make sure to tell you about her as you grow. Not that I know much, but I want you to love her the way I know she’ll love you if she ever comes into our lives.”

  “You have another daughter?”

  Fuck! I didn’t know Marley was standing there. However, this beautiful woman is going to be my wife, and I can’t keep this secret from her the way I have everyone else in my life but my mother, grandparents, and Ace. I haven’t told BlackJack, Taylor, Hawk, or Wrench. I haven’t told my grandparents on my father’s side, or, my sister. I haven’t told anyone in the MC either. I have my reasons why I didn’t, but they’re my reasons, and I need tell no one but Marley. I owe it to her to tell her everything about my life; she deserves that much.

  Marley pads over to me on her bare feet, wearing nothing but my t-shirt. It’s so big on her that it hits her knees. One little hand touches my arm while the other strokes our now sleeping daughters head gently. “Roman?”

  “Let me lay Romany down, and we can talk.” Marley nods and plants a kiss on Romany’s head.

  It takes me a couple of minutes to put Romany in her crib and make my way back to Marley. She’s sitting on the couch waiting for me. I drop down in the seat beside her. Her hand clasps my sweatpant covered thigh, letting me know she’s right here with me.

  I never imagined I’d be telling Marley what I’m about to tell her, but I can’t keep it from her either, she’s going to be my wife, I won’t keep anything from her.

  “Only a handful of people know what I’m about to tell you, and they are my blood family. No one else can know.”

  “You can tell me anything, Roman. It will never go any further, I promise.”

  I nod, take her hand from my thigh and bring it to my lips, planting a kiss on her knuckles, and sigh. “I was a stupid kid, Marley. I was still a prospect with the club, eighteen years old, and I thought I was God’s gift to women. Women, they all wanted to be with me in some way. Ain’t many eighteen-year-olds looked the way I did back then. I was built like a God, always workin’ out, and I had an attitude that seemed to have the women swooning.”

  It wasn’t hard for me to have women dropping at my feet neither. Everywhere I went, women fawned all over me. My Dad used to say it was a gift. My mother would tell me never to use women for my own gains, but I was eighteen, and being that age and able to have any woman I wanted was like taking candy from a baby.

  I got a big head because of it; I won’t lie. It seemed normal to me when everyone else in the club who wasn’t married or had an old lady was exactly the same.

  “Older women were no different. I made one stupid mistake, Marley. One that led to an older woman telling me she was carryin’ my baby. I didn’t believe her. We used a condom, but she swore blind it split. I told her to get lost and never come back.”

  I rake my fingers through my hair. Sending that bitch packing without even really hearing her out is the biggest regret I have in life. I can’t even bring myself to speak her name because I feel like I’ll vomit on it if I do.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Marley tells me in her sweet, calming voice.

  I smile at her and kiss her head. Knowing, she’s here with me, that she’s mine, that I’ll get to see Romany grow up is the best feeling I’ve ever had.

  “She left town, and I never saw her again. However, eighteen months later, she sent me a photograph from an untraceable address. The photo was of a little girl. My little girl. The second I saw that picture. I knew what I’d done. I’d lost my child because I didn’t believe her mother. I told only Ace and my mother at the time. When my mother saw the picture, she grabbed one of me at the same age, and the likeness was uncanny. There was no more denying that the baby was mine.

  “I searched for a long time for them. I wanted to be part of my little girl’s life, but no matter how hard I searched, I came up empty-handed. She’s nineteen now, and I’ve never so much as seen her face in real life. I could search the ends of the earth, and I know I’ll never find her.”

  I hang my head and breathe back my emotions. It never gets easier, no matter how much time passes.

  A hand strokes the back of my head. “It’s okay, Tallon. I’m so sorry, baby,”

  I reach over and grab my wallet from the coffee table where I left it earlier. Opening it, I grab the only photograph I have of my eldest daughter and hand it to Marley.

  “Oh, wow. She’s adorable. She really does look like you and Romany.” I hear the smile in her words. “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know, her mother never told me. I’ve spent all these years wondering about her, if she’s okay, where she is, and if she knows about me. It kills me that I’ll never know her, not even her name.”

  “This is the reason you fought so hard to be in Romany’s life? Why you begged me not to take her away from you?” I nod without looking at her. “Oh, Roman, I am so sorry.”

  “No.” I shake my head while turning to face Marley. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t take Romany, Marley. You made sure that no matter what you decided, whomever, you chose, Romany would always know her Daddy, and I love you so much for that.”

  Her little hand comes to my face. “I love you so much, Roman, and nothing will ever change that. Romany and I are going nowhere without you. I know one day, this little girl,” She taps the picture in my hand, “Will come looking for you, or we’ll find out where she is, and you will be just as amazing with her as you are with Romany.”

  I pull Marley against me and hold her in my arms. She’s so understanding about everything, and she always sees the bright side of every situation. I have no fucking clue how when she’s suffered the way she has, but I love her so much for it.

  I don’t know if I ever will get to meet my eldest daughter, but I know that I’ll never turn her away if she comes looking for me. If I find her first, maybe she won’t want to know me, or perhaps she will. I know that the first thing I’ll tell her is how much I have always loved her, and how I’ll always be here for her should she need me.

  That’s all I can do. I just hope she doesn’t hate me.

  I guess only time will tell.

  Chapter Twenty

  Marley

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt this sick or nervous in my whole life. How am I meant to tell the man I planned to spend my life with that we can’t be together?

  Roman didn’t want me to put off telling Marcus one more day. He’s right; I can’t. I’ve made my choice, and now I have to tell Marcus that it’s over between us.

  The thing is, I don’t want to hurt him. We’ve been through a lot together. Marcus once meant everything to me. However, it’s inevitable that I will hurt him. He’s told me each time we’ve met that he wants me back, that he won’t stop until I’m home with him, even that he wants to adopt Romany, yet if I had chosen him that would never have happened.

  It was all too much. I was genuinely in love with Marcus once, but I no longer am. I didn’t even know it was possible to fall out of love with one man and deeper in love with another.

  However, that’s precisely what’s happened to me. I’ve fallen so deeply in love with Roman that I can’t see anyone but him. He’s my soulmate. He was the one I was destined to be with. I went through all that hell just to find him. My heart feels lighter now that I’ve admitted it to both him and myself.

  I’m not doing this because I believe Romany deserves to have her mother and father together. No matter how much you love your child, it will only hurt them to have two parents who don’t like each other pretend they do. Those things have a way of coming back to haunt you, just as they did with my parents.

  I want to be with Roman because he stole my heart at a time I believed I could never love again, that no man could ever love me. I didn’t trust anyone or anything. Roman showed me that I had nothing to fear because he’d always be there for me.

  Of course
, it wasn’t Marcus’ fault that he couldn’t be there for me, he had no clue I was even alive, but the past couple times I’ve met with him, they haven’t been as happy as I thought they’d be. Pushing me the way he did only served to push me away from him.

  Why the hell would I want to take my daughter away from her father and move to Paris?

  I didn’t tell Roman this fact. I’m not sure what he would have done had I told him. Also, after finding out that he has another daughter whom he doesn’t even know the name of because she was taken away from him, I know I could never do such a thing. He’s a wonderful father to our little girl. He’s restored my faith in men and the fact they’re not all monsters, even if he is a biker.

  “You gonna be okay on your own, or would you like me to come with you?”

  I shake my head at Elie. She drove me here to Mike’s Dinner. I didn’t think I should come alone. It’s not that I’m scared of Marcus, I’d just feel better if I had a friend waiting for me. This isn’t going to be easy, and I don’t want to be alone.

  “You sure you don’t mind waiting for me?”

  “Of course, I don’t. Just remember that I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere.”

  I shoot her a smile. Elie looks beautiful today in her off the shoulder, blue dress. Her hair is loose, and she’s wearing light makeup. She’s so elegant, and I don’t even think she realizes how beautiful she is.

  I’m merely wearing blue jeans and a white blouse, with my hair French braided, and blue sandals on my feet, no makeup just lipgloss. I didn’t want to wear anything that would give Marcus the wrong idea about us. God, my stomach is turning over.

  “Do I look okay?”

  “You look beautiful,” Elie reassures me with a smile and a squeeze of my hand. “I know this is going to be hard, Marley, but you’ve made the right choice. Roman loves you so much.”