Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  He stood up, and Leah stomped across the room and stopped so that they were nearly toe to toe.

  “You’re right. I am angry. But it is me. It’s all true. I’m a slut, Daddy. I’m easy. I’m dirty. But you’re a drunk who pisses himself twice a week. So you’re dirty, too. We all have our sins and secrets.”

  Leah thought her father was going to hit her again. Never before that afternoon had he ever raised a hand to her. She’d never been spanked as a child, or even had her hand slapped away from a hot pan, not as far as she remembered. Her parents had raised her with gentle love and patience. Always. Until her mother had disappeared. After that, she’d taken care of her father in the same way.

  Never before today had he ever looked on her with such anger.

  He didn’t hit her now. Instead, he grabbed her arms and shook her hard enough to make her head rock back and forth on her neck. “Take it back! You are my good girl! Be my good girl! My angel!”

  She broke loose from his grip. “I am who I am, Daddy. I’m Leah. Just a girl, not an angel.” No, not a girl. “A woman. I’m a grown woman, and I am who I am.”

  His bruised face ravaged by desperate shock and denial, he shoved her away from him and stormed out of her room.

  Alone, Leah stood where she was and made a choice. Then she made a plan.

  ~oOo~

  She found her father in the back yard, staring down at a bed of annuals they’d planted in the spring—nothing special, just petunias and marigolds, a row of flashy zinnias at the back. He had a glass of scotch in his hand. From the size of the glass—a tumbler—and the level of the amber liquid in it, Leah presumed that he’d made a plan of his own: to get as drunk as he could as quickly as he could. Not that that was much more than an acceleration of the usual plan.

  It was late on Saturday afternoon, and the cicadas sang a song of evening creeping close. Leah’s first impulse was to ask him to be careful, to remember that he had a sermon to give in the morning.

  But she’d made a choice, and before she ever again cleared her father from his own way, he would have to step out of hers.

  Leah’s mother had disappeared almost ten years earlier. She’d given no warning, she’d left no note, and she’d taken very little with her. For weeks, everyone had thought something terrible had happened to her. The FBI had even been involved, treating the case as a possible interstate kidnapping.

  Then the agents had tracked her down. In California. She hadn’t been kidnapped or hurt; she’d simply left. When they’d found her, she’d refused to speak to her husband. Or her daughter. The last contact Leah had had with her mother had been a routine kiss on the cheek at a routine bedtime the night before she’d left them.

  After the case was closed, Leah had stepped into the hole her mother had left. Or maybe she’d fallen into it. In any case, she’d been trapped there for all these years.

  She’d always believed that it was her mother’s sudden abandonment of them that had driven her father into an endless bottle of scotch, but she didn’t remember all that clearly what he’d been like when they’d been a complete family. She remembered him in church, but her recollections of those years at home were mostly of her mother. She’d carved every moment deep into her mind so that she would be sure to feel pain whenever she thought of her mother. She wanted to remember that hurt always.

  Just in case her mother ever tried to come back.

  But now, finding the limit of her sacrifice for her father, Leah wondered what kind of husband he’d been. Had he been a drunk then as well? Had her mother held him together every day the way Leah had been? Had he driven her mother away?

  “Daddy.”

  His only acknowledgement of her presence was a deep, sad sigh.

  “We need to talk. I need to tell you what I’m going to do.”

  “‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things,’” he recited, and then finished the scotch in his glass.

  When her father started quoting the Bible instead of having an actual discussion, there was not much discussion to be had. But Leah pressed on, anyway. This was too important. “Philippians chapter four, verse eight. I have the Bible memorized, too, Daddy. I know you don’t approve of the things I told you—”

  He turned on her, and the anger in his eyes was hot enough to burn. “Approve? How could you think I might? They are foul things. They befoul you. And you befoul me! If you spoke truly, if you do such things, than you are not the daughter I raised.”

  Tears welled up in her throat, but Leah swallowed them away. Better to stay calm. Rational, mature, reasonable—that was how she needed to be. But she couldn’t just let his statement roll past. “I’m exactly the daughter you raised. This is who I am. Living in this house with you, cleaning up after you, taking care of you, keeping your secrets—you made me, Daddy. You and Mom. I am the daughter you raised.”

  A shadow of guilt darkened his eyes, but the growing fire of his anger pushed it away. “No. The devil has had his way with you. ‘Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ You must repent, Leah Grace. It’s the only way. Tomorrow, at service, you will repent. Clear all this from your soul. Accept the way of the Lord again. Then we can be like we were. Then we can be well again.”

  He wanted her to make a confession before the whole congregation—because he wanted all the gossips who’d been audience to their drama today to see him make it right and get his wayward daughter back on the righteous path. He wanted to save his own reputation.

  She would disappear from his life before she would do that.

  “We haven’t been well since Mom left. You want to fling Bible verses at each other? How about the first epistle of John, chapter one, verse eight: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ What about you? Are you going to admit your sin and repent, too? In front of your flock? Are you going to face up to the truth and tell them all how often I get you up off the bathroom floor with your shriveled-up dick hanging out of your boxers? Or maybe that’ll be part of my testimony. Maybe I’ll tell them what it’s like to be your daughter.”

  As before, up in her room, her vulgarity broke his self-righteous anger, and he wilted. “Leah, stop. Don’t be so ugly. Please. I love you. I need you to be you. You’re all I’ve got.”

  Seeing his pain, she softened. This was his fault, but it was hers, too. She was the one shaking everything apart, and her father had never been able to adapt to change.

  “I don’t want to fight, Daddy. I love you. I don’t want to leave you alone. I know you need me, and I want to be here for you. But I’m not going to be nothing but your angel anymore. I don’t want to pretend that it’s enough to spend my life taking care of you, and I don’t want to carry all these secrets around anymore. They’re heavy, and I’m tired. I want to be with Gunner. So this is what I’m going to do: I’m going to go to Tulsa now and make sure he’s okay. I’m worried about how hurt he is. I might stay the night with him. I don’t know yet. I’ll call and let you know where I am and when I’ll be home. I want to be here in the morning and make your breakfast and help you get ready for work. But I’m only going to do that if you tell me you understand that I need to be who I am now. All the different parts of me have to be okay.”

  “He calls himself Gunner? That’s the man you want to destroy everything in our lives for? A gang member? He’s dangerous, Leah. You saw what he did to his sister at the donation drive.”

  At that breathtaking hypocrisy, Leah brushed her fingers over her bruised cheek. “Are you dangerous, Daddy?”

  He turned away from her and reeled toward the table and chairs set up under the old sycamore tree. He sat down and stared at the glass surface of the table. Leah followed and sat across from him.

  “This isn’t right, Leah
. These choices you’re making, the things you say you’ve done—these are evil things. You are on the wrong path. I can’t condone any of this and lead my flock as I’m called to do.” He looked up, and his eyes focused on her cheek. “I’m full of regret for touching you in anger, angel. I’m so very sorry. But I am not dangerous. You know I’m not. That man—Max or Gunner or by any name—he is. He’s not stable, and he is violent. I can’t let you go to him.”

  “You don’t have a choice, Daddy. That’s what I’m saying—my life is not in your hands anymore. I’ve made my choice. I want to be your daughter and Gunner’s girlfriend.” She didn’t know if Gunner would even want that, but it didn’t matter to this particular conversation. In this moment, being Gunner’s girlfriend was a metaphor for living life on her own terms. “I’m telling you that I’ve made my choice. Here’s the choice you have: Am I packing a bag when I leave here now, or is this still my home?”

  He slumped there, spinning his empty glass on the table for a long time without answering. Leah sat quietly, listening to the cicadas, and the birds, and a frog who must have found his way to the little pond at the back of the yard.

  “Pack a bag,” he finally said, and Leah’s heart broke.

  ~oOo~

  The Bulls clubhouse wasn’t nearly as crowded as she’d expected, arriving as she was on a Saturday evening. In her mind, bikers partied nonstop, when they weren’t doing whatever criminal things they did that made people so afraid of them. But the street had plenty of parking open, and the fenced-off lot did as well. There were a lot of bikes parked in there, a few trucks, and a couple of cars, but nothing like the wall-to-wall metal that had filled both street and lot the night before. And no music making the windows rattle.

  The gate was open, but Leah didn’t think she would be welcome to park in their private lot. She pulled up at the curb in front of the building next to the lot. Not wanting to walk into the clubhouse dragging a suitcase behind her like she meant to move in (though she had no idea where she’d be spending this night or any night after it), not wanting to leave it in her open convertible, and not wanting to put the roof up, since the neighborhood wasn’t awesome and she didn’t want it ripped open, Leah stood beside her car for a minute or so and tried to figure out what to do. Finally, she wedged the little carry-on bag into the compartment that passed for a trunk, and she went up to the Brazen Bulls clubhouse.

  As she walked along the sidewalk, she tried to scan the lot for Gunner’s bike, but she didn’t think she saw it. Of course, she didn’t know much about motorcycles, so she could have been looking right at it and not realized. His was silver—or had some silver parts, at least, like the gas tank—but there were a couple of bikes with silver gas tanks. She didn’t know. But she hoped.

  On the brick beside the front door was a metal sign that read Private Property. Authorized Entrance Only, and, again, Leah’s nerves quivered. Should she knock? Would she be welcome?

  Gunner hadn’t invited her here—except he had, in a way. He’d wanted to take her away from her home. Well, here she was, just a little bit delayed.

  She knocked quietly, halfheartedly. When no one answered, she screwed up her courage and opened the door.

  There were people around, but they didn’t seem to be partying at all, and no one noticed that she’d come in. Unsure what to do next, Leah stood near the door and tried to understand all she saw.

  Somebody had cleaned the room since the party; the smell of Pine-Sol was still in the air. There seemed to be some kind of business going on: a few women—a couple who were older and obviously in charge, and a couple who were about Leah’s age and obviously not in charge—seemed to be trying to put a meal on around men in leather vests like Gunner’s, who were talking seriously.

  A woman stood near the bar, rocking a baby who slept in the cradle of her arms. A little shocked at the sight of a baby in a place like this, Leah let her attention linger there. The woman was blonde, and a bit older than Leah. The baby was young, like a couple months old, maybe. A boy, she guessed. He wore a blue onesie with an appliqué of a teddy bear wearing a baseball cap.

  The woman seemed worried, or at least serious. Come to think of it, everybody seemed serious.

  Leah had looked long enough that the woman noticed her, and her expression softened. “Can I help you, honey?”

  Her eyes dropped a little, and Leah figured she was noticing the Bulls sweatshirt. Hot as it was, she felt relief that she’d kept the sweats on. Maybe they would mark her as belonging.

  “Hi. I’m looking for Gunner?”

  The strangest thing happened. The woman’s face registered perfect shock, and then her eyes glittered with a lot more interest than Leah thought her statement had warranted.

  “You know Gunner? When did you see him last?”

  “A few hours—” she couldn’t finish her sentence, because the woman had grabbed her with her free hand and was dragging her through the room. Totally confused, Leah tried not to be afraid.

  “Dee! There’s somebody here who’s seen him!”

  An older man with dark hair and a really terrifying, intense face came out of the room Gunner had made her wait outside of when he’d gone for the Ecstasy. He came straight for them.

  “What’s up, Willa?” he asked the blonde whose fingers still dug into Leah’s wrist.

  “She’s here looking for Gun. She says she saw him a few hours ago.”

  Behind the scary man, Ashley’s big blond came from that room. “Yeah, Dee. Gun tapped that last night. They were making googly eyes at each other this afternoon. Sweet enough to make ya sick.”

  The scary man smiled, and his face softened up completely. He went from looking like he wanted to tear her appendages off to looking like a grandpa. “You saw Gunner today, sweetheart? When? Where?”

  Finally, it dawned on her: Gunner hadn’t made it home. He’d left her, his body beaten bloody, a few hours ago, and he’d never made it back. Something was wrong.

  What would these people do to her when they found out it was her fault he’d been hurt—that it would be her fault if he was even more hurt now? If he’d fallen off his bike or something and was lying in a ditch? Or if the sheriff had found him again?

  “He’s in trouble, I think. He’s hurt.”

  Grandpa reverted to scary, and he grabbed her out of the blonde woman’s—Willa’s—hold. “What do you know? Where is he?”

  Leah choked back her fear and answered as clearly as she could. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. He left me a few hours ago, but he was beat up really bad. I think—I think the sheriff beat him up.”

  “Hutchison?” somebody else asked. Another scary man, standing at Willa’s side now. “Why the fuck would Hutch lay a beatin’ on Gun?”

  Leah didn’t know who Hutchison was. “What? No, not him. Sheriff Lucas.”

  “Osage County,” Scary Grandpa mused. “He did go home. But Deb and their dad ain’t answerin’.”

  “Osage Regional is the ER he’d land in if he got hurt out there,” Willa offered.

  “Shit. Okay. Rad, grab Simon and Eight and get out to the Wesson place, make sure there’s not some fuckery goin’ on out there.”

  “On it, Dee,” the other scary man said.

  The man clutching Leah’s arms, whose name was apparently Dee, like Dee Snyder, she supposed, nodded at Willa. “Call and find out if he’s in that hospital, hon. He sure as fuck ain’t in Tulsa.”

  Willa nodded and went to the bar, to use the phone Leah had used earlier in the day.

  Dee turned his full attention on Leah. “Now, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

  “Leah.” She hated how her voice cracked between the syllables.

  “Okay, Leah.” He let go of one of her arms and brushed her bruised cheek. “I’m Delaney. I want you to tell me everything you know about what happened with Gun today. Every little thing. Start with why you think the Osage County Sheriff dealt him a beating. And throw in the part about this fresh bruise on your pretty face.” />
  Leah had had an extremely fucked-up afternoon. Her life was in shambles, and the only glimmer of hope she’d been able to keep her eye on was Gunner. But he was hurt, because of her, he might be really hurt, because of her, and here she was, standing in the middle of a biker clubhouse, literally in the clutches of a very angry biker, surrounded by other angry bikers.

  Everything was her fault, and this man, this Delaney, wanted her to say so.

  Instead, she broke into tears.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Gunner came awake in a dark room and had no fucking idea where he was. When he tried to sit up, pain blasted through his belly, and he groaned. That was not a cool kind of pain. Damn.

  “Hey. Easy, son. Relax.”

  A light flicked on, and his father was suddenly at his side, looming over him, his sun-wizened face slack with fatigue. Gunner understood that he was in the hospital. With that realization, he began to hear the ambient medical sounds in the room and beyond it.