Riven Knight

by Devney Perry

  Mom’s burial request had been a footnote in her last will and testament. She’d purchased the plot years ago.

  I hadn’t known she had such a fondness for the town where she’d gone to high school. All my life, I’d thought of her in the context of Denver. Even after she’d moved to Bozeman for her job, in my mind, her home was in Colorado.

  I’d visited her in Bozeman a few times. The town was fancier than Clifton Forge. It catered to tourists and college students, but it had suited Mom. She’d seemed happy.

  So why had she come to Clifton Forge and ruined everything?

  Before asking questions, I finished catching Draven up on my side of things so he had some context to provide me answers.

  “I kept up with Chief Wagner,” I said. “I learned that you were released on bond and they hadn’t scheduled the trial yet. He gave me the name of the prosecutor, who I talked to briefly before getting passed off to the victim witness advocate on the case. Then, when I was ready, I flew to Montana because I wanted to visit Mom’s grave. That didn’t work out so well for me, did it?”

  His shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. You should know this is all my fault.”

  “Oh, I do.” Whenever I needed to place blame, it landed on Mom and Draven.

  His gaze met mine, begging for me to cut him a break.

  No fucking way.

  “Think I’d better start at the beginning.” He blew out a long breath. “I’ve known your mother since we were kids. Went to high school together. She was a year younger and best friends with my wife—my girlfriend at the time.”

  My heart rate spiked. This was it. Now I’d find out why. Why me? Why Mom? Did I want to know? The way Draven spoke—his voice raw and his words dripping with sorrow—this would not be a cheerful tale.

  I already knew the ending.

  It was time to fill in the gaps and learn why Mom had been ripped away from me and why she’d lied to her daughter for twenty-something years.

  “You good?” Draven asked.

  I nodded. “Keep going.”

  “After high school, Amina left town. Chrissy and I got married. Life went on and I didn’t think much of it when your mom and Chrissy lost touch for a while. Then she came up to visit. Did it about once every summer. Chrissy liked it. She loved showing off the boys and bragging about our kids to her friend.”

  “Wait. Boys?” My eyes bulged. I wasn’t aware Draven had other children besides Dash.

  “I’ve got two sons. Dash is the youngest. Nick is the oldest. He lives in a town called Prescott about three hours away. You’ll meet him one day.”

  Great. I didn’t need two brothers who hated me. “No rush.”

  “Nick’s a good man.” Draven shot me a glare. “So is Dash. This is . . . you took them by surprise too. They’re adjusting.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I deadpanned, then waved for him to keep talking.

  He blew out a long breath. “Chrissy stayed home with the boys. I ran the garage, and I was the president of a motorcycle club.”

  “Like Sons of Anarchy?”

  “That fucking show,” he grumbled.

  Was that a yes? I waited for further explanation, but he gave no indication he’d give me one. But the clubhouse made sense now. As did some of the information I’d gleaned from Chief Wagner when I’d asked about my mother’s murderer. The windows were boarded up because their club was no more.

  “Didn’t your club break up?”

  He nodded. “The Tin Gypsies disbanded about a year ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Reasons. Things I won’t get into with you.”

  “More secrets.” I huffed, clenching my jaw tight. I was so goddamn sick of the secrets. Theirs and mine.

  “I’m not telling you because I’m trying to hide it. Truth is, it’s not safe. The less you know, the better.”

  “Safe?” I growled. “Two months ago I was safe. I had a good life and a mother who loved me. I hadn’t been . . .” I stopped and took a breath. “It’s too late for safe.”

  “I’m so—”

  “No.” He didn’t get to say he was fucking sorry. “Continue.”

  “The club put a strain on my marriage. I loved Chrissy more than life. The boys too. But I . . . I lost myself. Chrissy and I hit a rough patch. Your mom was up for a visit, came to a party at the clubhouse and we—”

  “Stop. Don’t say it.” If he said it out loud, I wouldn’t be able to forget the words.

  These people were destroying my mom. They were tainting her good memory. My mom wouldn’t have partied with a motorcycle club. My mom wouldn’t have conceived a child in that filthy, rotten building. My mom wouldn’t have had sex with her best friend’s husband.

  But she had.

  My heart ached for my mom. She’d been the best person in the world. She’d been my mentor and hero. She’d been the woman I’d wanted to be.

  Except I hadn’t known her at all.

  Every detail, every mention of her name felt like she was dying a second time over. Someone had stolen the life from her body. It might not have been Draven, but he was killing her all the same. He was slaughtering her memory.

  “She was in love with me,” Draven said.

  “Does that make it okay?”

  “No.”

  No, it was certainly not okay. Nothing about Mom’s life seemed okay.

  “I made the worst mistake of my life that night.”

  This time, I winced.

  That statement hurt more than I’d thought it would. If not for that night, I wouldn’t be alive. He might have regretted it, but I was sure Mom hadn’t, because she’d had me.

  “I—fuck.” He slid his hand across the table, not touching me, just extending. “That didn’t come out right.”

  “I get it. You had a wife. Kids. You screwed your wife’s friend and got her pregnant.”

  “I didn’t know. Amina never told me about you. Not until the night she was killed.”

  “She never said anything about you either.” In that, we were together. Mom had kept secrets from us both. “What happened with your wife?”

  I hoped she’d divorced him and found a man who was loyal.

  “She died,” he whispered. “She was murdered by a rival club. It’s my fault she’s dead.”

  “Why? What did you do?” I asked but I knew the answer. “Reasons, right? Things you’re not going to tell me because it’s for my own good.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was that why Mom was killed? Because of your former club?”

  Not even Chief Wagner had been able to explain the motive behind her death. He’d suspected it was a crime of passion involving a known criminal, but without a confession, we’d never know.

  “Probably. She came to town, called me out of the blue. She invited me to the motel to talk. I figured she just wanted to catch up. It had been a long time since I’d seen her. Not since that night at the party.”

  “She never came back to Clifton Forge?”

  He shook his head. “Amina loved Chrissy. She felt horrible about what we did. We promised never to tell Chrissy, and then she left.”

  “Did you tell her? Your wife?”

  “No.” He hung his head. “Things between us got better. We worked it out. She was the love of my life, but the guilt ate at me. I was going to tell her, confess it all and beg for forgiveness, but she died before I could muster the courage.”

  She died not knowing her husband was a cheat and her best friend a whore. Maybe that was for the best. Chrissy Slater would have hated Mom—and me.

  The pieces clicked. “That’s why Dash hates me. He knows what you did.”

  “Don’t know if I’d say hate.”

  “It’s hate. And that’s why.”

  “My son loves his mother, even in death.” He gave me a sad smile. “She was an incredible woman, my wife. He is punishing me for cheating on her, as he should. You’re getting some of that backlash. It’s not you, it’s—”

  “My existence.
It’s simply because I’m alive.”

  “He’ll come around. He’s a good man. Not sure how, with a father like me, but my children are good people.”

  “Because of their mothers.”

  He closed his eyes, letting that slash burn.

  He’d get no mercy, not today.

  “Back to my question. Why was Mom killed? Meeting with you doesn’t seem like enough of a reason.”

  “We’re not sure. Amina came that night to tell me about you. We talked for hours. I was pissed at first that she’d kept you from me, but I understood. We kept talking. One thing led to another and . . .”

  “Oh, God.” I cringed. “Please don’t.”

  I didn’t want the mental image of my parents hooking up in a motel room.

  “Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair. “She, uh . . . told me I could meet you. That she’d help negotiate that introduction. We were both nervous, but she seemed relieved too. Like she’d been keeping it from you for so long that it had eaten at her too.”

  Maybe it had, but she still should have told me.

  “I left her at the motel the next morning and came to the garage,” he said. “Your mom promised to call after she told you about me. Then the cops showed up and hauled me in for her murder. I don’t know who did it, but someone’s setting me up to take the fall.”

  “Who?”

  “Probably a rival club. One of our old enemies.”

  That explained the vest worn by my kidnapper. It had been black, like the rest of his clothing, except for the white patch stitched on the back. “The Arrowhead Warriors?”

  Draven stiffened. “Yeah. Where’d you hear that name?”

  “The man who kidnapped us? It was on his vest.”

  “Cut.”

  “Whatever. So because of your motorcycle club, my mother was viciously murdered and I was nearly killed.”

  “I’m sorry.” He held my gaze. “I want to tell you it’s over, but there’s a chance you’re in danger. The cops found a body in that cabin in the woods after it burned down. It might have been the guy who took you. It might have been someone else.”

  This wasn’t over.

  The man who’d burned to death in that cabin had not been my kidnapper.

  And I was still very much in danger.

  Dash was glued to Bryce. They were all being careful. If for some reason I got even the slightest inclination that was not the case, I’d say something to ensure her safety. Until then, I was staying quiet.

  “And if I’m in danger?” I asked. “What do you expect from me?”

  “Be cautious about going places alone. Avoid it if you can. Take your husband.” His dark eyes narrowed, his expression harsh.

  Draven saw straight through my façade. He knew this marriage was a sham.

  “Doll?” Isaiah walked around the corner of the garage, saving me from Draven’s scrutiny.

  Doll? Oh, right. That was me.

  “Hey, baby.” Ugh. While Isaiah’s doll sounded endearing and sweet, like he called me that every day, my baby sounded forced. Maybe because I’d never called anyone baby before. I’d had three boyfriends in my life, two lovers. None had been recent—I’d been too busy to date—and none had earned baby status.

  Isaiah came to my side of the table, standing close enough to put a hand on my shoulder. “Just wanted to check on you.”

  “Draven and I were talking, but we’re done for today.”

  I wasn’t sure I could hear any more. I swung my legs over the seat, standing beside Isaiah. I threaded my fingers through his, marveling at the surge of strength that passed from his body to mine.

  I took a step but paused. “Bye, Draven.”

  “Bye, Genevieve.”

  Isaiah led the way around the building, not stopping as we continued past the shop’s doors. He kept his grip firm as we took the stairs to the apartment. Was it for show? Or did he know how much I needed him to keep me anchored?

  I was about to pull my hair out and scream.

  Why? I still didn’t have a good answer. Why had Mom been killed? Why had she waited all this time to tell Draven about me? Why was this happening?

  Even Draven didn’t know.

  Isaiah opened the apartment door, only releasing my hand when we were inside. “Are you okay?”

  I went to the couch, sinking down on the edge and dropping my head into my hands. “No. My brain might explode.”

  The couch shifted as he sat by my side. His hand cupped my knee, but he didn’t speak.

  Isaiah was a man of few words, something I was learning. Mostly, he seemed to communicate with gestures so small, most people probably overlooked them.

  “Thank you for coming to rescue me. I don’t know if Draven had more to say but I couldn’t take it any longer. I’m confused and overwhelmed and . . . sad. I miss my mom and wish she were here. I want to talk to her about all this. Not him.”

  “Is that what you and Draven talked about?”

  “Mostly.”

  I spent the next ten minutes giving him the short version of my conversation with Draven. He filled in some blanks where he could, mostly information about the club he’d learned through observation in the garage.

  After Draven had stepped down as president of the Tin Gypsies, Dash had taken on the role. Both Emmett and Leo had been members too. When the club had disbanded, they’d kept their jobs at the garage. Draven had officially retired, though he still worked in the office most days.

  With the exception of the kidnapping, the guys had tried their best to shelter Presley and Isaiah from anything related to the former club.

  “Draven suspects that the body they found in the cabin wasn’t the kidnapper,” I told Isaiah.

  “That’s a good thing. Everyone seems to be watching out.”

  “And no one went to the cops?” I’d been worried that Bryce would report our kidnapping, but given that no officer had come to question me about it, I assumed we were safe.

  Isaiah shook his head. “Not that I know of. I don’t think the guys want to bring the cops into this. They want to deal with it themselves.”

  “That’s a good thing.” We didn’t need the police asking questions about that cabin.

  At some point, I’d have to call Chief Wagner and the victim witness advocate again. I’d been talking to them regularly up until the kidnapping.

  Or maybe I’d let small-town gossip work in my favor. They had to know that Draven was my father. Living above his garage, they’d eventually realize I no longer thought he’d killed Mom.

  “If for any reason Dash stops hovering over Bryce, we have to tell them. No matter what.”

  “Agreed.” Isaiah nodded.

  “Until then, we keep it to ourselves.”

  He dropped his gaze. “I hate this.”

  “Me too. The secrets are eating at me.”

  “Same.”

  Maybe the two of us should talk about it. Maybe we should hash it out, just to make sure we’d made the right choice in the heat of the moment. But I worried that once some of the information was set free, it wouldn’t want to return to its cage.

  “I better get back to work.” He stood from the couch and I did too, following him to the kitchen. It was the smallest kitchen I’d ever seen—the L-shaped cabinets formed a miniscule line. But it had the necessities.

  I went to the cupboard next to the fridge, where I’d put my baking supplies, and lifted out a sack of flour, a jar of sugar and a bag of chocolate chips.

  Isaiah paused by the door. “What are you doing?”

  “I need to bake cookies. They’re our only hope.”

  He didn’t smile but the darkness in his eyes disappeared for a fraction of a second. “Save one for me?”

  For him, for what he’d done for me, I’d make cookies every day. Of course, I couldn’t say that. It was far too intimate and comforting for our fledgling marriage.

  Instead, I winked. “No promises.”

  Chapter Five

  Isaiah


  “Incoming.”

  I was lying on my back on a creeper, ready to duck under a rig, but I stopped at Draven’s word.

  He walked toward the parking lot. Dash, Emmett and Leo set their tools aside to follow. I hopped up and did the same.

  How Draven had heard, I wasn’t sure, but the rumble of motorcycles drifted down the road, preceding a long line of bikes. The men riding them wore dark shades and matching black leather cuts.

  Fuck.

  The instant Dash spotted them, he rushed to the office door. “Bryce! Lock up. You and Pres get out of sight.”

  My eyes shot up to the ceiling. Genevieve was upstairs baking cookies to soothe her broken heart. Stay put, doll.

  She might get curious about the noise and come out, but I was betting she’d take one look at these men in the same style vest as the man who’d kidnapped her and be halfway back to Colorado before nightfall.

  Leo walked to a tool bench. To an outsider, it didn’t look like he was in much of a hurry, but it was twice the speed of his normal stride. He pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked a drawer I hadn’t opened before—I didn’t have the key—and pulled out three pistols.

  My stomach dropped. Not again. The last time there had been guns in this garage was the day we’d ridden into the mountains and my life had been turned upside down.

  Leo tucked one gun into the waistband of his jeans, covering it with his T-shirt, and carried the others over, handing them off to Dash and Emmett behind their backs. Draven had hung around the garage after his conversation with Genevieve. He bent and pulled a pistol from his boot.

  All I had was a goddamn three-eighths-inch wrench.

  “I should have taken Bryce out of here,” Dash said. He normally didn’t work on Fridays, but after they’d come down to announce their engagement and the baby, he’d decided to spend a few hours with Emmett and Leo, designing the new custom project they’d be starting in a couple weeks.

  He might not want to be here, but I was sure glad he was. There were a lot of Friday afternoons when it was only me finishing up for the day while Presley was in the garage. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to handle thirteen bikes pulling into the parking lot on my own.