He shrugged. “Yeah, we do. No way he’d leave her, or the girl, unless he could help it.”
Inside, everything began to break down. But it was only on the inside because the Prez of a fucking MC couldn’t burst into tears or drop to his knees with grief if that was the truth.
“He can’t be,” Dagger rasped, telling me he was just as affected by what Flame said. And even though my resident pyromaniac looked like he wasn’t hurting, deep in his eyes, I knew he was ready to set some shit on fire. Which meant Dagger was ready to get stabby with someone if we weren’t careful.
“He is,” Flame insisted grimly. “You know it, and I do too.”
“What happened to him?” Axe whispered rhetorically. “What happened to them?”
“She had a baby,” Flame replied, his tone loaded with a mixture of worry, shock, and awe. “Lucie became a mom.”
“She’s only a kid herself,” Dagger gritted out. “We made her leave and she—”
I held up a hand, not able to hear him say the words. Shaking my head, I bit off, “We wait for her to tell us what happened, and we sure as shit don’t talk about this with the others around.” The last thing I needed was our past fueling the MC gossip mill.
“She’s just as cocky as ever,” Flame warned. “If you go in there like you usually do, you’ll just knock heads. That won’t get us anywhere.”
“He’s right,” Axe agreed grimly. “Let me talk to her.”
Because they were both right, I didn’t slam my fist into either of their faces. Lucie and I were too alike. Had she been born a boy, she’d have easily worn this cut, carried the Prez patch, led the Hell’s Rebels with ease, and contained the fury of a brotherhood that was over three hundred members strong.
She should have been born with a cock, but she hadn’t been, and what was between her legs was like pure heroin to a desperate junkie like Axe, Flame, Dagger, and me.
Always had been, always would be.
She was our weakest link and our strongest.
Well, that was until she’d brought my daughter into the world.
Trying to maintain a stoic face was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do as my brothers and I headed back up the driveway toward the clubhouse.
It was an old motel that Bomber had redesigned back in the seventies. I’d seen pictures of the dump before he’d gotten his paws on it, and it had consisted of nothing but bedrooms, but he’d extended it so there was a large annex attached to the side of the building where brothers stayed, keeping the offices, bar, kitchens, and the kids’ area all close by.
On average, we had over twenty brothers staying on site. I lived in, as did most of my council. The prospects—men who weren’t trusted enough to be patched in and had to prove their worth to us—also lived in so they could be on hand for the shitty jobs we usually tossed their way. Some men lived in Rutherford with their old ladies and families, some even shared houses with other brothers in town. If there was one thing wrong with the clubhouse, it was that it was too small.
When Bomber had inaugurated this chapter of the Hell’s Rebels, he’d underestimated how popular it would be.
It wasn’t grody and grimy like some clubhouses I’d seen in my years on runs around the country either. We had too many old ladies and kids around for that shit.
Though Bomber had been a dick, even more so after Lucie had left, he’d maintained this place too. So the siding was freshly painted and the tiles on the roof weren’t falling off. The garden was even neat thanks to a few of the women who’d started planting basil and rosemary, of all the fucking things, there.
Even though I was proud of my home, I looked up at it through my daughter’s eyes and scanned it for anything and everything. When it all came up trumps, I sucked down a sharp breath that was loaded with relief and had to admit to myself I was nervous.
Goddamn nervous.
Of Lucie being here, the purpose behind the surprise visit, as well as the knowledge I was about to meet my little girl for the first time.
The car had parked by the time we made it the hundred or so yards from the gate to the building. Lucie was out, that tight ass of hers bustling as she opened the trunk and began dumping suitcases on the graveled drive.
“She’s here long-term,” Flame, ever obvious, pointed out as he hustled over to help her take her shit out of the back of the cage.
“She’d better fucking be,” I growled to his back.
Dagger nudged me in the side. “She could have been here to dump the girl and run like with Wheels’ boy.”
I shook my head in instant rejection of that. “Fuck off. Lucie ain’t like that. If she was, she’d have had an abortion from the start. You know what she’s like with commitments.”
The truth of my words settled heavily in my gut.
Lucie had always followed through on her promises, so why had she turned her back on the Rebels that fateful night?
Shoving those thoughts aside, I headed to the trunk and bit off, “What the fuck, Lucie?”
“For Christ’s sake,” Axe growled, elbowing me and pushing me out of the way. He grabbed Lucie, and though there was danger in her eyes, he ignored it and hauled her into his arms.
The hug was long and heartfelt.
Some might say most bikers didn’t have a heart, and a lot didn’t. Neither did we, because we’d lost ours to Lucie all those fucking years ago, and she’d always owned them. Always.
Her hands gripped Axe’s cut and she nuzzled her face into his throat. “God, I missed you,” she whispered, and I was surprised by the admission. Surprised because it wasn’t like her to own up to any weaknesses.
“Missed you too, sweet pea,” Axe rasped, the words choked.
I gritted my teeth when I heard the door to the car open, and the scuffed sound as little feet crunched the gravel.
“What’s her name?” Axe asked, and I silently thanked him.
“Amaryllis.” She moved her head, and tilted it so she could look at me over his shoulder.
My mouth trembled for a handful of seconds before I clamped my lips down and smashed them into submission.
Amaryllis.
My mother’s name.
For a second, I was speechless, fucking speechless, and then, because I wanted to run away, head for my bike and take off like I was eighteen again, I forced myself to squat down onto my haunches when Amaryllis clung to her mother’s legs.
“Hey, Amaryllis,” I whispered, incapable of speaking with a louder voice.
“You’re Daddy Wolfe,” was her retort, and I swear to fuck, whatever I’d expected her to say, it wasn’t that.
Speechless once more, I gaped at her before nodding as she frowned at me, the clear, milky skin of her brow puckering as I just stared at her in silence.
Lucie’s hand dragged through her daughter’s white-gold hair, and she explained, “She knows you all. We made sure of that.”
Axe cleared his throat, and though my eyes were focused on nothing but Amaryllis, pain hit me when he questioned, “Ryan? Where is he?”
A choked sound escaped her throat. “Died. Two months ago.”
“Why? What happened?” Flame demanded, and before I knew it, Lucie had been passed from Axe’s arms into Flame’s.