Almost like nothing had fucking happened.
As though this was a reunion or something.
Like we weren’t welcoming a traitor back into our midst.
But what could I say?
Lucie was the mother of my daughter, for fuck’s sake. I couldn’t toss her out on her ass, even if Bomber had been able to, I wasn’t him.
Lucie began to cry, and Flame rubbed her back with a finesse that would make the clubwhores whimper in disappointment. Usually, he was useless with women. He fucked them and left them watching after him, all of them wondering what it would take to make it into his bed on a permanent basis. They didn’t realize he was a lost cause.
Had been since the day Lucie had been born.
“Cancer,” she whispered, and fuck, if my own eyes didn’t water.
“How’s that possible?” Dagger growled, hustling in and dragging Lucie into his arms too. “He was only twenty-seven.”
“It was aggressive. A brain tumor,” she whispered, then pressed her face into Dagger’s cut. “We did what we could, but it was—” She rocked her head. “It just wasn’t enough. No matter what the doctors did, it just grew. In the end, it was a blessing.”
“Did you bring his ashes?” The words were harsh, and I regretted my tone, but not enough to temper it with a smile to soften things. There was no smiling now, not where the loss of a man who was like a blood brother to me was concerned.
“Of course,” she snarled. “Ryan was true to the Rebels even if they weren’t true to us.”
I didn’t even flinch when I tilted my head to glare at her. “You were the one who broke us, Lucie. Not me, not Flame, Axe, or Dagger. You. And you’re the reason Ryan didn’t—” I cut off the angry words when Amaryllis came at me. Her little hands everywhere as she slapped me, punched me, and balled her hands into fists as she launched herself at me.
She was little, too little to cause any damage except to my heart.
“You leave my mommy alone, Daddy Wolfe!” she hollered with each pounding, and what the fuck could I do but let her carry on? Let her burn off her anger?
I was her dad.
As I dropped to my knees, I recognized that it was about time I manned up to the job that Ryan had filled for so fucking long.
❖
Axe
It should have been amusing watching our Prez, my brother, being slapped by a little girl, but it wasn’t. It was painful.
Not because it was shameful or embarrassing, but because his daughter was full of rage. Full of anger and hurt and confusion, and she didn’t know how to control any of that. She’d lost Ryan, she’d lost whatever home they’d had, and she’d been moved from only the fuck knew where to Rutherford.
All of us just gaped at her, Lucie seeming to be in a stupor as she watched her daughter attack her daddy. Then, she shook herself, waking up from wherever she’d gone mentally, and hauled her arms through Amaryllis’s, curving them around her waist so she could drag her away.
All the while, Amaryllis’s arms were windmilling, like she wanted to carry on, like the fight hadn’t burned out of her, and maybe it hadn’t. And maybe Wolfe deserved that.
He couldn’t treat Lucie like shit, not when we had Amaryllis to think of now. Hell, not just because of Amaryllis either.
I’d never believed the shit Bomber had spread about her. I knew Dagger and Flame hadn’t either. It was why none of us had married or tied ourselves to old ladies. Why we only fucked clubwhores, never bothering to search for more, to make a family like most brothers our age did.
Wolfe had believed it though, that was why he was so angry. It was why his marriage to Kim had gone up the wall after three months, and why he hadn’t done more than grunt, ‘good’ when he’d learned she’d overdosed.
“Amaryllis! You stop that now! Am I raising you to be anything other than a lady?” Lucie scolded, sounding the exact opposite of a lady.
I shot Dagger a glance and saw he was grinning just as widely as Flame.
Fuck. I hadn’t seen either of them smile like that for a long time.
Six years, three months, two weeks, and four days to be precise. And yeah, like a pussy, I’d counted. Knew how long she’d been out of our lives, and had hated every fucking moment without her.
I’d never say any of that shit to my brothers, but fuck, to myself? Why the hell would I lie?
The second Lucie had walked that sweet ass out of the gates, the sun might as well have stopped shining. For all of us, Wolfe too, even if he wanted to deny it.
Amaryllis growled under her breath, arguing, “Ladies defend themselves. And their mommas too.”
“She’s got you there,” Flame said with a chuckle.
“Not helping, Mason!” Lucie snapped. Then, to her daughter, grumbled, “I didn’t need defending, baby girl. But I appreciate it. Daddy Wolfe can’t help that he’s a grouch. What have we always said? That he’s called that because he tries to huff, puff, and…”
“Because he wants to blow all the houses down,” Amaryllis parroted, her face still screwed up with anger as she glowered at her birth father. “Like the wolf in the story.”
I had to cough to hide a laugh, but Flame and Dagger weren’t even trying to. “Who were the three piggies in that scenario, Lucie?” I demanded, curious as fuck.
She shrugged. “You, Flame, and Dagger of course.” Then, she winked. “Naturally, it’s not their houses Wolfe wanted to—”
“That’s enough!” Wolfe growled, but his cheeks were pink, his ears too as he glanced around the lot.
No one was watching. I knew that because Flame had demanded everyone fuck off inside when he’d gone to help Lucie with her bags.
There was a reason he was the Enforcer.
Everyone who was sane was terrified of him.
And that was why Lucie wasn’t. She wasn’t sane. She was fucking nuts, and that was why we loved her.
She smirked at him then hauled her daughter up and around. It was something both girls were used to, because Amaryllis instantly clasped her mom’s hip with her thighs, sitting there with a pout as she cuddled into her.
“Seems you have a little protector,” Dagger whispered, his eyes glued to Amaryllis’s angry features.
“Born and raised in her parents’ image,” Flame agreed. “You always were so angry. I wonder why Ryan didn’t rub off on her more.” He had a point considering Ryan had been the most chilled of us all, relaxed to the point of always being horizontal.
“He did,” Lucie stated, but this time, the words were sad and her eyes were haunted. “In so many ways that it’s a joy to see now.”
“She love reading?”
Her gulp told me that was a yes.
“What about the piano? He teach her that?”
She nodded.
“We always gave him shit for that piano,” Flame whispered, and I didn’t even have it in me to slap him upside the head for cursing.
It was true.
Ryan wasn’t the average brother of an MC.
Sure, he’d earned his patches like any prospect had to, and with a knife? Fuck, he made Cujo look like he killed clean. But he played the piano thanks to his grandmother who’d insisted boys learn that and ballroom dancing of all fucking things, and he’d done more than just graduate high school—he’d been clever enough to head off to college if he’d wanted.