She threw herself across the center of the car and pressed a kiss to my cheek, effectively cutting me off, grinning smugly as she pulled the door handle and climbed out.
“It’s fine,” she tried to placate me, waving her hand as if trying to shoo me away. “I’ll see you after school here somewhere.”
I crinkled my nose and frowned at her jovial change in mood. “Listen here, missy,” I ordered, almost climbing out of the car when she rolled her eyes before focusing in on me. “No making anyone cry. No tormenting other kids with sick jokes about why you had to move school. No giving teachers lists of juvies when they ask about where they can find your records. And above all, no pretending to be allergic to the cafeteria food.”
With each demand, her smile grew bigger.
I knew her tricks.
We’d done this dance plenty of times before.
But each time she would come up with something new.
And each time, I honestly couldn’t fault her creativity.
“Mom, it’s gonna be fine,” she assured me again, leaning in the open car door with a smile. “I will keep the making people cry to a minimum… today. Just focus on work. Go and meet with that boss guy and impress his stupid business socks off.”
I snorted, my mind suddenly moving again back to me.
For some reason, I found it far easier to focus on Blair. It came much more natural to me to be the momma bear who needed to protect her cub than it did to pretend to be confident and like I wasn’t completely shitting my pants.
“I’ll see you after school.” I nodded, inhaling deeply to try and get my heart to stop racing. “Call me at lunchtime and let me know how things are going.”
She started to back away from the car, and my heart squeezed a little tighter. Blair was my baby girl, my partner in crime, and every time I watched her walk away or disappear from my sight, I felt like a part of my world was missing. God forbid if she decided she wanted to go away for college in a few years and move across the fucking country or something like that.
I sat there, watching as she disappeared into the school office building, my hands clenched on the steering wheel.
I was scared—fucking petrified, actually.
But no one else was going to do it.
And I made sure I put my big girl panties on this morning.
2
Huntsman
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at my youngest son, Ripley.
He looked up at me with an agitated frown and a piece of dry toast in his hand. “You need to let me sober up first, or else I’m gonna end up carving a fucking finger off. Do you want that? No, I didn’t think so.”
“You know, you ain’t too fucking old for me to put my foot up your ass and send you to your room,” I dared, one eyebrow raised, challenging him to say one more fucking word.
If there was one thing I didn’t tolerate in my clubhouse, it was fucking disrespect. Especially not from my children or my men—and Ripley just happened to be both.
“Go get fucking laid, Dad,” Rip groaned, dumping his food on the table and shoving his chair back with a screech. He instantly regretting his little tantrum, his entire body shuddering at the obnoxious sound.
“Karma’s a bitch.”
“Hawk, drop my dad off at the strip club on your way out of town, will you,” he groaned, raising his middle finger at me over his shoulder as he passed by the Exiled Eight Detroit vice president. “Fucking grumpy bastard.”
Hawk smirked, raising one eyebrow but keeping his mouth shut.
Smart man.
“How the hell did you end up with two boys so fucking different to one another?” Hawk intelligently started with instead of the smart-ass fucking remark I could see dancing on his lips. “Drake looks like he’s ready to take over the world in his fucking suit, Rip looks like he’s about to fucking tear it down.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Both were raised here, both experiencing the same loss when their mother took her own life and then having to grow up with me as their fucking role model—poor bastards. And yet, their approach to life was infinitely different.
Ripley saw the way people looked at us, at our colors and our family, and he felt pain he felt from their disrespect was something deep within his bones. His first instinct was to always fight back with two middle fingers in the fucking air before he started throwing fists.
Drake’s approach was much different.
While he wasn’t innocent of throwing plenty of his own punches, his first reaction to people’s criticism was to prove them wrong. He liked to have the mental upper hand, preferring to make his attack stealthy and hide his emotions away from the world.
“You think that’s fucking bad,” I scoffed, reaching for the coffee pot sitting atop the bar and pouring both Hawk and me a cup. “Their little sister, Meyah, seemed to get the best of fucking everything. Quiet like Drake, protective like Ripley, and her shot is almost as good as mine.”
Hawk’s eyebrows shot up as he raised the hot cup to his lips. “I can’t wait to meet her,” he mumbled before quietly adding, “I think. You plan on having any more?”
I choked, the large mouthful of hot, black coffee feeling like it was sliding down into my lungs. “You better shut your fucking mouth,” I hissed, gritting my teeth while Hawk seemed reasonably amused by the response. “I had to put up with Drake and Rip as kids, don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”
“Not until you have to raise a teenage girl,” Bishop’s voice rang as he stepped out of the hall.
Bishop was the Detroit Chapter President and Hawk’s uncle. He also raised a little girl on his own after his wife died of cancer.
“You think those boys were hard. Try being a dad when your girl’s got her fucking period, her friends at school are assholes, and everyone is using this shit called bing bong.”
“TikTok,” Hawk corrected, holding up his hands in surrender when Bishop’s head snapped around like it had fucking whiplash. The man was smart and quick to back away, heading for the exit while Bishop found himself some coffee.
“You think you got everything you needed while we were at Empire?” I questioned, following Hawk as he took a step outside and into the morning sun. The boys hadn’t been here for long, but we’d made sure to make a run down to Phoenix last night, so he could get a look at the nightclubs we part-owned, to see how they were run, and to check out what we put in and what we got out.
“Yeah, we fucking appreciate the close-up look,” he praised, his head bobbing. “I needed to see that shit and how it worked, so I could take a breath and stop worrying about how much these renos were costing.”
The Exiled Eight Detroit had just stepped into legal business territory.
Was it all for legal business?
No.
But they needed to know how to run it like it was if they were going to use it and not bring along any suspicions.
The vibrating in my pocket had me standing a little taller and pulling the offending object from my pocket. Though I took one look at the caller ID and gritted my teeth.
Regan Ballintine.
I swiped my thumb across the screen and pressed it to my ear. “The answer is no.”