Bad Boy's Baby: Wicked Angels MC (17 page)

“This?” I gestured around to the empty room. “This was nothing, Tristan.” His face hardened as I spoke. “This is nothing, and everyone’s going to be better off once Phin and I leave.”

“No,” Tristan said, more forceful this time. “Jenny, no. I can’t let you do that. Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? You’re going to put yourself and Phin at risk. You’re going to be attacked as soon as you leave the house, Jenny.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. My heart was pounding but I knew I was doing the right thing. “You told me that I was only in trouble because of you. Well, if you don’t care about me, I can’t imagine what any of those assholes would want with me, Tristan.”

“It doesn’t matter how I feel,” Tristan pleaded. He stepped forward and I took another step back. “If that’s what’s in their heads, that’s how they’re going to act. It doesn’t matter what we are to each other, but if they think you’re important to me, well, it’s going to be bad news for you and for Phin.”

Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked, looking up at the ceiling and willing them away. I had been right all along. Tristan didn’t really care, he only felt obligated. He wasn’t protecting me because he loved me. He was protecting me to save face with the Centreville police and keep his club legitimate. My mouth hardened into a thin line and I swung the bag over my shoulder.

“Later, Tristan,” I said softly. “Stay safe.”

Tristan’s footsteps followed me out of the room as I stalked down the hallway and grabbed Phin from the kitchen. He had a spoon stuck in a jar of peanut butter and he was doing a messy job of smearing it all over his face. I sighed in irritation.

“Can’t you stay clean for five fucking minutes?” I snapped under my breath before turning to speak to Phin. “We’re leaving. Go wash your face.”

Phin grinned, oblivious to my bad mood. “We’re going? Are we going out to dinner?” His voice rose loudly. “I’m so excited!”

“No,” I snapped. “We’re going home. We’re not going to stay with Tristan anymore.”

Phin’s face crumpled and I felt guilt surge through my body. “But I like it here,” he said, pouting. “I want to stay.”

“And I want you both to stay,” Tristan’s voice boomed from behind me. “Come on, Jenny. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” I said, breezing past him and dragging Phin out the door. “We have to go home now. Thank you very much for your hospitality, Tristan. Let me know if I owe you anything for all of the food we ate.” I glared at Phin. “Someone thought it was a good idea to contaminate all of your peanut butter.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Tristan said in a strangled voice. His eyes were pleading with me not to go but I steeled my resolve and walked out the front door.

Tristan Mayer was history. Now, more than ever, I hated myself for succumbing to his charms again. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive myself.

“Mom, why are we leaving?” Phin pestered me once I had him seated in the car.  “Why can’t we stay?”

“Because this isn’t our home,” I told him as I slid out of Tristan’s driveway. “And we don’t belong here.”

Tristan

Shaking my head in disbelief, I watched as Jenny dragged Phin out the door. He looked back at me with a reproachful glance and I felt my heart shrivel in my chest at the sight of his wide, trusting eyes. He was scared and upset; I could tell, and I barely knew him. My heart broke for the kid, and I didn’t understand why Jenny was so hell-bent on leaving. Sure, I’d been trying to hurt her. But didn’t she understand
why
for fuck’s sake?

I sat down and cracked a beer, pouring most of it down my throat without even tasting it. Damn her. Damn her to hell. If she wanted to walk out, if she wanted to leave…I shook my head angrily. No. No, it wasn’t going to be like this. Not this time. I was going to do it right; I was going to get my girl, and my son, and tell them that they were staying with me. If she didn’t listen, I’d pick them both up and carry them off. A hint of a smile crept across my lips as I imagined Jenny kicking and screaming. I could heft her easily—even though she was tall, she still weighed less than half of me. Besides, all of her protests would just be for show. I knew now how much she loved me. If she didn’t love me, she wouldn’t want to be a family, right?

Or maybe she just feels guilty about fucking up so badly in the past
, a little voice said in the back of my head. I frowned. Just when I started to feel like I’d gotten Jenny figured out, everything felt confusing again. There were still so many questions without answers, so many things I wanted to know. Like, why hadn’t Jenny tried to find me before now? Why hadn’t she decided that giving Phin a father was important? It was enough to make my head spin. I decided that after all of this had calmed down, I’d have a good long talk with Jenny. We’d sit down and get everything out on the table.

When I finished my beer, I belched loudly and threw the bottle in the sink. It shattered against the ceramic with a satisfying crackling sound. Grimly, I walked over to the door and started tugging my boots on. I was going to go after them, and with any luck, I’d catch up before something else happened. If I didn’t…well, that was bad news, too. But either way, I knew I had to try. Jenny and Phin were mine, dammit, and I was going to rightfully claim them as such.

The day outside was sunny and bright. There couldn’t have been a more direct contrast to my feelings if I’d willed it into life. Just as I was climbing on my hog and stroking it to life, my phone buzzed in my pocket. My heart swelled; it had to be Jenny! Telling me that she realized her mistake, telling me that she was coming back to be mine forever.

A cloud passed over my brain when I pulled out the mobile and saw Rod’s number. Uh oh. This couldn’t be good.

“Hey, man,” I said quickly. “This isn’t a good time, I have to go after the girl and her son.”

There was a pause. I frowned. “Rod? Are you there?”

Rod coughed, breaking the awkward silence between us. “Yeah, man, I’m here,” Rod said softly. “Listen, something bad happened to Wolf. He’s in the hospital. He was beaten up and left for dead on the side of the road. You need to go see him.”

I sighed in irritation. Wolf was one of the guys I’d talked to just last night about Jenny and Phin. Had he been a target? More importantly, had he spilled?

“Man, this really isn’t a good time,” I repeated. “Jenny and her kid could be in danger, and I need to go after them.”

Rod cleared his throat again. “I know you don’t want to go see him right now, but he’s got some stuff to tell you,” Rod added. Suddenly, I got a dark feeling in my chest, like my lungs were filling with wet concrete. It was almost impossible to breathe, and I had to put the phone away and turn my head to the bright sky. My hands got clammy and I could feel my heart pounding like a drum in my chest. Was this what panic felt like? I’d never felt such weird, strange anxiety before. And as much as I knew that I had to get to Jenny and Phin, I knew that Rod was right. He wouldn’t have called unless something was really wrong.

I frowned. Did this mean Wolf had ratted? Fuck! Climbing back on my bike, I gunned it into gear and pointed it in the direction of the hospital.
I’m sorry, Jenny,
I thought.
I’m coming soon. Just hold on for a little bit longer
.

Rationally, I knew that nothing could have happened to Jenny and Phin in the short time since they’d left. But the other part of me knew that nothing was rational anymore. Nothing was making sense, and the world had flipped upside down. Darius’s men could have jumped on Jenny as soon as she was off my property. I shivered when I thought of how quickly Randy and Steve had come for her the last time she’d wandered off. My hands gripped the handlebars of my bike with such a ferocity that my fingers felt numb. Why did she have to be so goddamn stupid sometimes? Why couldn’t she just have listened to me?

“Damn women,” I growled as my bike sped up and rounded a turn. The hospital was looming just head and I had a sudden thought of sympathy for Wolf. It wasn’t like him to allow himself to be taken to the hospital, no matter how bad things got. The Wicked Angels had a code: we took care of our own, we never let ourselves into the hospital. Hospitals asked too many questions. For every helpful doctor, there were about fifteen nosy nurses who were dying to know where the bullets came from, or what the tattoos meant, or something else that we couldn’t have possibly answered.

“I need to see Wolf,” I barked at the young nurse sitting behind the front desk. She blinked at me with wide, guileless blue eyes.

“Who?” She squinted at me. “Who are you talking about? Are you immediate family?”

“I’m his fucking brother,” I roared, beating my hand against the Wicked Angels patch on the front of my vest. “Now let me the fuck in!”

The girl blinked at me and she trembled. “There was a guy brought in a few hours ago,” she said in a soft, shaky voice. “He’s down around the corridor,” she added, pointing with a slim, pale finger that reminded me of Jenny’s. “You can’t stay more than an hour!” she called after me as I stalked down the hallway.

“Fuck off,” I muttered under my breath. Dealing with bitches like her was just one of the many reasons why I never liked hospitals.

Wolf was propped up in bed. He was in a bad way: one of his eyes was so swollen it was shut. But when he saw me, he paled and somehow managed to look even more terrified than he had a few seconds prior.

“Oh man, Tristan,” Wolf whimpered. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry, man, I didn’t mean to!” He trembled as I stepped closer and I frowned. A cold, liquid sense of dread rushed through my body as I glanced down at his helpless frame on the stark hospital bed.

“What the fuck happened?” I growled through gritted teeth. Wolf trembled. He didn’t answer. I leaned forward and snapped my fingers. Injured or no, I suddenly had a bad feeling about this. Why wasn’t he telling me what happened? This, combined with Rod’s reticence on the phone, was definitely making me think the worst had happened. And what if something happened to Jenny while I was here, looking in on Wolf? What if they’d just roughed him up as a decoy, to get me out of the way?

“Tristan,” Wolf said through swollen lips. “Tristan, I am so fuckin’ sorry,” he repeated. His bloodless cheeks looked like those of a corpse. “I didn’t mean to,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Cut the shit, Wolf. You better fuckin’ clue me in right now or you’re gonna be sorry.”

Wolf gulped. “They jumped me,” he croaked. I had to lean in closer to hear and I could smell him from where I stood – like blood and shit and grease and dirt. I wrinkled my nose.

“Get on with it.”

“They jumped me when I was on my bike,” Wolf said. He closed his eyes. “They surrounded me and forced me off the road.”

“And then?”

“They tortured me,” Wolf said. He held up his hand, engulfed in a cast. I could see the tips of his fingers were blue and swollen. “They broke my fingers, one by one.”

I swallowed nervously, not liking where this was going. “What did you tell them?”

Wolf gasped as I clutched his broken hand. “I told them about the girl,” he said, looking away.

Rage surged through my body and I closed my eyes, tilting my head back. Every cell in my body wanted to make Wolf pay for what he’d done, for how he’d betrayed me. His leader.

“Tell me more,” I urged. “Tell me or you’re dead, Wolf.” Leaning down over the bed, I glared at him. “You’re gonna be lucky if you walk away with your life after this,” I added. “You might just walk away with those damn fingers intact.”

Wolf gulped again. “I told them about her son,” he added, closing his good eye and reclining against the starchy pillows. “I told them they were both with you. I told them. I’m so sorry, Tristan. I’m so sorry, man. I never meant to hurt you!” His voice was rising to a hysterical fever pitch but I just felt nauseated. Wolf, one of the guys in the MC I’d trusted the most, had betrayed me so horribly that I couldn’t stand it. All thoughts of Jenny and Phin were momentarily forgotten as I relished the thought of paying Wolf back for his transgressions. And for broken fucking fingers? What a complete pussy.

“I never want to see you again,” I said in a low, level voice. “I want you to disappear. If you’re not gone, you’re going to wish you were,” I said, leaning down over Wolf’s prone frame. My heart was beating viciously in my chest and hot anger was filling every pore. “And if I see you again, you’re dead. You got that?”

Wolf nodded. I was still angrier than I’d ever been in my entire life.

“You had one job, Wolf, and you fucked it up. You got that straight?” Wolf nodded. A tear slipped down his cheek and dripped off his chin. Pathetic. “You fucked up,” I said solemnly. “And for just broken fingers? What kind of a fucking pussy are you!” Wolf shivered but he didn’t speak. “For what you told them, I would have hoped they were cutting your fucking fingers off, man! Come the fuck on! You’re a Wicked Angel, not some kind of Wicked Pussy!”

I chuckled. My anger was making me feel dangerously powerful. “Wicked Pussy,” I said, spitting on Wolf’s prone body. “That’s what you are.” His vest was draped over the back of a hospital chair and I grabbed it and studied it. Wolf’s eyes widened as I ripped the patches off and threw them on the ground, spitting on them.

“That’s what you did to my club,” I snarled. “You fucking threw us on the ground and spit on us. You realize that?”

Wolf nodded. He was trembling. In the hospital bed, he looked like a pathetic little boy. “I’m sorry,” he repeated again.

I had to resist the urge to punch him. “Not as sorry as you’re gonna be. When everyone finds out what a pussy faggot you are, you’re gonna regret doing this for the rest of your life. Good luck finding new men to ride with, asshole.”
Spitting on Wolf again, I turned and walked out the door. Anger was still swirling in my body and I tried to rid myself of the toxic poison. But anger, much like elation, was powerful. Soon, I could feel myself swimming in it the way I’d swim in adrenaline. Anger was going to power me to get through the rest of this day. Anger at Wolf, anger at Jenny for leaving. But most of all, anger at myself. After all, if I hadn’t fucked with Jenny, she’d still be there, safe in my house. Wolf was a traitor, but his actions didn’t even come close to mine. I was the real villain here. And now it was up to me to fix things before they got even more fucked up.

With a heavy heart, I left the hospital. My bike was gleaming in the parking lot and I ignored the stares from bystanders as I climbed on and gunned it in the direction of Jenny’s house. I had to go make things right, even if it was the last thing I did. Wolf had almost ruined my life, but I’d have to make it right.

Somehow I’d have to make it all right.