Possess: An Alpha Anthology Page 18

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Are you?”

  I wasn’t about to answer that. “You deserve better than this.”

  “Not me.” He looked away. “The kid does though.”

  He twisted the shirt. Frowned. It needed to be washed. I could have tossed it in the laundry. We had more than enough whiskey to entertain us while it dried and a year of lost time to talk about.

  It was too much to hope for.

  “Thanks for the help,” Gold said. “I gotta get back.”

  I spoke before thinking. “I could get you another drink.”

  A moment passed. Then another. All the things we left unsaid, the pain and wanting, resurfaced. I held my breath. I don’t know what sort of hell I meant to put myself through. His expression cracked.

  “Not a good idea.”

  I nodded, but, like a fool, asked anyway. “You sure?”

  Neither of us knew the answer to that. I waited for him, stared into those stormy blue eyes, longed to see something, anything that might have promised more than just a lifelong emptiness.

  Ours was a shared loneliness, and even isolation couldn’t bring us together.

  “Annie, I got the kid at Thorne’s. I gotta go pick her up. Get some sleep.”

  It wasn’t the first time he rejected me. Didn’t even hurt as much as that last time—when our one chance to build something was lost with two life-altering words.

  She’s pregnant.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said. “I owe you one.”

  He owed me more than that, but it wasn’t a debt I’d collect.

  I led him to the door. Gold turned, but he didn’t look at me. I swallowed, watching only his lips, the cool grace of his shoulders, the hard and practiced tightness of his muscles.

  It was selfish and desperate to study his body, to memorize everything I never had a chance to call mine, but he did the same. When all we had were our own imagined futures, the smallest glance, the slightest touch, and the whisper of an unsaid word fed a thousand fantasies of what might-have-been.

  “I’ll see you around.” Gold gave me a smile. “Take care of yourself, Annie.”

  “Yeah. You too.”

  It wasn’t what we meant. It was all we could say.

  Gold disappeared, like he had before. Like he had never crossed into my life again.

  I closed the door, dead-bolting not just the night but also any thought, any foolish hope, any lost moment he might have offered. Every time I saw him it always ended the same way.

  How many more times could my heart break?

  Chapter Four

  Gold

  Pixie sounded like a cute, fairy tale place where me and the kid could get a decent night’s sleep.

  It wasn’t.

  Pixie was a biker bar in the middle of the Valley’s industrial district. Nothing enchanted there unless you counted the strippers from Sorceress charming the last twenties out of my brother’s wallets.

  I sat in the gated parking lot, engine running, Silver asleep in the backseat of the truck. The kid loved when I drove. Too bad I rarely used the truck.

  I hated waking her. It took months before she could finally sleep through the night, and now I was yanking her from her crib and across town to a bar more safe house than pub.

  But I needed a place to crash, and I spent the last cash I had on formula and diapers at a convenience store so she’d have something dry to sleep in and a warm bottle for breakfast. Fortunately, Pixie welcomed Anathema’s officers if we needed a bed. The MC was also promised a girl to meet us in that bed if we wanted.

  That wasn’t happening.

  I had more than enough women in my life now. Alexis. Silver.

  Annie.

  Oh Christ, seeing Annie was the worst fucking thing I could have done.

  At least this time I went to her door instead of tossing pebbles at her bedroom window until she snuck out to meet me in the dark. We had a chance back then, but she was too young and I was deploying. I thought I got over her while I was in Iraq, but the mousey little teenager I left behind turned into this beautiful, confident woman—chestnut hair, full lips, delicate and sweet.

  I earned my medical discharge from the army, but she crossed half the country to go to college. By the time she graduated, I had handcuffs slammed on my wrists. A year later—after jail, circumstances, and distance kept us apart—we finally had our first date. Then a second.

  Then Silver.

  Alexis and I weren’t even together. Hadn’t been for months. She waited until she was showing before busting in on my life to demand I take care of her since she couldn’t strip anymore. I manned up, but fuck. I knew exactly what I lost when I ended it with Annie.

  Silver didn’t wake when I unjammed the carrier, but the music inside was too much. She howled. My brothers didn’t know what to do. They greeted me with drinks, and the two girls dancing on the tables stopped working to coo over the baby. It wasn’t like Silver hadn’t seen a pair of tits before, but I shooed them away before she caught something from the dancers.

  Keep slapped my bad shoulder. He nodded to the stairs.

  “Room’s waiting,” he said. Innkeeper, owner of Pixie and the rooms above, welcomed me to my home away from home. One of the strippers circled an arm over his waist. Keep smiled, but the addiction wasted what had once been charming. “All yours.”

  “Your sister call you?” I asked.

  Keep didn’t deny it. “Rose said you needed some help.”

  That went for the both of us. Good thing Rose called her brother instead of visiting. She already lost Brew. If she saw how bad Keep looked—even clean shaven and pretending the addiction hadn’t festered under his skin—she would have dragged his ass to her house to babysit both him and my baby.

  “Church in the morning.” I shifted the carrier. “Make sure you’re there, yeah?”

  “Got somethin’ good?”

  “Beats smuggling cigs.”

  Keep grinned, the remnant of sobriety in his system. I hardly recognized my old friend. I saw in him the same vice eating away at Alexis.

  “Got your vote?” I asked. “Pisses with The Coup too.”

  “Goddamn, Gold. You had me at The Coup.”

  I winked. Keep would forget the conversation in the morning, but for now, he tried. Probably too hard. Poor fucker was still looking to separate himself from his brother. Hard enough to think of a Darnell betraying Anathema, but with Brew dead and Blade missing, the face of Anathema changed. Was never friendly, but at least it had been trustworthy. Now?

  I watched my back and Silver’s carrier. The room upstairs was recently renovated and clean, but that didn’t mean I wanted my baby sleeping in the same bed her father once fucked two whores. At least it kept her safe.

  A fresh diaper satisfied her. The kid hardly survived two days alone with her mother. Every goddamned instinct in my body meant to beat the everloving shit out of someone, anyone, to ease the swirling rage. I didn’t. Couldn’t. Not while Silver slept. I tucked her next to me, her little chubby arms and legs stretched against the bed.

  It wasn’t often a man who lived a life of outlawed desperation and violence got to experience perfection. I had it twice in one night. First Annie’s soft hands. Now Silver’s gentle breathing. The little rosy hue to her cheeks. Pink lips. Blue eyes that were mercifully shut in sleep.

  Anathema prided in our men being men. Fierce. Tough. Wild.

  I cradled my daughter.

  I’d be all those things for her.

  Someone had to be.

  ***

  We held church first thing in the morning. That was a new policy change. We didn’t trust leaving the club exposed in the dead of night, not with The Coup and the other bullshit that spawned from the club’s schism rocking the Valley in civil war.

  Mercifully, blood hadn’t spilled in months, but that didn’t mean what remained inside our veins wasn’t bad, poisoned with hate and fear.

  We didn’t hold church in Pi
xie. The warehouse next door was much safer for a chapel, reinforced with concrete and setup like a bunker. We even safeguarded a passageway between Pixie and the warehouse in times of need. Fortunately, we hadn’t needed to use it since the war.

  That didn’t mean everything was sunshine and fucking ponies. Anathema changed in the past months. What had been a vibrant, full club now shattered with war, death, and jail. Our generation took command earlier than expected. Thorne assumed the presidency because no one else dared to fuck with a man more warlord than biker. Scotch, the last of the grey generation, came out of retirement and pinned his VP patch on his cut again. Our Sergeant At Arms was apparently dead, though his brother still sat at our table and sister shared Thorne’s bed.

  If this was a family, I was more fucked than I thought.

  Thorne tapped the gavel. He wasn’t happy, but he rarely had occasion to smile when business was bad and the club endangered.

  “Gold’s got something to say,” he said. “Make it quick.”

  No problem. What I planned was too good to pass up. The sooner it was done, the better it’d be for all of us. “I found some work. Might be a little ugly, might get messy, but I got a beat on it. It should get some green in our pockets.”

  Thorne frowned. “Or some blood in the streets.”

  “Might not be ours,” I said.

  “You want to risk it?”

  “Can we afford not to?” I didn’t let him answer. The table waited for the details. “The Coup has a steady income stream of electronics—stolen TVs, iPads, game systems, you name it. They’re muling it for a commission, and they’re getting a decent price.”

  Keep blinked. His eyes dilated, but he hid his trembling hand. “How do you know?”

  “I have my guys scouting across the river. They learned the truck’s routes and pickup locations. The Coup’s got Priest working on the deal. We follow him, we get our goods.”

  Keep whistled. “You sure it’s Priest?”

  “Yep.”

  “You want to piss with that motherfucker?”

  Screw over one of the first bastards who pulled a gun and split the club in two? Yeah. Priest was the top of my list.

  Scotch rubbed his beard, full of grey. He nearly lit a cigarette. I swore at him.

  “Sorry.” Scotch tucked the cigarette into the pack. “So you know where the trucks are. How do you know when they’ve got a deal?”

  “Unsecured email.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “They don’t encrypt their data. They ain’t WWII messengers. I broke their code.”

  “You hacked their email?”

  I grunted. “It’s not hacking. I got their password. I log in with a VPN—”

  Scotch waved a hand. “Christ, I’m too old for this techy shit. You trust your information?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded at Thorne. “There we go.”

  “What are you planning with this shit?” Thorne tapped the table. Even his fingers were inked, banding coiled barbs from his index finger up under his sleeve. “You want to hit Priest’s truck?”

  “Yeah. We get the goods, sell it to our own source. Make a profit.”

  And I’d get a couple thousand to take the heat off so I could feed my kid. That went unsaid. The guys understood. Anathema was no stranger to desperation.

  Thorne’s jaw set. “And you don’t think this will end in a bloodbath? Gold, The Coup’s been hoarding weapons, drugs, fucking territory for the past three months. We got a truce now. We fuck with that, we’re back in a goddamned war.”

  “Christ, you’re the one who’s been screaming for a war.”

  “I want to win the war.”

  “One truck,” I said. “Let’s just take one truck.”

  I was out of luck. Silver had behaved herself, tucked in my arms, but she fussed midway through her bottle. I shifted her to my other arm. Her squeal wasn’t a sound we normally heard in our chapel. Or tolerated. Thorne said nothing, but his patience waned. I spoke before he kicked my ass out of my own meeting.

  “We grab one truck, take the goods next time we do a run with the cigs. The Coup doesn’t have to know it was us who stole their hit. Could be any fucking gangbanger in the city. We make a couple extra grand from the electronics and the cigarettes, boom. Fuck with The Coup, and we get a little green.”

  “Yeah. I can see why we might want some extra money. Diapers are a bitch,” Scotch said.

  “Look—”

  “Why isn’t her momma dancing now, taking care of her kid?”

  I didn’t let them see me flinch. “This ain’t about Alexis.”

  “Thinking it is.”

  “You’d be wrong.”

  “I’m not the one swaddling a baby in the middle of church,” Scotch said. “What happened? Why’d you come into Pixie in the middle of the night covered in blood?”

  I glanced at Keep. “Fuck you. Shut your goddamned mouth next time, eh?”

  Keep smirked. “I’m the fucked up junkie, but even I don’t barrel into a bar soaked with blood and carrying a baby.”

  The guys waited for an explanation I didn’t want to give. I spat it out, tossing the kid on my good shoulder. I patted her back, trying to get her to burp without spitting up on the cut. Thorne got pissed before I got a good bubble out of her.

  “Take your pick,” I said. “Alexis almost burned the house down. She was high as a goddamned kite when I got home, and she was slutting around. Silver’s lucky to have survived the two days I was gone. I decided to leave, Alexis came at me with a knife.”

  “She still breathing?” Thorne asked.

  “Yeah. I had the kid to worry about.”

  “Right.”

  Keep cracked his knuckles. “Who patched you up?”

  I hesitated. “Annie Scott.”

  Scotch hooted. “Bullet’s daughter? Thought she was working with pups and kittens?”

  “Made an exception for me.”

  Keep’s sly grin made him look like his usual self, before the poison stole his passion. “She’d make a lot of exceptions for your ass.”

  Yeah, not what I needed to deal with. “I had to get back to the kid. Not to mention Alexis was trying her hardest to summon fucking CPS. Just want to get through one day without complications.”

  Silver squealed. Thorne jerked a thumb over his shoulder for me to get the kid out. Fortunately, a knock rapped on the door. Thorne let Rose enter. She reached for the baby before greeting anyone else.

  “Little Sophie Silver!” She sang to her as she took the diaper bag. She smiled at Thorne, and all was forgiven. “Sorry. Final ran long. The professor gave all essay questions.”

  Keep snorted. “Rat bastard. Want me to kick his ass?”

  Rose saw the same dark circles and stretched skin I did, but she stopped chastising Keep long ago. What else was there to say? Every man chose his own path. Keep’s would end him in the gutter.

  “I aced it, don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ll take Silver to Pixie.”

  Rose edged out of the room with the baby and our last shred of peace. Thorne leaned in, his voice as dark as his stare.

  “We do this, we need to expect retaliation,” he warned.

  “Knight’s in charge of The Coup now.” I eased his fears before he voiced them. “Families are off limits to him.”

  “Not worried about the fucking traitor,” Thorne said. “He doesn’t have as much control over The Coup as he thinks. Those men respected Exorcist. I ended him, but Knight never recovered their loyalty.”

  Keep exhaled. “What are you thinkin’?”

  “Thinking about Rose. Thinking about other people’s kids. Gold, you got a safe place to tuck your baby if shit goes down?”

  “I’ll keep her safe,” I said.

  “Fine.” Thorne took the gavel. “We’ll vote. But we better pray to the devil himself this bullshit doesn’t land us in hell.”

  Chapter Five

  Annie

  It was a mistake comin
g to his house.

  I slid out of my car before I realized the motorcycle in front of the garage didn’t belong to Gold.

  The bike was dark. Rugged. The owner obscured Anathema’s emblem with a swipe of black paint.

  This was a problem. I doubted Gold gave up his ride. I remembered everything about his bike—how it had looked, how it felt to ride it. Like his namesake, his bike polished with a gold finish. Not gaudy, but subtle. Something fun, like the Gold I used to know.

  The old Gold might have come to me with a bleeding shoulder, not for stitches, but to regale me with the play-by-play of how he earned the blood. The Gold in my exam room last night wasn’t that man. He didn’t want to tell me how he got hurt. He hadn’t smiled, hadn’t bragged. He refused the painkilling drink not to look tough but because he had to get back to his baby.

  Now he was all pain, worry, and fierceness.

  And another man’s bike parked in his driveway.

  A lot of things added up that I wasn’t supposed to count. My stomach twisted. The knife wound wouldn’t be the last time he bled.

  This was a bad time to blunder into a war. Gold wasn’t here, and I knew I should have called before showing up. I clutched a bag filled with medical supplies and antibiotics intended for dogs but I’d hoped would work in a pinch for the indiscriminating man and his shoulder injury. It was a nice thought when I was still daydreaming doodled hearts this morning, not so great in practice.

  I turned to my car.

  Didn’t make it.

  The front door crashed as my hand brushed the car handle. I quietly swore.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  The voice was feminine and wild, slurred with just the hint of mistake and shrill with untampered panic. I might have considered her uneducated and trashy as well, but that particular jealousy faded in the months since I forced Gold from my mind.

  We hadn’t been dating when he and Alexis had their…whatever it was the men from Anathema called their flings with half the dancers at Sorceress. He ended the relationship before he realized he got her pregnant. We didn’t know the truth until it was too late.