Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“A new one?”
“Yeah. He got it just after his birthday. What?”
The what here was that was, on the low end, a sixty-five-grand car. At the high end? Over a hundred grand.
Where the hell had that money come from?
“Cal, was Clay still working doing package delivery?” I asked. He didn’t work for one of the three big name companies, and at the moment, I couldn’t think of the one he did. But he’d been working there since he was twenty-five because the benefits were so good, and he had to take care of his sister after their parents passed.
“Yeah. Of course. Why?”
Something here wasn’t adding up.
But since I didn’t know what, I didn’t want to worry Caliana. She had enough on her plate.
“Just figure he wouldn’t need to pawn the watch then,” I lied, unable to meet her gaze as I did it.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t. No matter how bad things were, he wouldn’t.”
“No,” I agreed, sucking in a steadying breath, trying to keep my head on straight. At least while I was still trying to keep Cali calm. “He wouldn’t. But I swear to you, sweetheart, that watch was not in his belongings. I would have seen it. And I would have kept it for you.”
She watched me for a long beat before exhaling hard, her shoulders slumping.
“I know,” she agreed, shaking her head. “I just… I don’t understand how else it got in someone else’s hands. Unless… unless it got mixed up at the hospital or the morgue,” she said, and I could just picture her storming into those places as soon as they were open, demanding answers.
“Hey, how about you let me look into it?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“They probably won’t even talk to you, since you’re not next of kin.”
“There are a lot of ways to get people to talk,” I told her, watching as her eyes squinted at me. “What?”
“You’ve… why did you become a biker?”
“What?” I asked, surprised by the change in conversation.
“Why did you become a biker? It makes no sense.”
“Sure it does,” I said, leaning back against the door. “If you realize this was one of the few professions I could have gone into that would piss off my old man.”
“Oh,” she said, head tipping to the side as she looked at me. “I know things were… tense there.”
“That’s an understatement,” I agreed. My father had never let an opportunity pass by to tell me what a disappointment I was, how I wasn’t living up to my potential, how he’d busted his ass to raise me right, and I was shitting on that by dropping out of ROTC, by not going to college, by not at the very least joining the military, if I couldn’t figure out a major.
I’d been glad that he worked as much as he did when I was growing up. Because all he ever did when he was home was scream at me.
It was always bad. But it got worse after my ma decided she was tired of being yelled at too, and divorced him. Problem was, she didn’t have a stable home to bring me to, or a steady enough job. So my old man got custody. She got occasional visitation. Leaving me fully at his mercy without her there to act as a go-between.
His own father had forced him into the Army right out of high school. And he’d spent the next decade or so serving his country, eventually becoming a drill sergeant. But he’d come out to find that it was fucking hard to make a living and a life, especially once he had a wife and kid to take care of.
I figured it was that responsibility that made him so mean.
And all those years screaming at and critiquing recruits really helped him in screaming at and criticizing me.
And after stumbling around for a few years doing some less than legal shit, much to his delight because he felt he’d been proven right, I’d give him the biggest ‘fuck you’ by becoming a something he never wanted me to be.
A lifelong criminal.
Not the most honorable reason to join an organization, but it felt fucking good at the time. And I found a purpose here. A family.
“Pops died a year or so back,” I found myself telling her, watching as she jerked back like I’d struck her. I’d gotten the call from the neighbor. Said he’d had a heart attack while out front mowing the lawn. Didn’t make it to the hospital.
I’d done something uncharacteristic that night.
I let someone else babysit the club as I let loose, having drinks, hooking up, wanting to just forget shit for a while.
I hadn’t felt any better after that.
So it hadn’t exactly become a coping mechanism for me.
I just went back to how I usually was. Much to the chagrin of prospects like Sully.