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  “Don’t ‘Ever’ me! I want to know why my husband isn’t back yet and if you won’t tell me, I have no problem going over your head. I’ll contact Ghost,” I told him as I moved to take my cell out of my pocket. He swatted the damned thing out of my hand.

  “What the fuck did I just see?” My father’s voice roared through the clubhouse causing me to turn in his direction. If looks could kill, we’d be searching for a good burial plot for Trunk. “Did I just see you swipe a cell phone out of my daughter’s hands?”

  “It’s not what you think. She was threatening to bother Ghost with something that I told her was club business.”

  My father’s head snapped back as if he had been physically hit and, for just a moment, I wondered if he was about to turn on me. Then, all those worries flew out the door. “Let me guess, she wanted to know where her man is?”

  “Well, yeah, of course,” Trunk agreed.

  “And you didn’t think to tell her yourself?”

  “It’s club business,” Trunk argued.

  “It’s something, all right. Why don’t you just admit to her that you don’t know where Deck is, but that we’re looking for him?”

  “What?” I cried out as my father finally made his way beside me.

  “Double-D,” Merc hissed out in warning as he and some of the other men gathered around me. It was almost as if they were forming a protective circle to keep everyone else in the clubhouse from seeing my reaction. “Do you really think it’s wise?” He glanced toward my stomach, as if to indicate that me being pregnant meant they needed to hide the truth. I wanted to kick my father-in-law so hard in the nuts in that moment.

  “I think if we just tell her it’s ‘club business,’ her mind is going to go even crazier with worry for every minute he isn’t here to calm her fears,” my father admitted before turning back to me. “We’re working on getting him back.”

  “Getting him back from where?” I asked as I took in the faces of all the men that surrounded me. It should have hit me sooner that all the officers were here with the men who had retired from the club years ago. That did not bode well for my husband or my family.

  “He was captured two days ago,” my dad explained.

  “Captured? By whom? What the hell does that even mean? Why?”

  “It was the Tallahassee Chapter’s last run for a mob-like group running guns in and out of Canada,” he whispered the information to me so that his answer wouldn’t carry beyond us. “They’re known as the Trinity Group.”

  “Their last run? Why would they do something like this on the last run?”

  “We think maybe to force the club to continue with their arrangement since we’ve never had a trail on our people in the ten years we ran that pipeline for them.

  “Is he dead?” I asked while I tried to wrap my arms around my middle, protecting my unborn child from the news that Daddy might not ever get to meet him or her.

  “NO!” My dad’s answer was adamant just as Irons popped up with, “We don’t know anything for sure.” Kane, or Irons as the guys called him now, had been with the club for several years, and had been promoted to Enforcer for the club about two years ago when the old one stepped down and retired to Florida with his ailing wife.

  I glanced between the two men, waiting for one of them to clarify that statement. “We were about to meet and discuss everything,” my father admitted.

  “I thought you were retired?” I asked him and glanced toward Merc then too. “The both of you.”

  “Not when it comes to family,” my dad leaned in and placed a kiss on my head as he spoke the words. “We’ll bring him home to you, sweet girl, I promise!”

  I scoffed a bit. There was only one person on this earth whose promises meant much to me, and that was Deck. “Find my husband,” I demanded. “You bring him home to us, no matter what.” The men standing around me all nodded their heads before they took off to the room where they held their club meetings. It’s funny that they called it church, because suddenly, I found myself praying to whatever god would listen. It was something I never did, and yet, I had this bubble of dread brewing in my belly telling me that only divine intervention would bring my man back to me this time.

  Chapter 3

  The First

  Lucy

  Instead of going backwards through CJ’s letters to me, I quickly sorted through the boxes and found the first. Then I dug down to find where it all started. I had no clue that he had been feeling the same way about me that I had about him. Not for the first time, I cursed the boy I had grown up with because his lies had kept CJ and I apart for years, and then tore us apart a second time too. I still didn’t know why a person would stoop to ruining another’s happiness like that. Jealousy was a strong motivator, I supposed. Not that it mattered. CJ and I had a lifetime together, despite the bumps in the road. That was what mattered in the end.

  Lucy,

  After I dropped you off that night, I went back to the clubhouse and crawled in bed with thoughts of you swimming in my head. I wanted nothing more than to wake up and go make you mine. The rules about ages be damned. We’re not that far apart. Everything about you captivates me. Your beauty, for sure, but your heart and the way you see the world around you is something else entirely. Never before have I found myself just wanting to dive into another person and never come up for air. Does that sound crazy? I’m sure it does.

  The crazier thing was seeing you packing your stuff and leaving me behind without a word. What happened to send you away from me? What did I do? Was it even me? I know we haven’t been in one another’s lives very long but there’s this insane connection we share, and I felt like I lost a piece of myself as I watched you leave.

  I will get to the bottom of this and I will bring you back to me. I’m embracing the crazy, baby. There’s no one else I want to spend my life wrapped around. It’s you. I knew that from the moment I saw you with your little grease-stained nose as you were tinkering around with my bike. Please, come back to me!

  Yours,

  Double-D

  My heart ached after reading the very first letter my love had ever written for me. I wished he shared his letters with me sooner. It might have helped solidify our relationship earlier, and then maybe he would have been there to help me bring Toby into the world. I almost felt ashamed of myself for the thought, because I knew better than anyone else that we couldn’t wish the past to be different. If I did, then I was basically wishing Ever away and I couldn’t do that. She may not have been my daughter by blood, but she was mine in every other way that counted. I just had to keep reminding myself that inevitably, the bumps in mine and CJ’s road brought her into our lives. Without them, she wouldn’t be here, and I couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t exist, or my grandbabies, for that matter.

  Chapter 4

  Waking Up

  Deck

  Everything hurt and felt disconnected all at once as I managed to get my eyes to peel apart for the first time since… Hell, I didn’t know what “since” meant.

  “Finally!” Someone hissed as I managed to open them and attempted to adjust to the low light in the room. The walls appeared to be made of wood and the acrid smell of burning wood along with something I couldn’t quite place clung heavily on the air. “Thought we were going to have to dispose of you.”

  “Where am I?” I managed to croak out.

  “Where doesn’t really matter,” the voice spoke again. “Why is the better question. The Trinity Group isn’t quite finished with the Aces High MC just yet, and in specific, they’re not finished with you either.”

  “Me?” The one-word question left my mouth on a gasp as I struggled to move so that I could see who was speaking to me, rather than carrying on a conversation with a disembodied voice. “I’ve barely had any part in this,” I finally added when I received no response. There was no way this could be personal, since I had only ever been on one other run for the Tallahassee Chapter with their Trinity Group weapons pipeline. In f
act, most of the Charleston Chapter had steered clear of the pipeline for the simple reason that it usually ran up through the mountains rather than along the coast. They had less visibility and police presence to contend with than we did along the coast.

  “We are aware you haven’t had much involvement, otherwise this would have happened much sooner.”

  “Sooner?” What the hell do you want with me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” the man countered.

  It took two more days for me to find out what the man had been talking about and when I did, I couldn’t have been more shocked to see the reason I was taken standing before me in all of her crazy glory. Sasha, the woman I stupidly almost proposed to while I was in the Army, until I found her in bed with my best friend, was standing there in the doorway watching me.

  “Declan,” she cooed from her perch across the room. “You’re looking even better than you used to.”

  “Sasha, I’d say you still look the same, but the last time I saw you was when your legs were wrapped around my best friend’s back and he was balls-deep inside of you.”

  Her head rocked back as if the verbal smack I’d just given her was a physical blow instead. “You were never supposed to see that,” she admitted quietly.

  “You think?” I scoffed in her direction.

  “You don’t understand. You would never be with me unless we were protected, hell you wouldn’t even accept a condom that I had on me, preferring to use your own.”

  “Seems like that was a smart decision on my part then,” I told her as I started to see where this was headed.

  “Shane Michaels was an idiot, but he never meant to betray you. I told him we were split up and that I wouldn’t be going back to you. I needed to be pregnant.”

  For some reason, I didn’t think I wanted to hear why she needed to be pregnant or what the hell her plan had been. “If it was all in an effort to trap me into something more, you ruined everything with your actions. I had a ring in my pocket that day when I found you two.”

  The remorse on her face was almost believable as a tear trickled down her face. The fact that Sasha was moving closer to the bed I was currently strapped to made me worry though. I had no way to fight the bitch off if she decided to go crazy on me for old time’s sake.

  “You had a ring?” She all but whispered into the quiet room. Despite the quiet, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that we were completely alone. Besides the man who checked in on me periodically and brought food, I was pretty sure there was video surveillance of the room too.

  “Yeah, Sasha. I had a ring. Luckily, you showed your true colors before I gave it to you.”

  “If I had known,” she lamented.

  “If you had known, you wouldn’t have tried to use my buddy to knock you up so you could claim it was my kid?” I asked. She actually nodded her head in agreement as tears continued to trickle down her cheeks.

  “Is this why I’m here? What the hell do you have to do with the Trinity Group?”

  “My father runs it,” she told me. Jesus fucking Christ. I definitely had not seen that one coming. When I met Sasha, she had been on vacation with her mother and ended up staying behind to see what would become of us. I needed to know something though, because now I was starting to connect the dots.

  “Did Michaels manage to get you pregnant?” She nodded her head again. “You told your family it was my kid and that I left you,” I surmised. Again, with the head nod. It made me wish my hands were free so I could throttle the bitch. “Why the hell didn’t you tell them that the kid was Michaels’? Obviously, you had to know I was out of the picture for good once you were caught cheating.”

  “I couldn’t let them know I’d failed like that. They wanted my baby to be with someone strong and someone who was connected to the club so that they had leverage to pull strings.”

  So, the Trinity Group was already looking for an in with the club when they struck their bargain with the Tallahassee Chapter. That was interesting to note. “I was a target all along?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.

  She again tipped her head up and down. “You were, but I realized right away that I actually really liked you though. It wasn’t just business for me.”

  “Except for the part where I wouldn’t allow you to accidentally get knocked up,” I added.

  “That part was problematic.”

  “What if I couldn’t have gotten you pregnant anyway?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “There were contingency plans in place,” she admitted. My stomach rolled. I knew, once I started things with Ever when I went back home, that what I had felt for Sasha had been infatuation and nothing more, but it still sickened me to think about how my emotions were preyed upon to meet a greater need. Not just a need for the woman, but for this group of assholes who had my club locked down running guns for them all these years.

  “I loved you,” she finally told me as she drew close enough to run her fingertips across my arm. I shuddered with revulsion as she touched me. “I still do, even after all these years.”

  “What happened to your kid?”

  “What kid?”

  “The goddamn baby you ended up having with Michaels,” I hissed out. She shrugged her shoulders as if it didn’t matter.

  “He took her.”

  “He took her?”

  “Yes, He took her and kept her from me. She wasn’t needed since she didn’t help with any connections.” The sheer detachment with which she spoke of her own child was unnerving, to say the least.

  “So, you gave your baby over to the father and your family still thinks that I’m the dad?”

  She shook her head. “No, they know the truth now. I couldn’t hide it after your friend started coming around making demands about a paternity test. The stupid bastard nearly got himself killed.”

  “Jesus, do you hear yourself? So, why the hell am I here if they know the truth?”

  “Because they know it was me who screwed up and that it was supposed to be your baby. We are rectifying that situation.”

  “No, the fuck, you are not. I don’t love you. Never did, actually. I am married and have kids of my own with my wife now.”

  “She doesn’t matter. They don’t matter,” she shouted back at me. “You will cooperate, or I will have every one of them killed and I’ll make sure you have to watch before I kill you too!” She turned her back on me and stomped out of the room then. What a fucking shitstorm! How the hell was I supposed to deal with that level of crazy while I was strapped to a fucking bed? Worse yet, I couldn’t even warn anyone about what was happening so they wouldn’t know to keep a watch on Ever and the kids. I had to find a way out of this situation. Maybe, pretending to want to be with the bitch would get her to let her guard down enough to release me so I could get away. It was worth a shot. I’d do anything to make sure my family was safe in the end.

  Chapter 5

  Friends and Letters

  Lucy

  My bedroom door opened and Tiger Lily walked in looking gorgeous as ever. She had recently adopted a weird throw-back to the 1950s with her outfit choices, but with a twist. She would wear the cutest housewife dresses, but she paired the damn things with her leather jacket, boots, and a bandanna ties up on her head. I just smiled at the sight of her as she came over to my special reading chair and glanced down at what I had in my hands.

  “Whatcha doing?” She sing-songed to me. I swear, if I didn’t know she was a few years older than I was, I’d think she was more Anna’s age. The woman was simply timeless.

  I waved the pages of one of CJ’s letters at her. “Reading some of these old letters.”

  “Old letters?”

  “Every time CJ and I were apart, he wrote me a letter for each day we were separated.”

  Lily gasped. “Are you serious? Every. Single. Day? That had to be a lot in the beginning. Or wait, when did it start?”

  “It started at the very beginning, the first time I left for Florida, before we
were ever even a couple.”

  “Wow,” was all she could say to that. “Well, read it to me!”

  I glanced down at the pages in my hand, and for a moment, I contemplated telling her ‘no’. She had been there through most of this stuff though, so I didn’t see the harm.

  “Okay,” I announced before I flipped back to the first page and started to read CJ’s words to me.

  Sweet Lucy,

  I feel cheated.

  Sure, we weren’t really going out or anything, but there was nothing I wanted more each day than to bump into you somewhere, sometimes not quite accidentally. I know everyone says I’m being stupid, but they don’t understand. I never believed in soul mates, love at first sight, or any of that other sappy shit. Oh, damn, sorry for the language.

  …

  Tiger Lily laughed out loud at that, interrupting me as I was reading. I just glanced up at her with a mock glare on my face to let her know she was annoying me. We’d been friends long enough though that she knew I wasn’t really disturbed by it. “The dumbass actually apologized in a letter, one he probably had no intention of you ever actually reading, for cussing.” She laughed again as she shook her head back and forth. “Yeah, he had it bad for you from the very first. I remember being jealous as all hell of the way he spoke about you the few times he came around to the house or I was at the clubhouse to hear him.”

  “He talked about me back then?”

  “Sure did. He even asked me if I knew you. I guess he thought since I was a woman, and we had attended the same school at some point, that we would have known one another.”

  “But I’m a few years younger,” I mentioned.

  “Well, yeah, we both know how these things works, but CJ apparently didn’t.”