“But weren’t you and Dad close?” I ask. “You must have been mad that she moved on to your best friend?”
“Yeah,”—he lifts an eyebrow—“I was. Didn’t talk to them for six whole months. Right until your old man argued his way in here and dragged my ass out of bed so I could go see my newborn daughter.”
Nerves swell thick in my throat. What did he think when he saw me? Did he regret it? “Why did you hide it from me? Why not tell me from the start?”
“Sugar, if you’d seen your sweet little face when your daddy came home from work each day, you wouldn’t have told you either. We always thought we would, but how do you tell a baby? A toddler? By the time you were old enough to understand, your daddy was your hero. We couldn’t ruin that for somethin’ that didn’t really matter. I was still in your life, so I didn’t see the point in rockin’ the boat.”
I suck in a long breath, processing everything he’s told me. The two men standing behind Harris look bored, disinterested in what’s going on, and I suppose they are. To them it’s another tale of a dysfunctional family, but to me it puts all the broken pieces of my past together, forming a colorful mosaic out of the fragments that previously didn’t fit.
No wonder he was always around. Knowing this explains why he came to every milestone event of my childhood: birthdays, Christmas, school plays. I guess he didn’t want to miss out on his daughter growing up.
“If Dad knew, then why were you all arguing?” I ask. “It still doesn’t explain why things went so wrong.”
Harris drops his head between his shoulders, burying his thick fingers adorned with skull rings into his messy, gray-streaked hair. “Your mom and dad, they argued a lot. The usual stuff—money, you. Every married couple does. But the fights got worse, and you dad raised his hand at your momma one night.” He sighs, dropping his hands to hang between his legs. “He never hit her, but it scared her. She left for a couple of days and came to stay with me.”
“She said she went to visit an old college friend. I remember that. Dad didn’t want her to go, and I couldn’t understand why he was so upset with her seeing a friend.”
“I don’t think he knew for sure where your mom went, but your father wasn’t simple—he would have figured it out.”
“So what? He got jealous?”
“Your mom got pregnant again.”
The tension in the room is palpable. Nobody moves, until King rises from his seat and motions for all the hangers-on to leave. The men behind Harris file outside, followed by Dog, the prospect I don’t know, and Callum.
I startle as Bronx reaches across himself to take my clenched fist in his hand, wrapping his fingers around mine and prying them loose. “You okay?”
“What do you think?” I snap.
“You want to take a break?” He lifts my relaxed hand to his lips, kissing the fingers one by one.
His gentleness irks me, not that I know why, but something about the contrast of that with the anger building inside of me makes me want to slap him. I wrench my hand away, uttering a quiet, “Don’t.”
Harris fidgets with his rings, spinning them around his fingers in turn while he watches me keenly. “Are you sure you want to know the rest of what happened, baby girl?” He stops fiddling, straightening his back. “Sometimes things are best kept in the past.”
“Only it’s not my past,” I say. “Every fucking morning I wake up wondering about why things happened how they did. How can it be my past when it’s so royally screwed up my present?”
“What do you want to know first?” he asks quietly.
“Who shot her?” I reply without hesitation. “Who shot Mom?”
“Your daddy.” He sighs, leaning into the sofa. “But I’ll take the blame any and every day.”
“How? Why?”
“He pointed the gun at me. Your mom got in the way.”
“Trying to protect you?” I can’t understand why a pregnant woman would put herself in harm’s way like that.
“Tryin’ to protect both of us. Your momma was a smart girl. She would have known if your daddy shot me, he’d be goin’ to prison. She also would have known it would mean both her babies didn’t have a father in their life—biological or otherwise.”
I place a hand to my chest, trying to rub away the ache. “Was it quick?”
“Instant.”
“And Dad?”
“Turned the gun on himself.”
Wait . . . what? “You didn’t kill either of them?”
He shakes his head solemnly. “No, baby girl, I didn’t.”
I look to Bronx, but he’s eyeing the both of us, clearly trying to work out what he’s hearing, too. The entire past twelve years of my life have been a lie. My uncle didn’t kill my parents, and he wasn’t dead.
“Why the fire then? Why not let the authorities deal with it?”
Harris scoots forward on his seat, reaching out for my hand. I take hold of his calloused fingers and look at the stark contrast of his huge palm engulfing mine. “Ryanna, what happened after I left? Why did you disappear?”
Disappear? The reasoning behind Eddie’s reluctance makes a little more sense. With all the contacts an MC like the Devil’s Breed have, Harris could have found me if the information was out there. We’ve run in parralell groups for years, which leads me to realize the only logical answer—I was a secret. Why, though, I’m still not sure.
“I stayed and watched the house burn.” Harris places his other hand over both ours, comforting and offering me strength. “It was so quick. I remember thinking that something that big must take an age to burn down, but it fell so fast. The engines came, I guess because the neighbors called them, and they doused the flames. It took them so much longer to put it out than it had for the fire to ruin the house.” I give his hands a squeeze and then slip mine free. “Nobody saw me for so long.”
“Where were you?”
“Hiding in the garden.”
“Why didn’t you run like I told you to?”
I shake my head. “I did, just not far. I couldn’t have gone further. You were asking me to leave behind my home, my family, and my safety. I was a scared kid. I wanted to see if something remained.”
“What happened then? When the fire was out?”
“The cops came, and the forensic people. I didn’t know what they were at the time—people wearing white bags on their shoes. The police searched the grounds, and that’s when one of them saw me.”
“But they didn’t take you in, give you help?” Harris asks.
“No. He just shone his torch on me and looked at me for the longest time before walking away.”
“And you didn’t crawl out to him, look for help?”
“I was scared, in shock, and working on denial. I couldn’t think clearly enough to tie my shoe, let alone work through what I should have been doing.” I sigh, bringing my knuckles to my lips. “I was eleven years old, Harris.”
He shakes his head, his brows knitted together as he stares at the floor. “Fuckin’ assholes. They were as dirty then as they are now.”
“What do you mean?”
“That cop—he would have known who you were. Probably got paid a pretty sum to pretend he didn’t, too.”
What is he talking about now? “Why would they be bribed to not report in about me? I don’t get it. What made me so special?”
Harris reaches out and takes hold of his beer, downing more than half the bottle in the one go. He sets the drink back on the table, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Story for another day, honey.” He stands, dusting his palms on his thighs. “I’m goin’ to give you some time to work through everythin’ we just talked about. It’s a lot to take in.”
“Thank you.” Truth be told, I don’t think a month of Sundays would be enough to come to terms with it all.
My mother was shot.