I almost choke on my mouthful of coffee. “Your what?”
Queenie gives me a stern look. “That little girl belongs to this family,” she says quietly. “And I’ll be damned if we let anyone rip her away from where she belongs. Slate might be blind to it, but I’m not. She’s his daughter, right?”
I steady my voice. There’s no point in denying it now. My voice shakes when I finally whisper, “It’s true. Katie is Slate’s daughter.”
Queenie doesn’t look surprised. If anything, she looks relieved that I’ve said it out loud. She leans back, still holding her cup of coffee.
“To be honest, it didn’t take a genius to piece it together. The name, those blue eyes, that hair—she’s got my son written all over her. You should’ve seen him with Katie the first day. He didn’t even realize what he was staring at, but I did.”
My eyes drop to the floor, shame filling my very soul. “I wanted to tell him,” I say quietly. “I still do. It’s just that things have been so chaotic.”
Queenie’s expression softens, but her tone doesn’t waver. “You need to tell him, honey. And soon. Because if you don’t, I will.”
The words punch right through all the excuses I’ve been telling myself.
“Queenie, please,” I stammer, my voice breaking. “Slate has a lot on his plate right now. He’s stretched thin. If I tell him now, it’ll be like dropping another weight on his shoulders.”
“My son deserves to know what he’s fighting for,” she insists stubbornly.
I get the feeling that I’m not going to win this argument, but I give it one last try. “I don’t want to distract him when danger is near. I need him to be clear-headed for his own safety.”
She tilts her head, her voice low but firm. “I love you, Christina, but you have to know my son deserves the truth. Waking up every morning in his bed and lying to him all over again is a choice on your part.”
“I didn’t lie to him. He never asked, and I never volunteered the information.”
“We don’t accept lies of omission or half-truths in this family. You are the mother of his child and have a duty to tell him he has a daughter.”
I shrink in on myself. “I know what you’re saying is true.”
“My son has been walking around for years not knowing why he feels like something is missing from his life or why he feels so damn restless all the time. That little girl of yours is the reason. And she deserves to know who she belongs to.”
Her blunt words hit the mark, driving home how not knowing might have affected him. “I know,” I whisper. “I’ll tell him.”
“Listen to me on this. You think you’re protecting him, but all you’re doing is keeping him from the one thing that could change his whole situation for the better. You think you’re protecting Katie, but she’s growing up without her father, her grandparents, her uncles. You’ve got people here who would walk through fire for her, and she doesn’t even know it yet.”
Tears well up in my eyes again. “I was afraid,” I admit. “When I woke up from that coma and found out I was pregnant, I couldn’t even remember how I got there. I thought I’d been in an automobile accident. Memories of the explosion came back pretty damn fast, and before I could get myself turned around, I realized I was being watched. I thought Slate was better off not knowing, that he’d probably moved on by then. I thought what we had was probably just another in a long line of flings for him. He didn’t deserve the kind of trouble I was dragging in my wake.”
Queenie snorts a laugh. “My sons thrive on chaos and danger. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re all veterans of foreign wars who grew up in a damn motorcycle club.”
Leveling me with a more serious stare, she continues, “I know you didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m gonna give it to you anyway. You’re seriously worrying about all the wrong things if you think you’re putting Slate in danger. What you’re really not understanding in this situation is that Slate is the dangerous one. They should be wary of provoking him, not the other way around.”
I blink at her, trying to wrap my head around what she’s saying. She continues, “My sons are tough as nails, and too damn smart for their own good at times. They operate as a unit and can raise a private army within minutes simply by calling on our affiliate and allied clubs. Which is exactly why wearing his property cut should be a warning to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.”
“But the man who’s been stalking me said he was going to blow the clubhouse up.”
“And how would he manage that? We built that thick wall around the clubhouse to create an impenetrable compound. We have prospects guarding the gate at all times, brothers patrolling the grounds in shifts, and drones in the sky.”
“All because of the trouble I brought to your doorstep,” I say bitterly.
For the first time, Queenie’s voice turns irritated. “No. That was all in place long before you and Slate even met. You act like you’re the only woman who was ever in danger. Rock pulled me out of a religious cult back in the day. They didn’t appreciate oneof their women getting away and hassled us for years. That’s part of the reason we built this compound the way we did—to protect me and anyone else needing sanctuary. We’ve got a brother living here we rescued from a Mexican cartel. You’re not the only one who ever brought danger to our doorstep, and you won’t be the last. So let go of all that guilt and help us keep you and your daughter safe.”
I nod again, finally getting what she’s laying down. “I’ll do it,” I whisper. “I promise. I just need a moment to do it the right way.”
Her face brightens. “Perfect moments are rare around here. Maybe instead of worrying about how to engineer the perfect moment, you can just focus on the happy family you’ll be making with him.”
Across the room, I hear Katie’s small laugh, and something inside me begins to crumble. “He just told me that he loved me for the first time.” I don’t talk about the fabulous sex we had because who does that? Instead, I focus on my biggest worry. “Telling him is going to piss him off. What if telling him changes things between us? What if it ends any hope of having that happy family you mentioned?”
There’s no judgment when she looks at me. Instead, I see only compassion and a little sadness. “You can’t build a happy family on lies, honey. Slate’s a good man. You wronged him by not telling him that he’s Katie’s father. You’re just gonna have to trust him to understand your reasoning and ask for his forgiveness.”
