He nodded. “Yeah. I got you.”
“Good, because that’s just the start of what I’ll do to you and your buddies. Spread the word.” He patted his face a little too hard and shoved him towards the door.
“I’ll let Rocky and Diesel know what we learned,” Rebel offered, already on his phone and giving us his back.
Falcon, for his part, was already rounding up prospects to come clean up the shop.
We left the shop as a group and headed back to the clubhouse just to make sure everybody had the new intel.
I did some thinking while on the road. Some of the pieces had started to slide into place but there was still a lot of unknown information.
Once we got back, I updated Diesel. “Sounds like somebody is targeting us and I have a feeling it’s not the Chaos Raiders.”
Diesel nodded. “Agreed. Slate will see what he can find online, everybody else, keep your fucking eyes and ears open. Learn what you can through any source you have.” He eyed each of us and then with a nod, dismissed us all.
I took some time before I headed home, needing to clear my head before I went inside to hug my little girl. She was the best fucking part of me, and I wouldn’t do anything to harm her progress.
Including getting in deeper with the woman who seemed to think her job was to do more than babysit.
Chapter Six
Eliana
Zoya hadn’t spoken, not yet, but she had started to communicate more in other ways. She talked to me through color and shape, through the soft scratch of crayons and pencils across paper. Her drawings told me the stories she couldn’t or wouldn’t say out loud, not yet. And damn if they didn’t break my heart a little bit every time she handed me one with that adorable, pride-filled smile.
This afternoon, we sat side by side at the kitchen table with the late sun spilling over our sketchpads. Zoya was focused with her tongue pressed between her teeth as she filled the page with shades of blue, orange, and pink. When she finished, she nudged it towards me with a shy smile. It was two figures, a kid and an adult with dark, curly hair. It was me and Zoya, wearing huge smiles as the sun beamed down over us. All around us was green grass for as far as the eye could see and too many butterflies to count. It was… stunningly beautiful.
I swallowed around the giant lump of emotion that had formed in my throat. “You drew us?”
Zoya nodded, pigtails swinging.
“Wow,” I said softly. “You made us look so happy.” I wasn’t even sure I’d been that happy in a long, long time.
Her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close enough that I considered it a win. Her reluctant smiles reminded me so much of her grumpy father that it made me smile. She mightnot be communicating with her words, but she modeled him in enough ways that she was becoming easier to read.
But the thing that kept me up at night, the thing that wouldn’t let my brain have a moment of peace was thewhy. Selective mutism was a trauma response, yet Sledge seemed to have no idea what happened to Zoya. I wanted to use my research skills to figure it out, but I also didn’t want to pry into details that he hadn’t shared with me yet. The man had his reasons, even if I disagreed with them.
The other part was that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the details of what his biker buddies had gotten up to that made Zoya lose her voice. I wondered again about her mom. Sledge had never talked about her. It really wasn’t my business, but I needed answers if I was going to help her.
And I was.
No matter what her grumpy but hot father thought.
Zoya watched me carefully as if she was looking for any signs that I wasn’t being honest with her.
I offered up another smile and tried a different tactic. “Your eyes are the exact same shade of hazel as your dad’s, have you noticed?”
She didn’t answer but I had her attention.
“I got my brown eyes from mymami, though my dad calls them golden brown because that makes them sound prettier, I guess. To me they’ve always been just brown. But I got these wild curls that no hair product on the planet can tame, from him.” I hoped sharing the details would encourage Zoya to share because I craved the details that would let me help this sweet little girl.
She flipped the page and started drawing again, so I did the same, focusing this time on Zoya as she drew. She was such a study in contrast, so light and delicate on the outside, but something dark lurked inside and it was a heavy burden she felt forced to carry.
We drew in silence for a long time, but my curiosity got the best of me, and I almost wished it hadn’t. Zoya’s new artwork wasn’t colorful like the others, but it was still full of life, but the dark and dirty side of life. The scene was gray and red and black, the lines were jagged and rushed, as if she couldn’t get the image out of her mind fast enough.
When she finished, she slid the pad over again, but she didn’t look at me this time.
The image was shocking. A stick-thin woman with long, stringy blonde hair stood alone in the middle of the page. Her arms and legs were too thin underneath her cut-off shorts and black tank top. Her blue eyes were filled in with deep, angry slashes of red. Above her head, in shaky block letters was just one word, ‘Mommy’. Behind the woman was a figure I couldn’t quite make out. It was almost like a man made of smoke. It wasn’t clear what it was supposed to be, but every instinct in me said it wasn’t good.
