Coal was by the door and held it open for Nathan to enter. “You okay, brother?” he asked.
“I could be better, but I could be worse,” Nathan answered honestly.
“Glad they got you back,” Coal said quietly.
Nathan clapped him on the shoulder. “Me, too.”
When Patch took Nathan to his makeshift med room to finish looking him over, Annabelle turned to me. The concern had vanished from her eyes and was replaced with pure, unadulterated fury. “You,” she growled, yes growled, and stabbed her finger in my direction. “You fucking lied to me! You knew what he was capable of and yet you still lied about his death, which not only put me, but my children, in danger! You put my kids’ lives in danger and one of them was nearly taken from me! How could you do that, Phoenix? Did you think it was okay because he’s not yours?”
“Everybody, out! Right fucking now!” I bellowed. If we were going to have it out in the common room, we were going to do it without the whole damn club watching, not to mention our children and my grandparents who were staring at us with jaws agape.
“Why do you want everyone to leave, Phoenix? So you can feed me some more bullshit behind closed doors? They all knew Octavius was still alive while you made a fool of me. So, let them stay and watch the show. I have nothing to hide.”
Holy shit. I had never, and I mean never, seen her so angry. And I was terrified. Yes, I did lie to her, but it wasn’t for the reasons she thought. I needed to speak, but I was too scared to say anything. If I lost her again...Fuck, I couldn’t even bring myself to complete the thought.
“Fucking say something, you big bastard,” she screamed.
“Mom,” Coal said softly. He was standing off to the side with Gram and Pop, but I didn’t fail to notice how he was positioned in front of Ember, even though Dash was cradling her against his chest. When my eyes landed on her, I heard her sobs loud and clear. Fuck, this was going to do a number on her, too.
“No,” Annabelle fumed. “He’s going to explain and he’s got five seconds to start doing it before I walk away from him.”
I visibly flinched from the pain that ripped through my chest at hearing her words. I sucked in a huge breath and did the only thing I could. I told her the truth. “We faked his death last year. I wasn’t going to let him keep his secrets and spend the rest of his days living comfortably in a jail cell. No, I was keeping him here until he told me what happened to you or I found something that led me to you, whichever came first. When I finally found the papers and headed out to California, I knew, if I found you, you wouldn’t come back here unless he was dead. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t kill him before I found you!”
“You should’ve had one of your boys do it before we came back!”
“Fuck, no! If anybody ends him, it’s going to be me!”
She stood with her hands balled into fists, glaring at me while she heaved in breath after breath. Then, she shocked the ever-loving shit out of me. “I want to see him.”
No. She didn’t really ask to see him, did she? “Annabelle, I don’t think—”
“I don’t care what you think. I want to fucking see him!” she roared. “He ruined my life just as much as he did yours. I have every right to see him and say my piece to him. You owe me that, Phoenix Alexander Black.”
If I wasn’t so busy feeling uncertain and helpless, I might have been turned on by her fierce determination. I swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay. I’ll take you to see him.”
“Just you. No one else,” she added.
Ignoring the shocked and stunned faces in the common room, I silently led her to the cell in the basement where Carbon had secured the little weasel. “Ah, my big bad brother has returned to torture me so soon? I expected it to take you longer to figure things out and clean up the mess you made at the warehouse. Such a messy job disposing of bodies,” he taunted.
“I’m not your fucking brother,” I growled.
“Our DNA says otherwise,” he quipped.
Before I could say anything else, Annabelle shoved me to the side and stepped forward. “Oh, brother dearest, you brought me a surprise. How thoughtful of you to return my lost property.”
I growled low in my throat. If Annabelle had something she wanted to say to him, she needed to do it and do it soon, because I was going to snap his neck with my bare hands if he continued trying to goad me.
“I was never yours,” Annabelle spat, facing down the man who took so much from her. She stood as tall as she could with her hands clasped tightly behind her back.
Octavius chuckled. “Oh, you still don’t know, do you? Well, you would have found out from Nivan at some point, so I’ll go ahead and tell you myself. Yes, you were my property. Didn’t you think it was strange that I would take in an 18-year-old to provide for while her parents worked off a debt? You were a legal adult. I didn’t have to do shit for you. No, your parents didn’t owe me any money and they never worked on the farm. I met your father when I first started providing guns for his club. He was always looking for ways to make more money. He’s the one who came up with the idea for loaning money to those who couldn’t pay it back and having them work off their debt at the farm. I paid him quarterly for the idea, a sort of royalty, if you will. A few months into it, he asked for his quarterly payment early. He had gotten himself into trouble of some sort. When I refused, he offered you up for sale. So, yes, Annabelle, you are my property.”
I had my eyes on Octavius as he spewed his shit at Annabelle. I should have been watching her. If I was, I would have seen her hand move, but I didn’t. Before I could react, Annabelle had a gun in her hand and proceeded to empty the clip into Octavius without hesitation, not missing a single shot.
We had soundproofed the cell we usually kept Octavius in not long after he became our resident prisoner, but Carbon put him in one of the regular cells until we could get the locks changed on his old cell and there was no way the guys didn’t hear the gunshots upstairs. Almost immediately, I heard the sounds of booted feet running down the hall. The door to the basement flew open and Duke called out as he practically jumped down the stairs with Carbon and the rest of the club on his heels, “Prez! You okay?”
Annabelle whirled around to see a wall of leather with guns drawn and aimed in our direction. She squeaked and the gun in her hand fell to the floor. “Put the guns down, brothers. We’re fine. I need a couple of you to clean—”
I was interrupted by the frantic screaming of my daughter. “Mom! Dad! Let me go before I knock your ass to the ground!”
