Page 6 of Judge’s Redemption

I lower my voice, but not the disbelief in it. “I've got a fucking child?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“How old exactly?”

“Four. She'll be five in October.”

“When did you find out?”

“A few weeks after I left.”

The shock twists into something sharper. “You knew when you were pregnant and didn't tell me?”

Her entire expression changes. “Don't you dare.”

I stand again. “I'm trying to understand.”

“No. You're looking at me like I stole something from you.”

“You knew where I was.”

“And I came back.”

The anger drops out of me so fast it leaves cold behind. “What do you mean?”

“I was six months pregnant when I came back to Ransom. I went to the compound because I thought you had a right to know, even after everything you'd said to me.”

“I never saw you.”

“I know.”

Shay gives me a hard, humorless look. “King met me at the gate.”

The name settles heavily between us. King our old president had been a ruthless bastard who ruled the club with an iron fist and treated every person around him as something he either owned or could use. He's been dead for months, but the old man has still found another way to reach out of the ground and fuck with our lives.

“What did he say?”

“That you knew where I'd gone. That if you wanted me back, you would've come for me.”

My hands curl at my sides.

“He said the club didn't need a baby tying you down. Then he warned me that staying near Kingdom Come would put my child in danger.”

“I didn't know that he’d done that. He never told me you were there.”

I turn away because if King were alive right now, I'd kill him with my bare hands.

He knew Shay was pregnant. He knew I was going to have a child. He sent her away, then walked back through the compound gates as though he hadn't taken something from me that I can never get back.

First steps. First words. Four birthdays. Every ordinary day in between.

“He stole four years from me.”

Shay's laugh is bitter. “No. He finished what you started.”

I turn back.

“You made him believable,” she says. “That's the part you don't get to put on King. You told me I'd only ever been temporary. You told me the club would always come first and that you were done with me.”