Page 13 of Biker's Dark Revenge

"What happened to her mother?"

I shook my head.

"Dead," I replied. "Overdosed. That’s why Liana’s taking care of her."

"Fuck," Chuck muttered, running a hand over his head. "If I’d known what was going on, I never would have let it go on this long..."

"We need to end it now," I replied firmly. There was no point going over and over what we could have done differently. All that mattered was that we moved now while we had a chance – that we took the swing before anything else could happen. I wasn’t going to let Lombardi or his men get away with this, not any longer, not now that I knew what I knew.

"You’re right," Chuck agreed. "You think they’re still going to be using that compound you were at?"

I shook my head.

"I doubt it," I replied. "They’re going to know it’s compromised. They’ve probably moved somewhere new..."

"And we need to find them," he growled. "I’ll get some of the Dogs on it, get them staking out the place."

"I’ll get them there-"

"You rest," he told me, giving me a hard look. "You’ve done enough for now. The last thing we need is for you to burn yourself out, you hear me?”

I was about to protest, but I stopped myself in my tracks. I knew he was right. I was getting older now, and if I was going to be in fighting form to get involved with this Lombardi shit, I was going to need to rest up and give myself time to get myself together. I couldn’t just throw myself head-first into everything that came my way, not anymore. I needed to be more careful these days, and I wasn’t going to forget that.

"Tell Liana that we need to talk to her at some point," he remarked. "She’ll have information we can use about what they were planning for her."

"I will," I replied, though, if anyone needed time to rest, I knew it was Liana. I had seen the dark rings beneath her eyes, a sure sign that she was struggling with the newfound stress of being a pseudo-mom. She’d never had kids before, and dealing with a kid who was handling as much as Kara must be a lot.

"Thanks for catching me up on everything, Lee," Chuck told me before I turned to leave. "We’ll get to the bottom of this. You know that, right?"

"I know that" I replied. I trusted Chuck more than I trusted anyone else – shit, more than I trusted myself some days. If anyone was going to be able to get a handle on all of this, it would be him. Lombardi had been skirting around our territory for a while, especially since Star had come to the Dogs for help – he still felt like he was owed her, even though he’d have to pry her out of Jaxon’s cold, dead hands to make it happen.

I headed back to my room in the compound, though I hadn’t been spending a lot of time there lately. No, with everything that had been going on, I had been staying with Liana, crashing on her couch so I could help out with Kara and make her feel a little more safe in the wake of what had happened.

I didn’t feel like going back there now, though, not after the conversation we’d had. When she had asked me about...about why I seemed so good with Kara. I didn’t want her to know the truth. I didn’t want her to get to the bottom of that, not if I could help it. There was a reason I had kept that part of my life hidden from everyone at the Dogs, and I didn’t want that to change – I knew they would see me differently if they heard about it.

I would become a charity case, the kind of guy they didn’t want to be around because that would always be hanging over their heads – they would be dealing with the reminder of how bad things could get. I knew a few of the Dogs had kids of their own, and they didn’t want to think about that shit, the shit I had been through.

Liana least of all. I knew it would shift how she saw the time I spent with Kara, and I didn’t want to lose out on being around that sweet little girl. Yeah, I got that I was projecting my shit onto her, but how could I not? She was around the same age Dina had been when she passed, and being around her made the burning pain of her absence hurt just a little less. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

I flopped down on my bed and let out a groan as I stared at the ceiling. It was that shit with the giraffe – it was something I had done with Dina when she was little when she’d had bad dreams. I promised her that this little toy was going to soak them all up for her and she had nothing at all to worry about. I could still remember how peaceful she had looked when she was sleeping, eyes drifted shut, as though nothing in the world could hurt her.

And I guessed, now, it couldn’t.

I had a duty to this little girl who had just fallen into my life – I might not have expected Kara, but I wasn’t going to let her down, that much, I was damn sure of.

It was strange, letting myself give a shit like this. Ever since everything happened with Dina, I had cut myself off from the possibility of allowing that kind of connection again. It had seemed too dangerous, too risky, to allow myself to even get close to that – what if I lost them again? What happened if I wasn’t strong enough to hold them together, to keep the people I allowed close to me from being hurt again?

Being part of the Dogs was one thing – I cared about these guys, of course, I did, but I knew they were capable of taking care of themselves. When I looked at Kara, when I looked at Liana, I saw a vulnerability that scared me – a vulnerability that threw me off my game. How was I meant to handle that? How was I meant to make sense of it?

I knew that it was dangerous to allow myself to even think about it. I needed to get myself in hand. This wasn’t about them, this was about Lombardi – this was about wrecking his plans and making sure he knew that he would never get away with what he had done, ever again. This was about freeing any other children who might have been trapped in the same nightmare that Kara had been in.

And assuring Liana that I would never let anything like that happen to her again. When she had looked at me, her eyes blazing with sincerity, and told me that she needed me to promise her that Lombardi would be brought down, I had felt drawn to her in a way I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Not just drawn but a duty – a willingness to do whatever it took to do as she asked. It didn’t matter what it took from me, it didn’t matter what it cost. It mattered that she had asked for it.

I closed my eyes and felt a wave of tiredness hit me hard. I was going to need all my strength when we took on Lombardi. Still, sleeping here, instead of in Liana’s small apartment, was going to be weird.

I hoped they were alright. And I hoped I hadn’t managed to make a mess of things when I had stormed out of there after she had asked about my family.

Maybe I could come clean with her about it, one day. But right now – right now, I knew there were more important things to focus on.

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