Page 32 of Biker's Hostage

Her father was coming around for dinner that evening. We had set ourselves up in a small apartment of our own last month, and now that she was starting to show, she had decided it was about time to start building bridges between her father and the next generation of her family.

Our family. That’s what I had to keep reminding myself of, our family. It still felt surreal to think of it like that, but at the same time, I couldn’t wait to hold my son for the first time. A son. We'd found out the week before, and I could already picture how he was going to look, her green eyes, her sweet smile. He was going to be perfect, I could tell.

He was healthy, at least. We knew that much so far, though there was little else to speak of. I didn’t care about anything other than him coming into this world well and cared for.

And this was part of making sure that happened. We needed her father to be on board if we were going to give this child the full family life he deserved. It wasn’t like I had any family of my own to bring to the table, and I wanted him to be able to rely on his grandfather when the time came.

He had been keeping his distance from the two of us since we moved in together. We used the last of my savings and the remains of what she had from her student loan. It wasn’t like we had a lot, but it was enough, and I had started working for the Dogs to earn some cash. More than that, though, I knew it was a way to prove myself as trustworthy to her father; if I could get them to see that I would work in tandem with them without causing trouble, he would come to believe it when I said I was going to stick around and provide Chelsea and our son with everything they could possibly have needed.

Any father would have had a hard time accepting that his daughter was having a child with someone like me. But her dad in particular had his reasons to doubt me. She had assured me it would just take time for him to come around to me completely, and when he did, he would care for me as his son-in-law as much as he cared for her. But in this uneasy middle ground, I just wanted to skip to the part where he trusted I was capable of providing for them.

“Oh, God, there’s the door!” she exclaimed, practically jumping out of her skin. “I’ll get it. Can you get the curry out of the oven...?”

“Hey,” I murmured, catching her hand and giving it a squeeze. She glanced down at me. “Everything’s going to be fine,” I promised and planted a kiss on her palm. She inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and then smiled.

“It will be,” she replied, like she was trying to convince herself as much as me. And then she went to answer the door as I headed through to the kitchen to lay out our food for the evening. I’d been learning to cook lately, and though I still had a lot of ground to make up, I was pretty proud of the curry I made for the three of us tonight. Chelsea had been complaining that she’d been craving spicy food all week, and I had tailored the flavors to exactly what she wanted.

I heard her greeting her father in the next room, and a few moments later, he emerged into the kitchen. Our eyes locked, and he jerked his head at me in an awkward greeting.

“Good to see you, Ian,” I remarked, and he grunted in response. Chelsea hovered in the doorway, glancing between us, clearly hoping this was going to go better than it was. Even though her father had chosen not to stand in the way of things between us, that didn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that he liked the thought of us being together.

“Come on, let’s eat,” Chelsea told nobody in particular. “I’m starving...”

I served up the food at the small dining table pressed against the wall in the living room, and Chelsea gripped my hand beneath it. I could feel the tension coming off of her in waves, and I wished I could convince her father to just put a smile on to lighten the mood. His eyes were fixed on me, scanning me for some hint of wrongness, like he was waiting for me to screw up at any moment.

“So, how have things been with the Dogs?” I asked him.

“Fine,” he replied, nodding slightly. “Busy.”

“You’re helping those girls get resettled, aren’t you?” Chelsea asked, smiling. I nodded. Turned out that a lot of what the Dogs were involved in these days was far-removed from the harshness I had expected. Their main focus was pulling apart the pieces of Lombardi’s empire that were still standing and setting free the last women who had been trafficked and abused as part of his twisted business. Much as it was new to me, it felt like a chance to put right some of the damage my brother had done in this city. Liam might have been family, but I was coming to learn that blood didn’t define who you had to believe in. What he had done was wrong, and it was better that he had no chance to serve Lombardi’s goals any longer.

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” her dad replied. He was curt, short, and it was obvious she wasn’t used to him speaking to her in that way. Her hand tightened on mine beneath the table, and I gave it a squeeze.

“You know, I really respect what you guys do,” I remarked, trying to turn the conversation to something a little more positive. He narrowed his eyes at me.

“What do you mean?” he shot back. I guessed my respect wasn’t exactly something he was keen on earning, after everything I had done.

“A lot of people in the Dogs’ position would just be trying to make themselves richer,” I pointed out. “Especially now Lombardi’s gone. But you guys... you’re trying to make a difference in the world. I admire that. Not everyone has that in them.”

“I don’t know about that,” Chelsea cut in, smiling at me softly. “I think everyone can change if they’re given the chance. Right, Dad?”

Her dad paused for a moment—but then nodded.

“I guess they can,” he replied gruffly. I breathed a sigh of relief. Okay, so we were on the same page about something. That was a start.

“And it’s not us doing it,” Ian continued, shaking his head. “You’re part of that now, Zane. Remember that.”

I grinned.

“Yeah, I am,” I agreed. It was the closest I was going to get to an acknowledgement from Ian that I was part of this family now, and I would take it. I would take everything I could get right now. God only knew I had a lot to prove to him—I had a lot to prove to Chelsea, too, but she was more willing to hear me out.

I could see Chelsea’s shoulders relaxing slightly from the place of tension she’d been in before, and she finally released her grip on my hand and grabbed her fork.

“This looks great, Zane,” she remarked to me. “Thanks for cooking tonight.”

“You made this?” Ian exclaimed, sounding surprised. I nodded.

“I’m trying to learn how to cook,” I explained, “for when the baby’s here. I want to be able to teach him, when he’s old enough.

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