Page 21 of Where We Ended

“Fuck,” Killian rasped, shaking his head. Laura had tears in her eyes, Penelope was sobbing with little hiccups and Callie looked worried.

My rage was untethered and wild. Like a whip of lightning crashing and clinging to every single place inside me.

“Who was that…do you recognize him?” Jameson asked.

“Alec Veda,” Penelope answered and my eyes flew up.

Everyone turned to look at her.

Callie asked, “As in the president of Sons of Speed?”

“How the fuck do you know Alec?” I glared at Natty’s friend, not that I was angry, but I was surprised, and I didn’t like surprises.

Everyone’s gaze coasted over to me, then ping ponged back to Penelope.

She hesitated. “My mom dated a member in the Chaos Kings, Miles…well, he wasn’t always faithful to her, so one summer when he’d left without leaving us a dime, she tested the waters with Sons of Speed. She found a guy there who she started seeing a few times…I went with her, and I remember when we stepped into that club and saw their president. Alec Veda is hard to forget.”

Jameson’s grip tightened on her hips as his eyes narrowed. “Hard how?”

“He’s just intense…and then there’s that tattoo, you can see it in the video, it’s of Artemis, Goddess of the hunt. She’s got this golden hair and green eyes. Her bow has all these swirls of darkness and sunlight bursting from it, it’s beautiful. I remember staring at it when he crossed his arms over his chest, realizing the arrow in her bow points directly at his heart. I remember it being such an odd thing to have inked for the president of a motorcycle club. Especially when he has all this simmering anger and rage around him like...” She looked up at me. “You actually. He reminds me of you.”

Yeah, that’s what happened when we shared a fucking gene pool. That tattoo would be the first thing I took from his flesh when I found him.

Penelope’s stricken face turned toward me as she asked, “Why would Alec Veda go after Natty? She’s never once mentioned him, or Sons of Speed for that matter. There’s no way there’s a connection there.”

Fucking Alec. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. As angry as I still was with him, after all these years, I had a soft spot for him because of our past. Because he was my blood. And for one solitary night, while Natty had needed me, he’d been the one to step up and comfort her. Natty assumed I hated him for it.

It broke me, but I was more grateful than I was angry. With a curt tone, I declared to the room. “There is a connection.”

The room waited for me to continue, and fuck…I guess I was about to open this can of bullshit with these people, not because I liked them or needed them but because they’d had a map ready to go with places marked so they could narrow down where Natty was last seen. They cared about her. For that reason and only that reason, did I explain.

“He’s my brother.”

Killian stood, shaking his head, then loudly cursed. “Fuck. Me… Of course he is.”

“That’s some important information…you made it seem like you’d barely met Fable…how true is that?” Wes asked, crossing his arms. Callie, his wife, was on the floor still, rubbing a hand over her pregnant belly, lost in thought.

“Fable is Alec’s father…and mine. We were raised together…in a way at least. We were both carted over to our father’s house once a year, forced to stay for months at a time, sometimes longer. While there, we were exposed to Fable’s special brand of parenting, if that’s what you want to call it.”

Penelope took a seat in Jameson’s lap, shifting her baby on her shoulder.

“And Natty knows him?”

My jaw clenched painfully hard as I nodded. “Alec would occasionally be dropped off in Death Raider territory with me.”

“You made it seem like a surprise when Fable turned up,” Killian said accusingly.

I thought back to our conversation that night, I had confessed to the group that Fable was in town. I had made it sound very vague and as if I barely knew my father.

“Didn’t trust you.”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “Do you now?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Wes laughed; Jameson muttered something about me being an asshole.

“So, Alec took her then, not Fable?” Laura glanced around at the group.

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