Page 10 of The Princess & the Prospect

Chapter 5

The video hadn’t been much of a help thanks to the fact that it angled to a point where Anna had been mostly in the shadows at the end of the bar and whoever had come up to speak to her had been lost in them. I had attempted to track down some friends of Anna, but no one knew who she was hanging out with, or how to contact anyone who may have helped her. Not that it really mattered since it was obviously a club brother she had walked out of here with. Everyone I had spoken to today had denied it was them though. No matter how much of an asshole I’d made of myself the night before, I didn’t think any of my brothers would openly lie to me, especially since my wife was missing now.

I was about ready to pull my own damn hair out, going crazy with worry, when I heard Merc call from down the hall where his office was. “Joker!”

“I can’t find Anna,” I told him as I continued walking away.

“Joker! Office, now!” He called out, halting me in my tracks.

“But I,” I started and was abruptly cut off by him yelling, “Now!”

I entered the office, too keyed up to take a seat. Instead I stood there a moment as he clicked away on his computer. Then I started pacing and chewing on my thumb nail, nearly losing patience by the time he gave the machine before him one final clicked and then directed his attention to me.

“Look, I don’t know what this is about, but I’m really worried. I need to find Anna.”

“Are you?” He asked. I didn’t answer, because what the fuck kind of question was that to ask?

“Where are you going to look for her?”

I blew out a breath in frustration. “I don’t fuckin’ know,” I finally admitted. “Nobody really knows her. It’s crazy. Even her family is clueless about where she could be. I thought she left with another brother, but everyone I’ve asked has said it wasn’t them.”

Merc nodded knowingly. “That girl is something special. Her whole life she’s been a dreamer, but she also lives to make people smile. I think the only selfish thing, or out of character thing, I’ve ever seen her do was to hide her true identity from you so she could have something that was just for her, for once.”

I winced, feeling his censure for how I’d been treating her. Deck had already dislodged my head from my ass earlier by telling me something similar.

“Did you enjoy your time with her before you knew her real name and age?”

“Yes, of course,” I answered.

“Would you have been serious about the woman you thought you were getting to know?” His question took me aback because my immediate internal response was to scream an emphatic yes to the heavens. I thought she had been the one that I could settle down with and start a family of my own.

Instead of tipping my hat I just went with an easier response. “I had thought about it, yeah.”

“Did she actually lie to you about anything other than which part of her name was the most commonly used nickname, or when she didn’t correct your assumptions about her age?”

“She didn’t bother telling me about her family’s involvement with the club either.”

“Did you tell her all about your family, friends, and coworkers? Did you tell her the little details about them, like their names, where they worked, what clubs they might belong to?”

“No,” I answered, seeing where he was going with this.

“No, so maybe you were getting to know each other at the same pace then? Maybe she wanted you to be able to give her a chance to know and like her without her baggage sending you running?” His eyebrows arched upward to emphasize his question.

“I know. I overreacted a bit. I get it.”

Merc grinned at me, but allowed the grin to drop and a grim countenance took its place. “I don’t think you do,” he managed to say before I started to disagree. He cut me off immediately though. “I took her to my home and Tiger Lily put her to bed last night because she’d had to stand witness to exactly how far out of the park you hit that overreaction.” His words, once again, had me wincing.

“On her wedding night, she had to deal with a reluctant, pissed-off groom, a baby in her belly, and then I came out to find her watching you with your tongue down another woman’s throat at damn near two in the morning. The girl was about to drop from exhaustion and then she got that jolt of adrenalin from seeing her new husband with another woman. You did that shit right the fuck in front of her eyes. I don’t think you can fathom the work my wife had to put in to soothe that girl. Not that it mattered. I don’t think she ever managed to fall asleep even though she pretended to for our sakes.” His eyes roamed the room before settling on a picture that sat on his desk.

“Lily and I started with a shotgun wedding too. I knew she had a crush on me, and in my stupid youth I took advantage of that when the girl I’d been seeing regularly, but in secret, went out of town and broke up with me so that if she met someone while she was away it wouldn’t be cheating. I figured if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me too. I was at a party that night, and Lily was there watching me from the corner. She was shy back then, even though she was an MC princess.

“I took her innocence, and knocked her up while doing it. Then I walked away and didn’t even give her a second glance until the day she told me she was pregnant. I had already been back together with my girl at that point. My girl dropped my ass then and there. My dad, and hers, had heard her confession and next thing I knew I was getting married. Hadn’t even managed to finish high school yet. I was also suddenly prospecting for her dad’s club. I already rode a bike, and had thought about putting my hat in the ring, but I still wasn’t sure. Part of me had been thinking about trying to make a go of it in the town where my girl had wanted to go to college instead.

“I didn’t take the marriage seriously. Hell, I left her alone for the most part. We didn’t even sleep together again until damn near almost a year after we were married. Deck had already been born by then. She knew I was cheating on her. She wouldn’t touch me because of it. One night, my parents had Deck, and told me I needed to take her out because she was miserable and her parents were afraid she was going to do something horrible to herself if she was left to keep living the way she was. We went to a party, got drunk, and for the first time since I knocked her up, we had sex again. It wasn’t great, and I continued to fuck around, not thinking that I was the reason sex with her wasn’t any good. She had no clue what she was doing, and I just got in, got off, and left her hanging, and hating sex even more. It hadn’t been anything more than a chore for her considering I don’t think she ever got off.”

He shook off the rest of his story and waved it away like the bad memory it probably was for him. “I thought that by taking care of my needs somewhere else I was sparing her. She didn’t seem to enjoy sex, so I got it elsewhere. I never let her see. I thought I was granting her that much, but she told me years later that her heart used to break because I would come home smelling like them. Fucking whores and their perfumes. It never occurred to me. Then there were the times I wasn’t careful enough about where lipstick marks got left behind.” I blanched at his admission, knowing the state my dick had been in this morning. That statement hit a little too close to home, though I didn’t think Merc knew about that part of my shameful behavior - yet.

“She heard whispers from people too, probably the same club whores I’d been fucking. We had some nasty, mean bitches in here over the years. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me to know they tracked her down outside of the club and gave her play-by-plays. My point is that I was an asshole who needed to grow the fuck up. Even still – I never put it in her face the way you did with that girl last night.”

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