Page 4 of Everlasting

Waking Up

Deck

Everything hurt and felt disconnected all at once as I managed to get my eyes to peel apart for the first time since… Hell, I didn’t know what “since” meant.

“Finally!” Someone hissed as I managed to open them and attempted to adjust to the low light in the room. The walls appeared to be made of wood and the acrid smell of burning wood along with something I couldn’t quite place clung heavily on the air. “Thought we were going to have to dispose of you.”

“Where am I?” I managed to croak out.

“Where doesn’t really matter,” the voice spoke again. “Why is the better question. The Trinity Group isn’t quite finished with the Aces High MC just yet, and in specific, they’re not finished with you either.”

“Me?” The one-word question left my mouth on a gasp as I struggled to move so that I could see who was speaking to me, rather than carrying on a conversation with a disembodied voice. “I’ve barely had any part in this,” I finally added when I received no response. There was no way this could be personal, since I had only ever been on one other run for the Tallahassee Chapter with their Trinity Group weapons pipeline. In fact, most of the Charleston Chapter had steered clear of the pipeline for the simple reason that it usually ran up through the mountains rather than along the coast. They had less visibility and police presence to contend with than we did along the coast.

“We are aware you haven’t had much involvement, otherwise this would have happened much sooner.”

“Sooner?” What the hell do you want with me?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” the man countered.

It took two more days for me to find out what the man had been talking about and when I did, I couldn’t have been more shocked to see the reason I was taken standing before me in all of her crazy glory. Sasha, the woman I stupidly almost proposed to while I was in the Army, until I found her in bed with my best friend, was standing there in the doorway watching me.

“Declan,” she cooed from her perch across the room. “You’re looking even better than you used to.”

“Sasha, I’d say you still look the same, but the last time I saw you was when your legs were wrapped around my best friend’s back and he was balls-deep inside of you.”

Her head rocked back as if the verbal smack I’d just given her was a physical blow instead. “You were never supposed to see that,” she admitted quietly.

“You think?” I scoffed in her direction.

“You don’t understand. You would never be with me unless we were protected, hell you wouldn’t even accept a condom that I had on me, preferring to use your own.”

“Seems like that was a smart decision on my part then,” I told her as I started to see where this was headed.

“Shane Michaels was an idiot, but he never meant to betray you. I told him we were split up and that I wouldn’t be going back to you. I needed to be pregnant.”

For some reason, I didn’t think I wanted to hear why she needed to be pregnant or what the hell her plan had been. “If it was all in an effort to trap me into something more, you ruined everything with your actions. I had a ring in my pocket that day when I found you two.”

The remorse on her face was almost believable as a tear trickled down her face. The fact that Sasha was moving closer to the bed I was currently strapped to made me worry though. I had no way to fight the bitch off if she decided to go crazy on me for old time’s sake.

“You had a ring?” She all but whispered into the quiet room. Despite the quiet, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that we were completely alone. Besides the man who checked in on me periodically and brought food, I was pretty sure there was video surveillance of the room too.

“Yeah, Sasha. I had a ring. Luckily, you showed your true colors before I gave it to you.”

“If I had known,” she lamented.

“If you had known, you wouldn’t have tried to use my buddy to knock you up so you could claim it was my kid?” I asked. She actually nodded her head in agreement as tears continued to trickle down her cheeks.

“Is this why I’m here? What the hell do you have to do with the Trinity Group?”

“My father runs it,” she told me. Jesus fucking Christ. I definitely had not seen that one coming. When I met Sasha, she had been on vacation with her mother and ended up staying behind to see what would become of us. I needed to know something though, because now I was starting to connect the dots.

“Did Michaels manage to get you pregnant?” She nodded her head again. “You told your family it was my kid and that I left you,” I surmised. Again, with the head nod. It made me wish my hands were free so I could throttle the bitch. “Why the hell didn’t you tell them that the kid was Michaels’? Obviously, you had to know I was out of the picture for good once you were caught cheating.”

“I couldn’t let them know I’d failed like that. They wanted my baby to be with someone strong and someone who was connected to the club so that they had leverage to pull strings.”

So, the Trinity Group was already looking for an in with the club when they struck their bargain with the Tallahassee Chapter. That was interesting to note. “I was a target all along?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.

She again tipped her head up and down. “You were, but I realized right away that I actually really liked you though. It wasn’t just business for me.”

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