Page 189 of Dagger

“Love that boy.” John chuckled. “He’s got a hilarious way about him, but Cara’s right; he is a little shit.”

“But he’s our little shit,” I whispered, mouth still curved in a smile. “And I wouldn’t change a thing about him.”

“Cara would,” John fired back, and we began to choke out more laughter. We were still busting a gut a couple of minutes later when Cash banged on the door.

“Pop,” he yelled. “You and Duchess get your asses up. There’s been a call from home, and it’s fuckin’ wild.”

“I’m not club anymore,” John yelled back. “I don’t wanna know about your ‘Days of Our Biker Lives’ bullshit. Keep me and my woman out of it.”

Cash barked a laugh from behind the door. “No, Pop. This one’s not on us. This daytime drama is all you and Duchess.” His tone lowered urgently. “Dad, it’s big. Prepare yourselves.”

John’s stare snapped to mine. “What the fuck’s he talkin’ about? We haven’t been there for two months.”

A weird feeling slid through my stomach, and I bit my lip nervously. “I don’t know, but we better go and find out.”

Three Days Later

Salt Lake City

“It’ll be okay, Mom,” Sophie whispered from her seat to my left.

I bit my lip and nodded, feeling Johnny squeeze my hand reassuringly while we waited for the judge to walk into the family courtroom.

The last few days had been filled with revelations, starting with a call to the clubhouse from the CPS offices in Salt Lake City, who were looking for me.

Of course, I called them back immediately. I had to grip the edge of a table to keep myself upright when they announced that my son, Robert Henderson Junior, was a father to a twelve-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl who had lived happily all their lives with their mother.

The knowledge that Junior was a dad knocked me for six, but what really blew my mind was hearing that he’d been present in their lives from when they were born. His name was on their birth certificates, and when the house was cleared for sale, the movers found a letter he’d left behind stating that if anything happened to him or the kid’s mother, the authorities were to contact me directly for instruction. They also found a will, stating that I was to become the legal guardian to the children, Jack and Molly.

Within forty-eight hours, we were packed up and in the truck heading west through Nevada toward Utah, and my mind was full of questions that nobody seemed to be able to answer.

The kids’ mother, Leanne Wright, went to Hambleton High and was in the same class as Cash. He vaguely remembered her as a pretty, quiet girl who lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of town on the border between Hambleton and Mapletree. The same trailer park my ex-husband—ever the snob—had succeeded in getting closed down after years of campaigning.

Leanne and her mother, Cecelia, had been forced to relocate to Moab, a tourist town just over the Utah border, where Cece found a job as a live-in housekeeper at a big, family-run hotel.

When Leanne was twenty-one, Cecelia passed away, so she moved to a house, bought and paid for in her name in a suburb of Salt Lake City called Sandy, where she worked as an office manager in a family care medical practice while raising her two kids.

In mid-October, a massive car pile-up on the I-80 hit the local news. The children were in the car with Leanne when she was killed outright. Jack had sustained a broken arm and cuts, and Molly a concussion and internal bruising. Apart from that, they were doing fine, physically at least.

The instant we hit SLC, John and I drove straight to Primary Children’s Hospital, where both kids were still recovering while waiting to be placed into foster homes until I could be found.

As soon as we arrived, their doctor encouraged us to meet them, so we did.

Jack was polite but watchful over his sister.

Molly was shy and traumatized over losing her mom.

I fell in love, which meant John and I had some big decisions ahead of us. Not that it was much of a decision for me.

Junior wasn’t my biological son, but the world didn’t know that. The only reservation I had was that Robbie had grown up to be as evil as his father, and I couldn’t help wondering if it ran in their blood.

That was when John sat me down and told me another revelation.

Sunshine was also Junior’s biological daughter.

I knew Robbie had committed suicide because he’d been caught with date rape drugs and was being accused of raping women after roofying them. I also knew the Speed Demons were there when Robbie shot himself. My ex-husband used to rant that the club had something to do with his son’s death, but I never really listened because, by then, I understood Robbie was just like his father.

His death saved a lot of young girls from being subjected to heinous acts, so I couldn’t bring myself to mourn him, except when we were in public of course, and it was expected of me.

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