Page 8 of Demon's Angel

Childcare arrangements have been a snap to set up. Now my biggest problem is what to do about her. The bitch who appears to have left her child. Her five-month-old, helpless baby, unable to fend for himself.

My gut clenches at the thought of what could have happened to him had I not put Dan on her. He’d have disappeared, taken off by God knows who and fuck knows where while she’d have gone off in the other direction with her suitcase in hand, and no one would have been any the wiser.

“Calm down, Demon.” My father uses a parental tone he’s perfected over the years. It never fails to get my attention, and doesn’t do so now.

Having told Pal, and not too discreetly, word has gone around the clubhouse, sort of like Chinese whispers. Brothers might accuse women of gossiping, but in truth they’re as bad as, if not worse than, any of the bitches. The words ‘woman’ and ‘abandoned baby’, and that both being brought back are as much as any of them know. If I was in a better mood, I’d probably be amused at the two-and-two’s they were putting together.

Hell, though. He knows Violet. After I’ve given him more details, he exchanges them for advice. “Son, don’t leap before you know what’s going on. Even if she did leave the baby, there could be reasons. Post-partum depression, like I suggested. Don’t jump down her throat until you know what you’re dealing with.”

“Fuckin’ depression doesn’t make you abandon a kid, Hell.” I glare, my eyes half on him, and half on the clock where the minutes are ticking by far too fast.

“You think that? You don’t know the half of it, boy,” he yells, a bit like he’d done when I was a boy.

“Well?” I challenge. “Even a depressed woman would want her kid cared for. Dropped him off at a hospital or something. Not in the middle of a shopping mall with someone it appeared she didn’t even know.”

Hell looks like I’ve gone crazy. “And if she just couldn’t cope? It might have been planned for good reason. Babies can drive you up the wall. Screaming for nothing and no way to pacify them. It could have been to give her a temporary break, just a few hours of peace.”

“She had a suitcase with her,” I remind him, grimly. “She had no intention of going back.”

Hell stares at me; he’s not backing down. “All I’m asking is that you give her a chance to explain. Don’t immediately leap to the conclusion that she’s a bad mother.”

His reasonable tone is annoying me. Sure, I’ve painted her black as hell, but I can’t get my head around anyone leaving their kid like that. “You didn’t see her that day, Hell. I did. She didn’t want the kid; that was obvious.” As I go back over that morning, it’s becoming clearer to me by the minute.

He sighs. “So what are you intending to do, Demon?”

This is the bit I haven’t quite worked out. I’m left with ten minutes now. “Make damn sure she can’t hurt that kid again. Jay and Pal will be looking after him for now. See what’s happened to the father. Whoever he is, I doubt he’d be very happy his son was abandoned. Who knows, he could have been taken by a pedo.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, son. You don’t know that the father even knows he’s a dad.”

“’Bout time he found out then, and took over.”

All I know is I’m determined, unless Violet comes up with a good fucking explanation for her behaviour, she’s not going to have responsibility for him again. In my world you step up, not down.

It’s Hell’s turn to bang his fist on the desk. With twenty years of practice, he’s got the art down better than I. Papers leap and shift, I jump.

“Give her a fuckin’ chance, Demon. Listen.” He shakes his head. “You’ve been brought up to make decisions for the club. Sure, you stepped into that chair before it was time, but one thing you need to learn right now—you’re the fuckin’ prez. You decide what needs to be done. But this club ain’t one man. That’s why we vote. No one man has all the answers, and no good prez jumps into a course of action without knowing the facts first.”

“Facts are clear though, aren’t they? That kid’s at risk.”

“And if there isn’t a father in the picture? You intending on putting him in the system?”

“Kid’s got grandparents, hasn’t he?”

“Facts, Demon. Not suppositions. Facts. The things you don’t have at the moment.”

He’s got a point. “Mo didn’t give me up. Neither did you.”

Hell sighs deeply, then rubs at his temples. “I had an inkling that might be at the bottom of the way you’re reacting. Mo had me. I wanted Mo. Wanted you, too, from the moment I knew about you growing inside her. You were loved, Demon, from the fuckin’ start. But if Mo had been on her own?”

Yeah. I look down at my hands. My mom would have tried to get an abortion if Hell hadn’t been in the picture, and I wouldn’t have been here at all. At seventeen, with no job, parents who would have disowned her, she wouldn’t have had much choice.

“Sometimes it’s too much for a woman alone. Maybe a helping hand is what she needs. Not fire and brimstone.”

My mouth quirks slightly. “Or Hellfire and Demon.”

He closes his eyes briefly and nods. “I’ve got your back. Which is why I’m pushing you now. Thing is, I happen to agree with you. But I’m just saying you need to hear her out, okay? Listen, then decide what you need to do.”

The clock ticks mercilessly on. Talking to the man I still view as my father, his years giving weight to his words and experience, has at last calmed my temper some. While I have little doubt in my mind that Violet has proved herself to be an unfit mother, I at least have relented to the extent I will talk to her, see what her side of the story is, before making any decision that affects a child’s life.

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