Page 113 of Redemption (Brazen Bulls Birthright 1)

“I bet there’s at least one that didn’t get used tonight.”

“Then lead the way.”

Eight didn’t need to be told twice. But as he stood and started to lead the way, Marcella stopped him.

“I think it’s time to tell Ajax.”

Eight forgot about getting his brains fucked out. “What? About us? Yeah?”

She nodded. “This is working. I like your family. I want you to meet mine. And I don’t want to keep this secret from our son. I’m in, Eight. If you’re in, too, then let’s be out and proud about it.”

Vaguely, he remembered the argument they’d been having before everything went down. The thing between Marcella and Dash had bugged him before she’d told him about this sexy video they were making, and he was more bugged now. But right now, in this moment, his jealousy seemed like his problem alone. Something he was going to have to get right with. He’d have to trust that she’d be faithful to him. And that meant trusting that he was worth her fidelity.

Could he do that?

Yeah, he thought he could.

“I’m in,” he told her. “I’m all the way in.”

He framed her beautiful face in his ugly hands and kissed the fuck out of his woman.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Eight cut the engine on his truck and sat back with a soft chuckle. “I know he’s only a kid, but I’m fuckingnervous.”

Marcella reached over and patted his thigh. “I am, too.”

It was Monday afternoon, just a few days after the Bulls’ party on Friday. Over the weekend, she and Eight had discussed how to talk to Ajax. They’d decided to pick him up from school together, surprise him with a trip to the Air and Space Museum, and talk to him after, over pizza.

Marcella really was nervous. She’d spent all of Ajax’s life trying to make sure he felt complete despite the absence of his father, then the past few months trying to integrate a potentially temporary father into his life, then realizing that he had not felt complete without his father, and finally realizing that neither had she.

All the while, there Eight had been, strolling in after ten years, making her figure out shit about herself and her kid she’d been shoving out of sight for years.

And now, here they were.

That party had lit a fire in her, but she didn’t think it had really changed anything, except, possibly, sped up a timeline she hadn’t known she’d been following. Well before the trouble, while she’d sat with the wives and daughters, Marcella had seen that the club was not a gang—at least, not in the way that term was used.

They were a family. Those women weren’t bimbos or doormats, they were smart and tough and funny. They had careers and lives of their own. They raised children and made homes and kept everything together.

Truly, for all the men’s rituals and rules, for all their macho bluster, the women ran the show.

And they’d welcomed her wholeheartedly. She heard stories about Eight, many of them told in marveling tones about how much he’d changed, how much he’d grown, in the past few years. Sage had called him the Guinness Book record-holder of late bloomers, and they’d all laughed.

The women told her about the club, the family, the way things worked. They answered her questions, and she thought their answers were honest, though some of them had clearly been carefully phrased.

Also, it had helped alotto sit next to Felicia, another Black woman, and hear that she felt wholly a part of the family. More than that, Marcella could see it was true.

Then the trouble had blown up, and Eight had gone out and handled it calmly, like a leader. Could the situation have ended without any bloodshed whatsoever? Maybe—though it didn’t take a great deal of mental acuity to realize the Bulls would never allow a man who’d done that to live.

Marcella was completely fine with that. A man who’d behave like that Greg guy didn’t deserve to breathe, as far as she was concerned. Which settled her worldview in fairly neatly with the Bulls.

But Eight, notorious impulsive hothead, hadn’t gone out guns blazing. Virtually all of the other Bulls out there had been drawn, but Eight had put his gun away and handled the situation so that Kelsey was safe and nobody but the bad guy got hurt.

Watching him be the president of the Bulls had wiped the lens clean of lingering suspicion and worry about who Eight was.

She knew now. She saw him. He was the decent man, and not just in deep. Right under the surface. The asshole schtick? Nothing more than façade. A shield.

Behind that shield was the horribly abused boy who’d locked himself away and tried to protect himself through pure toughness. Now that boy was trying to live. He’d had some catching up to do.

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