Page 95 of So Steady

Shredder. Noah shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Tabby asked in a mock jovial tone. “Siccing your crazy roommate on us, or never mentioning that thing where you’re a bikie who’s done time for assault?”

“I’m not in The Rangers anymore.”

“But you used to be? And you’ve been to jail? And your dad’s Harry Newcomb, the bail-jumping psychopath murderer?”

He felt anger hardening his features and took a deep breath, trying to keep his temper under control. This was his fault; he’d kept the information from them and now he was paying the price. “Yeah.”

Sam shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve known you foryears.”

“Your dad knew.”

Sam and Tabby exchanged glances.

“Dad knew everything?” Sam demanded. “Your father and jail and everything?”

He could hear the hurt in her voice, the betrayal. “I didn’t mean to tell him. The way we met, it was just…relevant.”

“You met at the pub,” Sam said. “Dad asked you about your tattoos and you had a few drinks and he offered you a job.”

That was the story. The one Edgar had told her after she got home from the tattooing expo in Vegas to find him taking up tattoo room two.

“Yeah, that’s not exactly how it happened.”

Sam’s face fell. “What do you mean?”

“What I said.”

Tabby’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, fuck this.”

She walked around the register so she was standing in front of him and poked him in the stomach. “You need to be forth-fucking-coming from here on out, or we’ll call the cops.”

As always, the word ‘cops’ made his sac tighten. Didn’t matter that it had been years since he’d done something arrest worthy. “Why the fuck would you call the cops?”

Tabby set her jaw like a Hollywood tough guy. “Paula told us you owed her money. Actually, she said you owed some guy called ‘Shredder’ money.”

Jesus, those amoral assholes.“She’s lying. I don’t owe him or anyone else shit.”

“That’s not what Paula said. She said you were in for about twenty grand. Something about your ‘education?’ What was that? Filing off your fingerprints and giving you an illegal firearm so you could rob petrol stations?”

Noah’s brain throbbed. “They mean training me to tattoo when I was a kid, but—”

“You learned to ink with The Rangers?” Sam interrupted. She looked horrified and he knew why. To her, tattooing was an expression of love, creativity,good. He was sure that to her, learning the trade by drilling patches on the backs and arms of bikies was sacrilege. But what could he say? No, he hadn’t?

“Yeah, I did, but that wasn’t my choice.”

He could see neither sister believed him. Why would they? Yesterday he’d been their mate and today he was an ex-con with a murderous bikie for a dad.

“So, Paula,” Tabby said. “We tried to calm her down while we called you, but you and Nix weren’t picking up.”

Because they’d been on their way to that fancy restaurant. It felt like another life now, Nicole beaming across from him in her pretty dress…

“And when we told her you weren’t answering, she freaked out again and started yelling about how if she didn’t get her money from you, she was gonna get it off us because she’d heard we almost got our place burned down and she knew people who’d do it properly.”

Sam let out a low animal moan and he wanted to sink through the floor. He kept thinking this situation couldn’t get any worse, but it seemed bottomless.

He held up his hands. “I know this sounds cheap, but I don’t think she meant it. She was drunk, and she and Shredder don’t have any pull around here. But if you want to call the cops, you can. Call them right now.”

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