Page 31 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)
“My marriage certificate.” He made to hand it to me, but I wasn’t going to touch the cursed thing. If I did, I’d rip it up.
Wolf took it and scanned the page. He grunted once and tossed it back at Shock. It fluttered to the floor. No one bothered to pick it up.
Shock filled the silence. “Bring me my wife, and I’ll take my hat out of the running for regional president.”
My balls tightened. My dream job taunted me.
I could run not only a chapter, but twenty of them.
With that kind of power, Shock and everyone else would have to answer to me.
I knew the position was dangling open for the last two years.
Ever since Nonno took over, the Eastern leadership slot was empty.
No one bitched about it because Nonno managed his region and the national region just fine for Big G’s sake.
What had changed? I’d missed something that Shock hadn’t.
I stuck a pin in that to fire a verbal round at my nemesis.
“You say that now . What happens when Nonno gets here? I think I’ll wait for an official declaration before I make any deals.”
He must have expected that reaction. “Have it your way. I’m tacking on another demand because of that.” Shock pulled a stapled stack of papers from his binder. “This is a court order to return my daughter.”
He knew about Zoe. Ice coated my insides, and the only thoughts in my head were how fast I could kill him. And whether I’d have enough time to take out Bandit before all hell broke loose and the space turned into a big pile of lead and blood. In that space of plotting murder, I projected calm.
This time, I took the paperwork. While I don’t speak legalese, it looked legit. I snapped my fingers toward Hickey to have a gander at the bullshit typed in neat lines. There were plenty of signatories on the bottom with one hell of an official seal.
Once my hands were free, the urge to strangle Shock made them twitch. His bodyguard opened his stance, preparing for a fight. I could take down Shock despite his weight advantage. But not his Rottweiler shadow. The odds were all wrong.
Which meant I had to resort to outwitting the son of a bitch who held my balls in a vise.
“Hickey?”
“Legit, as far as I can tell.”
Fine . Time to put money on the table and lay down a card. “Zoe’s mine.”
Shock stood up. He scooped the marriage certificate up from the floor as he did. “Not according to law. I’m legitimately her father because of this.” He shook it in my face.
I laid down another ace in my hand. “You’d have to have been living with Kate and having relations with her for one year prior to and six months after the birth to have a claim.” When Zoe was born, I looked into a lot of law books to make sure shit like this wouldn’t happen.
“Page five. Affidavits.”
I didn’t have to see Hickey fact-checking because I knew they were all lies. “Perjury is a crime. Falsification of witness testimony is another one.”
“So is kidnapping. And I’ll make sure Kate’s charged with it.”
All the more reason to keep her away from her dick-husband . “It ain’t kidnapping if the child ain’t born yet.” This was going to get ugly as fuck.
Shock grinned. “So you admit she’s mine?”
I leaned forward. I was just inside his reach and invaded deliberately as I raised my voice so others could hear me.
“Hell to the fucking no. She’s mine. She was conceived in New Hampshire or Maine.
I should know, because my dick was there, and yours was not.
” This wouldn’t be a surprise to any of my men because they’d all seen Zoe.
Not one of them had any doubt she was mine.
Shock pulled out one more page from his binder. It was a photo of me at Nonno’s. There was a hooker on my lap. The same one I’d fucked right after leaving Kate. “Where was your dick again?”
That photo could link me to an unfortunate drowning.
And with Zoe conceived in Maine mere days before it was taken and a body dead in the time and space between, I was fucked.
If I went in for murder one, Kate and Zoe would be on their own against Shock and his shady legal team.
But doing that would also expose Nonno as the guy who ordered the hit.
That really wasn’t an issue for Shock if he was gunning for a spot higher than the regional president.
He leaned in and spoke much more quietly than usual. “Bring them to me.”
I stuck out my thumb to begin my count. “One, you gotta burn that photo. Nonno’s in it.” I added a finger. “Two, do you think you’re the only one who’s been digging up dirt?” I squinted at him to warn him I’d spent sixteen years finding filth on him.
Then I stuck up my middle finger all by its lonesome. “Three, fuck you. No deal.”
“You’re going to regret that.” He stepped back and snapped his fingers to summon his men.
This conversation needed a good course correction. I raised my voice a bit louder. “The only thing I have ever regretted was not killing your ass eighteen years ago. One good bullet…” I cocked my fingers and pointed at his head. “Boom.”
His mouth twisted into a smirk. “I heard that about you. You’re just like your father—killing the competition on your way up.”
“It beats blackmailing them,” I fired back.