Page 32 of Blue-Eyed Jacks (Destroyers MC: Skilletsville PA #1)

The Lake House—Kate

I found Zoe on the deck. She stood beside Danielle and stared at the lake. “You really live here?” Zoe asked Danielle the question I was too polite to utter.

“Yes. It was my grandfather’s house.”

Zoe whistled. “I could get used to this.”

I had to agree with her; the house was amazing. Jackson’s “fishbowl” comment resurfaced, but somehow, this was more an example of letting nature in rather than letting mankind in. The house exuded peace and elegance. I could hardly find fault with it.

Gina heard us and joined our group. “I got your things situated. It’s time to take you out on the range for a little target practice.”

I shot her a glare over my shoulder. We had not hashed out the details yet.

“It’ll be fun,” she echoed her son’s words.

“This club’s idea of fun has people falling from balconies.” I paused and addressed Danielle, “Surely you’re not okay with this? Sprout could have been seriously hurt. My daughter could get seriously hurt.” Guns were much more dangerous than climbing.

“I get to shoot a gun? Fucking cool.”

“Zoe, language,” I hushed her exuberance.

“I see Sprout is rubbing off on you. That’s not a good thing.” Danielle’s teasing smoothed the conversation into a lighter tone. But I was not on board with this.

“I don’t think Zoe’s ready for this.”

Without hesitation, that set of notes emanated from my daughter. “Ma-ahm!”

Counting to ten wasn’t going to work this time because Gina interrupted me. “Firearm training is a must-have in this house. There are too many idiots coming in and out. I got her, Mama Bear.”

“You do?” As much as I adored Gina for helping me all those years ago, this was crossing a line.

“Certified concealed carry, licensed nurse, part-time paramedic, and I’ve been shooting since I was six. Please don’t do the math.”

My mouth opened and shut.

“I bet you’ve never fired a gun, have you?” Gina asked.

I hadn’t. As many times as I fantasized about killing Shock, I never put thought into the actual deed. Maybe that was why he singled me out. I was the proverbial lamb to slaughter. “I haven’t.”

“Then you get schooled first.” Gina led us down an exquisitely simple, curved wooden staircase. The expense of this house must have been astronomical.

“What did your grandfather do?” Zoe asked Danielle.

“Dot-com startups before the bust. His was one of the companies that didn’t go under, so the stock appreciated in value when everyone else’s tanked.”

“How much money do you have?”

“Zoe!” I flushed red with embarrassment at my daughter’s question.

But Danielle was extremely patient. “On paper? Sprout and I are worth seven hundred million, give or take about four to six hundred thousand in market fluctuations right now. But I can’t touch much of that. In reality, there’s about a million and a half in liquid assets.”

Zoe and I were shocked speechless.

Gina nudged me. “Makes my nursing salary look like shit, doesn’t it?”

I nodded.

The ironic part of this conversation was that I knew people richer than Danielle.

Two of the vacation houses I cleaned were owned by financiers.

Their net worth was much bigger than Danielle’s million and a half.

I kept that information to myself. Zoe didn’t need to know that the teenagers she hung out with on the docks each summer were richer than this. She might get ideas.

Gina led us out of the house to a new outbuilding set on the hill. Inside, there was almost every style of gun imaginable available. From rifles to a tiny .22 caliber pistol that was almost smaller than my hand. “Who uses this?”

Gina looked me up and down. “Someone brand new to guns. That little puppy is only good at close range and fires two shots.”

Zoe leaned in to admire it. “Can I get one like that?”

“No,” I blurted automatically.

“Sorry, kiddo, you don’t carry your own until you’ve done at least a year on the range.

That’s the rules.” Gina took the tiny gun from me and put it back in the case.

She pulled her weapon out of a concealed holster.

It wasn’t much bigger. “This is what I carry.” She explained the name, capacity, and the enhancements in the model to make it easier for people with smaller hands to shoot.

“The very first rule of all firearms is that they are loaded until you confirm they aren’t.”

“You keep all these loaded?” I took a step away from the gun display.

“Of course not. But you should always treat them as if they were; that’s the lesson.”

Oh. As lessons go, that was a very good one.

Gina went on to show how to check the gun. More importantly, how to hold the weapon away from anyone as you did. When it was my turn, my hands shook.

I swallowed. This wasn’t me. Zoe, however, was practically devouring the lesson. Her empty hands mimicked Gina’s motions.

This wasn’t right.

“I can’t do this.”

Gina stopped talking and studied me. “I’m surprised at you.”

I glared back. “Why?”

She spoke carefully, “Because I thought you’d do anything to protect your child.”

My jaw set. “I am protecting her. What if her grip slips? What if someone takes this thing away from her?” A million other what-ifs ran through my head.

“What if Shock takes her and not you?” Gina didn’t bother sugarcoating her statement.

That scenario was my worst nightmare.

My grip tightened. I followed Gina’s directions and tried to absorb everything. When it came time to fire at the little paper target down range, I pulled the trigger, thinking of his ugly face.

And missed.

There was a lesson there. Life isn’t easy. It doesn’t go as planned. Actions you take to protect yourself don’t always work. I knew that lesson well. I tried again. This time, I took more care in lining up the sights with the target. I hit the paper.

Each time, I got a little closer.

Each time, I learned another lesson. Gina was right there by my side, correcting my mistakes and, more importantly, reminding me what was at stake.

Near the end, I tried picturing Shock’s face inside those circles. And missed again. But when it was Jackson’s face in them, I hit the big black circle in the center every time. Go figure .

Then it was Zoe’s turn.

I pinched my lips between my teeth, worried every second of the lesson.

Unlike me, Zoe had no ghosts from the past messing with her head.

She fired true, even hitting the center of the target once.

Gina squashed her celebration by reminding her where she was and what she had in her hand.

Then dared her to hit it five more times.

Which didn’t happen. Zoe’s demeanor turned serious.

Finally, Gina pulled the targets in about fifteen feet and switched Zoe to a lighter gun.

“Her aim is loosening up; that’s a sure sign she’s tired.”

I nodded, not really understanding much more than my daughter was pushing herself too far. “We should stop.”

Zoe set the new gun down, defeated. “Just once? Please?”

I’d been expecting a fight, not the plea in her voice. “Once.”

The corner of her mouth went up. Gina pointed out the changes in weight, firing mechanism, and loading before Zoe adjusted her ear protection and signaled she was ready.

With the closer target and the lighter gun, she put all ten rounds into the black circle. Four clustered near the center but slightly high and left.

“The gun is so small and light when you pull the trigger; it’s kicking the front to the left slightly.

And your left hand isn’t doing anything because there’s no space for it to help stabilize it.

” Gina checked the gun and then showed Zoe how to stabilize it better.

“One more clip so you can feel that pull.”

I frowned.

She caught the tail end of my expression before I masked it. “Last one, Mama Bear.”

Zoe readied to fire, but one of our bodyguards interrupted. “Gina, get them into the bunker, we got company.”

Said bunker was under a false floor in the last shooting bay.

We scrambled to get hidden, but despite the walls and the fake floor rattling as Gina slid it in place, I could make out the distinctive rumble of motorcycles.

I prayed it wasn’t Shock. I also prayed that our security team kept their cool and their lives.

The last thing I wanted was for more people to die because of me.

Zoe rubbed a red mark between her thumb and forefinger.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s just a blister, Mom.”

From the guns. My right hand was raw in the same spot. “It’s a good thing we stopped.” I smiled as if to reassure her this was all normal and we were going to be okay.

The bikes sputtered to a halt. There was muffled conversation, just loud enough to indicate someone out there was upset and throwing their weight around, but it didn’t match the tone or pitch I dreaded. The footfalls from heavy boots tromped closer.

“Get ‘em out.”

That was distinct.

I shot an urgent plea to Gina.

She slipped her gun from the holster and pointed it upward.

The floor was lifted from the hole.

Five bikers stared down at us. I didn’t recognize a single one, but I recognized the patches and colors of each. They were Destroyers. The oldest’s road name patch read, “Nonno.”

“What are you doing here?” Gina tucked her gun away and held up a hand to be lifted out.

Nonno, the one she addressed, stared down at me and Zoe.

“Seeing what the fuss was about before joining the shit show.” He held out his hand. I was loath to take it. “Come on. Let’s get a look at you.”

I was lifted out. Zoe followed without help, scrambling up the crude ladder fixed to the pit’s wall.

Nonno barely gave me a second glance once Zoe stood up. “Well. Now I see why that bastard is so pissed.”

He reached out to touch Zoe’s face. She recoiled and stepped behind me. Instinctively, I blocked Nonno’s hand and view of my daughter. “Don’t touch her.”

That got his attention. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

I didn’t care. “Don’t touch my daughter.” I articulated my words slowly and added every ounce of vitriol I could into the icy tone.

His hand fell.

“She looks like Jackson.”

“No shit,” I said.

His expression morphed from a scowl to shock. “Got a mouth on you.”

I straightened to stand taller.

“And a bitch-ass attitude. No wonder those two are salivating like dogs.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Nonno. And since you don’t know who the fuck I am, I’ll tell you. I lead the North American continent’s Destroyers. Every chapter in this hemisphere north of the Panama Canal answers to me.”

Lovely . I took his hand and shook once, then dropped it fast. “Kate.”

His lips curled. “Just Kate, not Kate Weaver ?”

“Just. Kate.”

His eyes dipped to my legs and back, measuring me, assessing my appearance, and performing the action quickly enough that it could be deemed harmless. But it wasn’t. The reminder that I was only a woman, no… worse, a woman in their manly world, pissed me off.

“Search her.”

When they came up empty, they searched Gina. She relinquished her gun and a knife she had in her boot. Zoe, still huddled behind me, clutched my shirt. “Are they going to…?”

“Absolutely not. If any of you touch my daughter, I swear to God you’ll die if it is the last thing I do.”

Nonno motioned his men off. “One condition—”

“No,” I replied before he could finish.

“Kate, this is for your own good.”

I’d heard that line before. Almost without fail, whatever someone else decided turned out terribly for me. “I’ll say this even more emphatically, no .”

“If you insist. We’ll take them both.” He turned on me. “I was going to suggest your daughter stayed here. But since you wouldn’t listen, I changed my mind.” He motioned for me to precede him.

Damn it . I sent Zoe a warning with my eyes. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at Nonno. Not glaring, like I would have guessed, but studying him ruthlessly. Almost without any outward emotion at all.

“You’re my dad’s boss.”

Nonno stopped in his tracks. He smiled. “That’s right.”

Her chin lifted slightly. “My dad, Jackson.” She pulled her shoulders back and stiffly walked past him, leading the way and forcing me to catch up.

As I slipped past Nonno, he brushed my elbow. “The resemblance in those two is uncanny. Even without looking, I can tell she’s related to One-Eyed Jack.”

He knew her grandfather. If this were any other time or place, I might have been curious to find out more. But I ignored him. I knew he was taking us for a reason. Probably to maintain control over two volatile men.

Which proved to me that he didn’t know Shock or Jackson well at all.