Page 35 of Brandishing Balance (Devil’s Psychos MC #3)
Jason
I watched Maya from across the kitchen. Sitting at the table with her coffee mug, she looked utterly regal. A fucking queen addressing her court. I could tell that Johnny felt it as he watched her, even Kara never took her eyes off of Maya.
Maya had always had a way with people, a charm about her. It was fucking magnetic and immediately drew us to her way back then. She hadn’t understood, and I hadn’t had the words to explain it, but something cosmic had drawn us to her, from the very first meeting.
Now, as she perched on her chair and addressed the room, her spine straight and that easy confidence back, I felt myself fall in love with her all over again. Not that I ever truly stopped, but damn, was she fucking sexy.
Nico still kneeled beside her, his hand on her thigh, eyes watching her reverently.
“How do we find him now?” I asked, glancing around the room at the men all staring at my woman.
“My brother is already searching,” Kevin said. “Jack said he’s found some leads and is digging deeper. The IP address for the warehouse helped him dig into financial records and find Hillcrest through other business ventures. Jack’s working on it.”
“I also reached out to Stephanie,” Kara said, looking to Maya. “She has her own forensic accounting firm—”
“Stonewall Financials. I know,” Maya nodded.
“Right,” Kara nodded, looking a little put out.
I wondered if Maya kept in contact with Stephanie after all the years, and if that was why Kara seemed upset? Just because Kara hadn’t kept up with most of her friends, didn’t mean that Maya hadn’t.
Shit, just because Maya hadn’t kept in contact with me and guys, didn’t mean she didn’t keep up with all of her friends. Her ink was testament to that. The fucking wall of photos at Slade’s booth at Skin of a Different Breed was testament to that too.
Clearly, Maya had kept up with people over the years.
“So yeah,” Kara continued. “Stephanie is digging into what she can find publicly. And Jack’s getting her what he can find not publicly. ”
I read through the lines on what Kara was trying to say—Jack was getting her records and accounts by hacking into systems illegally.
I didn’t give a damn how Jack Adams found the information, as long as it led him to Hillcrest’s fucking location so we could go in there and wipe the bastard off the face of the fucking planet—after torturing him for a week straight, maybe longer, like ten fucking years.
“What happens now, with your dad? Does that mess up things at the firm for you?” Maya asked Kara.
Kara shook her head. “No, it shouldn’t. The plea deal he accepted gave me the guilty verdict that I needed to gain the firm. With my father’s guilty verdict, his ownership shares in the firm were transferred to me. I now own sixty percent of all shares in the firm.” Kara shrugged a shoulder.
Maya laughed lightly. It was a balm to my tortured soul. I was so fucking glad she was able to laugh still, after everything that happened. “Good for you. Bad ass bitch.”
Kara’s daughter fussed in her car seat and Kara bent down to pick her up. “Are you bored? Did you think we forgot about you?” she cooed at the baby.
I watched Maya as she watched Kara intently. The yearning in her gaze about did me in. “Can I hold her?” Maya asked, and my fucking heart exploded in my chest. I need to work my shit out with her ASAP, because I had things I needed to work into her.
I don’t know where my need to have kids came from, but seeing Kara with her daughter so often, and then hanging out with Luke daily too, it really drove home the idea of having a baby of my own.
Nico stood up from where’d still been kneeling next to Maya and backed away.
Maya also stood up though, confusing me. I thought she wanted to hold the baby. “Let’s go sit in the living room, I’m kinda sore.”
Kara only nodded and followed Maya into the living room, where she waited until Maya was situated at one end of the couch, before she handed over her child.
Maya’s bright smile warmed me from the inside out. The wonder and awe on her face only added fuel to the fire—I wanted to have a baby with Maya as soon as possible.
I eyed my brothers, wondering what they were thinking, but saw it clearly on their faces as they both froze and stared in awe at Maya cooing softly to the baby in the other room. Yeah… they were on board alright.
Johnny chuckled and shook his head. “You guys are fucked.”
“Yep,” We responded together.
Nico
The clubhouse was quiet when Marcos and I rolled in later that afternoon. Jason stayed behind with Maya—because I told him I’d kick his fucking ass if he ever left her alone again—but I was wishing I had been able to.
As vice president for the club, I couldn’t do that though.
Not when Marcos was president, and he was going to call church in a couple hours after most of their guys got off work.
Lots of them still had day jobs, as the club wasn’t earning enough to make ends meet anymore.
Not since the bullshit Buckley pulled over the years, and not since we stopped running coke for the Seratellis.
All of that was changing though. Marcos and I were on it.
In the meantime, though, we had to wait.
So we headed into the clubhouse early to see what we could hear, and when Luke got out of school, Jason would join us for church and the vote, bringing Maya and Luke along.
They would wait in one of our dorm rooms while the meeting commenced.
It would be different having Maya back here again, but I couldn’t wait. She had run the Devil’s Chasers when she’d been with us before. Maya had been the only old lady at the time, and while we never inked her, she always wore her ‘Property Of’ patch showing that she belonged to the three of us.
None of the Devil’s Psychos had old ladies—except for Nickle—we weren’t as sophisticated as the Knights.
I was pretty sure every member over there was wifed-up.
It made me yearn for more with Maya. I wanted her tatted with my ink, permanently showing my ownership of her.
She was mine, and I was never letting her go again.
Watching her this morning with Kara’s baby only confirmed that. I never used to understand Marcos’s obsession with knocking her up back then, even going as far as to tamper with her birth control. But now I got it, completely. The urge was strong, but I knew I couldn’t act on it.
Maya needed time to recover, and we all needed to discuss limits and way too many other topics before we could ever discuss having a baby together. The urge was there, though.
I followed Marcos into the president’s office and closed the door behind me. “Dude, I never got it before, the birth control tampering, but I get it now.”
Marcos whirled on me, “What the fuck?”
I held up my hands in surrender, “I’m just saying, back then I didn’t get it. I get it now though. Seeing her with a baby… I want that.” I admit the words that have been in my heart all morning.
Marcos softened and sighed, running his hand through his messy hair—that he was slowly growing out because Maya asked him to, same with the newly thicker goatee. It oddly made him look even more menacing.
Chuckling softly, Marcos shook his head and walked over to his desk, settling in the chair behind it.
I took one of the chairs in front of it, like we were in some white-collar office downtown and not some dingy ass biker office.
We should get the Devil’s Chasers in here to clean up now that Buckley’s been gone a while.
“I guess we’ll be talking to Maya about more kids after everything settles down?” Marcos asked.
I nodded immediately. “Doc Griff said she has an IUD, so they weren’t worried about pregnancy after everything with Hillcrest. They gave her a dose of basically liquid Plan B in her IV to be safe, but yeah, it’s something we’re going to have discuss because she’ll need it removed.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Marcos smirked. “When the time comes, we’ll bring it up to her. We’re going to have renegotiate everything . I need to make sure what happened back then never happens again.”
I sighed. “I don’t even know how much of that scene affected her, so much as what happened after? Like obviously the hypothermia was nothing to play at and we won’t do that again, but was the suspension play an issue? The extreme punishment? Those are things we need to ask her.”
“Yeah.” Marcos sighed.
“So I take it then, you’re all in? The four of us—shit you moved her in with us immediately. That was a far cry from trying to establish paternity and trying to sue for custody.”
“I know. Fuck, I need to call that lawyer and tell her to stop moving forward. Elaine gave me a copy of Luke’s birth certificate. My name is already on it… and I have no plans of living without both Luke and Maya going forward. Yeah, I’m all in.”
I grinned and nodded approvingly. “So now we just need to get Stone on board.”
“He’s there, he’s just stubborn as fuck. He never stopped loving her. Stone is just being hardheaded, but you saw his face today—he’s team knock-up Maya .” Marcos laughed at his own joke.