Page 170 of Burning Ember

When I merely glower, he shakes me. “Now, when you can manage to calm the fuck down, tell me how it is you know who I am, but I’ve never seen you before last night?”

His soulless eyes stay on mine and a long moment passes. He doesn’t remove his hand from my mouth until I take a deep breath from my nose and my body starts to let go of some of the tension rioting through me a moment ago. I nod that I’ll behave and he slowly lets go.

“I was there. I saw you take Sunny into her room. And you’d come out and leave money on the table like she was some whore and not a child. Men like you should be castrated, spend the rest of their life in prison.”

His forehead wrinkles as his brows pull together. Then an amused expression morphs on his weatherworn face. He raises a black eyebrow. “What exactly is it that you think I did to your sister?”

“You molested her.”

“Christ! Why the hell would you think that? Your mama makin’ shit up about me?”

Reluctantly, I answer, “No.” Suddenly, my world starts to shift. The earnest expression he’s wearing throws me for a second.

“Sunny wouldn’t talk for days after you came, or eat. She’d cry. She wouldn’t tell me why, but you did something.”

“Were you there every time I came to visit her?”

“Only a few times.”

“Where?”

Fighting through the anger barreling through my chest, I bite out, “In the closet.” For a long time he simply stares at me. Then he walks across the room to the window and lights another cigarette.

“How old are you? You look older but you can’t be more than what . . . eighteen? Shoulda been too young to remember me like you do.”

I loathe answering his questions, but I’m starting to feel like my world’s tipping on its axis and what I thought was up is suddenly down, and I need to know the truth. “I’m twenty-two.”

His body goes rigid. He turns and studies me as if I’m lying and he’ll find the proof in my skin or my eyes. “Fuck. You’re not jokin’ are you?” He looks away and takes in a deep long drag. He lets the smoke slowly escape through his lips and watches the rings as if they’re telling him secrets only he can see. Then holds out the bud and stares at the cherry. He mutters, “Heard the brothers talkin shit, but I never believed it. Of her. Of him. But that has to be why she wanted out.” Then he sighs heavily and nods to himself. “It never fuckin’ made sense. She loved me, loved the life.”

“Did you or did you not molest my sister?”

“You seriously askin’ me if I molested my own daughter?” He throws a murderous glare at me. “No. I may be a shit father, and an evil son of a bitch—but fuck, I’d never touch a kid. And I’d take anyone to ground that would dare lay a hand on my Sunny like that.”

Those words barrel into me like a freight train. “Your Sunny.”His daughter.

“Yeah.”

The mental gears in my head slow, grind together, and suddenly screech to a halt. I don’t want to believe it. For all I know he could be lying out his teeth. But I have to admit, I’ve wondered many times on whether I was right about what really happened all those years ago.

I start grasping at straws. “Then what was the money for?”

“What else. Fuckin’ child support. Money to get her and your mama by.”

“But she was a complete mess after you left. Every time. And she wouldn’t tell me why.”

“So you just assumed I was rapin’ my kid? That’s fucked up.” He shakes his head. “Sunny would beg me to take her with me. But I couldn’t. My life was too dangerous. I told her that. Always had too many targets on my back.”

“I . . . I . . .” I’m reeling. Seeing it all in a different light all of a sudden. My hatred for him cools to a simmer. I can even hear the defeat in my voice when I ask, “If you’re her father then where the hell have you been all this time?”

He shrugs and spares me a glance. “Every time I came to see her, I was risking her and your mama. When shit got deep for the club, I knew I had to cut ties. That it was either lose them or bury them. So I made the choice I could live with.”

“Why’d my mother hide me from you?”

“‘Cause, she was hiding her sins, and she was smart. She knew if I found out that while I was servin’ time, she was sleeping around behind my back with a man I trusted, I would’ve killed them both. She kept visiting me. Supposedly got real sick for a while and couldn’t, but then started coming every week like regular, acting crazy weird about making sure we had conjugal visits when she never seemed to care about having them before. I figured she wanted to get pregnant, that maybe it was just that time that she needed somethin’ more than me to make her happy. But then when she got pregnant with your sister, she told me some bullshit about her not being able to wait for me like she promised. That she didn’t want this kind of life anymore now that she was a mother. Shouldn’t have believed her. My gut told me it was a lie. Your mama was a biker bitch through and through. But that’s the story she always stuck to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not much to understand.” He stares at his smoke and rolls it between his fingers. “My old lady slept with my best friend and you’re the evidence I need to prove he betrayed me.”