Page 15

15. FAMILY MATTERS

BIGFOOT

I did not want to leave Sammy in the care of Kingston again, especially since he was still an untried prospect, but I didn’t have much of a choice. That meant that I had to trust more in Sammy’s ability to take care of herself than I did in the fact that I had a man watching her back. As we walked back to the library, Glitch sent me a message that we needed to meet up because he had new information that we all needed to see.

I hadn’t been back in the clubhouse more than two minutes when he came around the corner and hitched his thumb back toward the office. “We’re all waiting,” Glitch threw out before he turned back around and hauled ass in that direction. I didn’t take offense to a club member ordering me around. I knew he didn’t mean shit by it. Glitch fit his name. There was something his brain that didn’t connect with other humans. That was fine because what didn’t work with human interaction sure the fuck worked wonders when he had a keyboard at his fingertips.

“I take it you found something important that might help with our current situation?” I asked the minute the office door closed behind me.

Glitch nodded as Baffle made his way to my side. “Found a link between the Mojave Devils MC, The Rivera Cartel, and the man in town they have on their payroll.” I knew before he even confirmed who it would be.

“Sheriff Estes?” I questioned.

“That would be the one. Not sure if either of his two deputies are on the take with him, not that it would matter. If it came down to it, I don’t think he’d have an issue getting rid of them.”

I turned from Glitch to my VP. “Do we know what the fuck is so special about Violence that the Rivera Cartel would buy off our sheriff? We aren’t close enough to the border with Mexico to matter to them.”

“Seems someone thinks that there is a mineable resource between Fox Mountain and Black Peak that will produce some precious minerals and resources the Cartel wants possession of. Our club property and the town of Violence is the closest settlement to those would-be mines.”

“They want to turn Violence into their own personal mining town?” I asked, unable to believe the bullshit I was hearing. “There are wind turbines between us and the mountains. It’s not fucking feasible.”

“It’s possible my source is a little off the mark. Cerro La Mula isn’t far from us either. It’s also not part of the Apache National Forest, so they won’t have the issues with mining there that they would near the other mountains. Plus, you know what we found here on our property.”

I turned to Baffle and understood immediately. The caves beneath our property hadn’t simply yielded a great place for our grow farm, they had also granted us an unexpected mining operation of our own. There was a healthy load of gold, copper, and zinc beneath our feet. It was how we managed to obtain more property as it became available. It was also how we funded our businesses in an area where there hadn’t been much development previously. The town of Violence sprung up around our club, not the other way around.

“We are not going to let the fucking cartel or the damn Mojave Devils move in on our town.”

“No, we’re not,” Baffle agreed. “We need to redirect their attention somewhere else. We might be able to fight off the MDMC, but the Rivera Cartel has a longer reach and more resources. I’m not sure how we’d fare against them if push came to shove.”

“Luckily, I think they’ve only been putting out feelers and haven’t fully committed yet,” Glitch informed us.

“They tried to kill me, in case we all forgot how this shit happened.” I pointed to my not yet healed arm. “Do you seriously think this has all been a push to get fucking mineral rights or easier access to them?”

“It’s our best guess so far, and considering what we found in our own backyard, it’s not improbable. All they would have needed was for some idiot to find something in his backyard or on a hiking trip, and then for him to run his mouth about what he found and where. Whoever that fucker was that tipped them off is probably dead somewhere while they’ve been searching for signs that he wasn’t fucking lying.” Baffle turned and paced to the other side of the office and back again. “Why does it feel like we’re missing something?”

Someone banged on the office door, and I moved to open it. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Prez. There are some men out at the gate requesting to see you.”

“Did you get a name or at the very least a description of the men, Prospect?”

His face turned red as he nodded his head. “Yeah, sorry. They’re the Morton brothers that run that campground.”

“Have them sent up and bring them directly back to my office.”

Once the prospect was gone, I turned back to my club brothers. “This can’t be a good sign.”

“Maybe they’re tired of you stalking their girl,” Knuckles grinned like an idiot as he said it.

“That’s the other piece of the puzzle we need to figure out,” Baffle reminded me.

“What do you mean?”

His eyes drifted back to Glitch before they returned to me, and he spoke again. “There has to be a reason a woman affiliated with the Mojave Devils ended up married to Brian fucking Morton. And if my suspicions are confirmed, then this takeover of our town has been in the works for a long fucking time. We’re spinning our wheels playing catch up until we get the full picture.”

A knock sounded on the door a few minutes later as we all sat there quietly contemplating what Baffle had just laid at our feet. I opened the door, and before the prospect could announce the Morton men, they stormed into my office. Brian was caught up short when he realized I hadn’t been alone.

“We need to talk,” he finally said.

“Then talk.”

Brian glanced around and seemed nervous to speak in front of the men in the room with him. I wasn’t going to have him waste my fucking time though, not when we were fucking hip-deep in a takeover we thought was only ankle-deep a few minutes prior.

“These are all my club’s officers. I don’t have secrets from them, so whatever you have to say, you need to fucking say it now or don’t. We don’t have time for you to stand around and contemplate life while you wait for me to empty out my office for you, though. That shit ain’t happening.”

Brady seemed amused. Josh, the middle brother, appeared to be along for the ride. Brian grew angry and finally decided to say what was on his mind.

“You need to stay the fuck away from my daughter.”

“That so?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’s so. She doesn’t need to get involved with your MC or any trouble you have brewing. She’s a good girl and has been through enough without adding your band of thugs to the mix.”

“Thugs? Really, Bri?” Brady asked his oldest brother.

“What would you call them?”

“Allies, if you’re smart,” Brady explained. I grinned at him and then turned my focus back to the man who didn’t seem to care much about his own daughter before he walked into my office.

“It’s too late to keep Sammy away from club business. It’s already at her doorstep. I’m already there, and I don’t plan on walking away from her. She saved my life, and if there wasn’t another reason, that would be enough to keep her under our protection.”

“So, this is a favor for a favor thing?” Brian asked. I had already started to shake my head, but he ignored the gesture and carried on. “If you want to do my little girl a favor, you will forget about her. Leave her alone to live her life without all the bullshit the club will bring into it.” His chest heaved with the effort to speak passionately about his need for us to leave his daughter alone.

“Does your vehement dislike of our club around your daughter have anything to do with your wife?” Baffle asked.

“My wife? What the fuck does my wife have to do with anything?” I glanced from Brian to Brady and then Baffle before turning back to Brian to answer his question.

“She has been linked to a rival club of ours. The Mojave Devils,” I tacked on to see if their name sparked a response from him. The man seemed clueless.

“No. She’s not involved with an MC. She’s a stay-at-home mom, for Christ’s sake.”

I glanced back at Brady who looked disappointed in his brother. “She’s been keeping secrets from you, Bri.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What secrets?”

Brady explained to his brothers, after a healthy warning from me about keeping shit to themselves, what happened with the Devil Sammy killed and how he had been sent to her cabin by Colleen Morton.

“That can’t be,” Brian denied.

“I have the security video. You obviously never told your wife about the cameras. Maybe there was a reason for that. I think somewhere deep down you knew you couldn’t trust her the way you pretended to.” Brady didn’t wait for his brother to accept or deny that claim. Instead, he pulled out his phone and shoved it in his brother’s face. “Watch. That’s your wife, gleefully showing a biker where to find your daughter so he can kill her.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Brian denied again. “You don’t know that’s why she sent him there.”

Brady took his phone back and pulled something else up. “That is your daughter’s mattress. Those three holes are from the three rounds that fucker put into her bed, thinking she was sleeping in it. If she hadn’t heard something that woke her up, she would have been dead. Instead, she killed the fucker. The fact is your wife sent him there. Whether she ordered the hit or just pointed him in Sammy’s direction, Colleen knew he didn’t have good intentions toward her.”

The middle brother appeared stunned and remained silent until Brian turned on him. “Did you fucking know about Colleen? Is that why you were so fucking determined that I get my daughter away from the club? You’re the reason we’re here today. You swore Sammy would be in danger if we allowed them to keep tailing her everywhere. Are you in on this shit - whatever it is - with Colleen?”

“Fuck you if you think I’d ever harm my niece for that cunt you married. You’re the one who brought that bitch into our lives because you were too fucking busy thinking with your dick and running wild after Joy died to think about wrapping your cock up.”

“Then why? Why were you so damn hard up to keep my daughter away from the Kings of Anarchy?” That was something I was curious to have answered as well. I thought them being here was Brian’s doing, not the middle brother who Sammy barely even talked about.

Josh scrubbed his hands down his face as he shook his head back and forth slowly. Then, instead of addressing his brother, he turned his attention fully on me. “Fuck!” he spat out. “I’m sorry man.”

“What the fuck have you done?” Immediately, I thought maybe he got into bed with the MDMC or the Cartel, but what he ended up admitting to was something I never would have seen coming in a million years.

“She told me to do whatever it took, so things wouldn’t get complicated.”

“Who told you? What the fuck did this bitch say to make you want to keep Sammy away from me?”

“I’ve been dating Melissa for almost a year,” he admitted. I was blown away and so were my club brothers from the looks of all the shocked faces in the room. “We’ve kept it quiet, but when she realized who Sammy was at the hospital, she called me immediately and said there was no way we could allow that shit to happen. If you hooked up with Sammy, you would demand that Melissa couldn’t be with me.”

“What the fuck?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?” I asked him. “I don’t give two fucking shits who Lis dates as long as they treat my boy right if it’s serious between them.”

Josh laughed and then looked down at his feet as he admitted her reasoning. “Because it would look pretty fucking incestuous for me to be your son’s stepfather one day while my niece becomes his stepmom.”

My eyes widened as I glanced around the room to get my brothers’s take on that revelation. We were all shocked for approximately two minutes before I burst out laughing right along with Baffle and Knuckles. Glitch stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes focused on Josh and Brian.

“That’s actually pretty funny,” I admitted. “You’d be Uncle Daddy and Sammy would be Mommy Cousin.” I laughed louder as the words left me because it sounded even more ridiculous out loud than it did in my own head. The Morton brothers stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Well, two of them did that. Brady’s shoulders shook as he laughed along with me.

“I wish Sammy had been here to hear that,” Brady eventually admitted.

“That’s my daughter! Are you telling me you’re not just protecting her because she saved you, but that you’re interested in her romantically? Does she know that?”

“I am and she does.”

“And did she agree to date you?”

I laughed again as all the times Sammy had denied me flashed through my mind. “Right now, she thinks I’m stalking her, but eventually I’ll wear her down,” I joked just to get a rise out of Brian.

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“Fucking relax, asshole. I’m only half kidding. Melissa, who happens to be my son’s mother and your brother’s secret girlfriend, gave your daughter the impression that we were very much together as a couple when she met her in the hospital.” I turned my attention from Brian to Josh then. “Good luck explaining to your niece how you’ve been dating Lis for a year when it was Lis who told her that she’s my ol’ lady.”

“Son of a bitch!” Josh growled. “She doesn’t know how to make life easy on a man, does she?”

There was a reason I’d never even considered getting serious with Melissa, even after she found out she was pregnant. In fact, I fully believed her pregnancy had been a goal of hers, because she thought it would force my hand. She learned quickly that shit was not going to go her way.

“Nope,” I finally answered Josh. “Why do you think I never made her my ol’ lady when she had my kid?” I chuckled at the contemplative look on his face. “She’s not my biggest concern right now, though I’ll deal with her bullshit later.” I turned back to Brian. “Your ol’ lady is my problem, and we need to deal with her because there’s no telling what the fuck she’s been up to or what she has put in the works.”

“The house!” Brady shouted. “Colleen has been adamant about getting our parents’ home, but Dad left it to Sammy.”

“What’s the point?” Josh asked.

“The point is that I moved Sammy into the house after that incident with the fucking Mojave Devil. She said that it looked like someone had been cleaning things out of the house that shouldn’t have been taken and moved some things in that shouldn’t be there.” He turned to his brothers then. “The grandfather clock is one of the pieces missing.” There was something important in that statement, but Brian spoke before I could ask questions.

“She’s been on me to get Sammy to sign something giving us the house. She probably thought I’d get it done and started to redecorate.”

“Why the fuck would she think that? You know damn well Sam was planning to renovate before she moved in. We already got the master bath done and were about to start working on the kitchen. She wouldn’t renovate just to give up her claim on the house.”

“She’s been living in the cabin, I figured I could talk her around, since I have a kid that needs more space.” That statement worked to piss Brady right the fuck off.

“Funny that space was plenty big enough for you to raise Sammy with Joy but not enough to raise Ryan with Colleen,” Brady spat at him.

“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled out to silence the brothers who devolved into a whole name-calling situation after that.

“Brady, why are you concerned about what Colleen has taken out of or put in the house?”

“Besides the fact that the clock was a priceless piece of our family history dating back to 1740s Scotland, and belonged to Sammy?” he questioned, then I watched as the blood drained from his face. “What if she had the place wired up?” he eventually asked.

“Wired up…” I repeated as the words sank in. “Fuck. Glitch!”

“On it, boss.” He turned to the Morton brothers. “One of you needs to come with me, so I can’t be accused of trespassing. Not that I’d care, but I can’t help Sammy if your bitch wife decides to call the law on me.” Glitch threw a pointed look back toward me. He couldn’t mention to the civilians that our local sheriff was dirty and working for the people trying to kill Sammy and me. They were close to the situation, but not close enough that we could share that, considering we weren’t really sure how Brian would react or what he might pass back to his wife - whether intentionally or not.

“Brady and Brian stay. We have things to discuss. You go,” I said as I pointed my finger at Josh. “We’ll figure shit out later where the family dynamics are concerned.” Josh nodded and followed behind Glitch as they got ready to leave the office. I stopped him with one question, because it was important that I got the answer to it before he hauled ass. “Are you serious about Melissa?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Even though she claimed me as her old man in front of your niece?”

Josh heaved out a somewhat defeated sigh. “She panicked. I’m not fucking happy about it, but it’s something we can work through.”

“All right. You handle Lis. I’ll handle Sammy.”

“No one is handling my daughter,” Brian insisted.

“Shut up!” Josh and I said at the same time. Josh grinned at me before he added his own threat - if you could call it that. “You better treat her right. She’s still my niece, and you fuck with her, or she gets hurt, I don’t give a damn that you have a club at your back. I will find a spot for you inside the fucking mountain and make sure your sorry carcass is never found. You feel me?”

“I feel you. Same goes for my boy. Don’t give a rat’s ass about his mom aside from her being whole and healthy for my son’s sake, but you fuck things up for him, and you won’t even make it inside a mountain. I’ll leave you as carrion for the creatures in the desert.” He nodded his head and left with Glitch to go check on my woman’s house.