Page 92 of Reaper

“How did we miss this?” I damn near growl.

“She used her mother’s maiden name as her last name. It wasn’t until I found Zac’s parents’ marriage certificate that I made the connection and dug deeper.”

Curses rang out through the room.

“She’s his sister?” someone asks, their voice heavy with confusion.

“Stepsister,” Python replies.

“Fuck…” I curse.

This clusterfuck just got a hell of a lot messier.

Chapter 36

Lark

Walkingintothekitchen,I smile when I see Mama Astrid already at work. I cross the room to the sink, wash my hands, and join her at the counter.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Well, the roast beef for the po’boys has been going since this morning and we’re on the tail end of it. I just checked it, and it has maybe another hour and a half to go yet. I’m starting on getting everything prepped for the Cajun mac and cheese as well as the creamy andouille pasta since they have a few of the same vegetables. How about you grab a cutting board and a knife? I’ve got the onions. Can you chop these?” she asks as she points her knife at the peppers on the counter.

“You betcha.”

We chop in silence for a bit when I feel her eyes on me.

“Are you alright?”

I sigh as I nod. “Yeah, they stung like a bitch when Doc cleaned them up, but I don’t think they were deep enough to scar.”

“Did he take bloodwork just in case?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Something about the way she said that has my gaze snapping up to her as I stop chopping.

Her shoulders slump as she sighs and shakes her head. “There was a bunny back in my day that tried to cause shit with Odin and me. Lola.” She shakes her head again as she sighs. “I’ve seen it happen a lot, and I know I’ll keep seeing it. A lot of bunnies get it in their head that the club members are ‘theirs’, so when one of them brings in a woman they like, they see it as competition. That they need to do whatever they can to get the woman out of here. Some, they’ve ran off. Others stayed and put the bunnies in their place.

“One night, we crashed in our room here at the clubhouse because we’d had a lot to drink. In the morning, Odin was still passed out so I decided to take a shower. When I walked out, I found Odin stripped naked and Lola straddling him. He was still passed out, but she’d apparently worked him and got him hard. She was about to have sex with him when I dragged her ass off him and beat the shit out of her. In the process, she clawed me pretty badly with her nails,” she says as pulls up the sleeve of her shirt revealing four long scratches. “There are a few more, but they are under my shirt since I had come out in a towel. Bitch coated the undersides of her nails with some cocktail of drugs and I ended up in the hospital.”

“Did Odin get drugged then, too?”

Mama Astrid shook her head. “No. She didn’t draw blood when she touched him—only with me. That’s how the drugs got into my system. Our fight woke him up and when he saw how I was acting after the drugs started to kick in, he got Doc to check me out.”

“That’s why Doc was so insistent on drawing blood and taking swabs of each of my wounds.” My stomach rolls at the thought that Brandy could have drugged me like Lola had Mama Astrid.

She nods and after a moment, she clears her throat as she looks over at me. “Don’t let them walk all over you. You did good today from what I heard. Brandy will try again; I can guarantee it since I’m almost positive she’s head over heels for Reaper. Same for the others. Especially Star. She thinks that because she was the last one he touched that she’s top bitch.”

I snort at that. “More like the one that made him not want to have sex with any bunny ever again.”

We both laugh at that.

“So, how are things going with Reaper?”

“Pretty good. I’m spending the weekend with him. Igor and Void get along together, so that’s a relief.” I pause as I nibble on my lip. “He asked me to be his Old Lady and I said yes. The guys are voting on it,” I tell her in a quiet voice.