Giggles emerged from behind the slightly open door, raspy feminine sounds that reminded me of the long-forgotten sound of my mother’s own silly laugh.
Still, I knocked on the door because Reaper wouldn’t have a problem sending away one of his many women if it meant some one on one time with me. I’d never been sure why, but the man not only coveted me, I think he truly loved me (as much as his black heart could) almost like a daughter.
“Yeah?” he called out, laughter in his gruff voice.
“’S me!” I hollered. “You got a second?”
There was conspicuous silence and then another husky giggle.
“Sure, babe, give me a second and I’ll getcha.”
I leaned against the wall across from the door and unwrapped a square of Hubba Bubba before popping it into my mouth. There wasn’t a huge likelihood of Reaper being loose-lipped about his plans to steal The Fallen’s cache, but I figured I could at least find out what time they planned to meet and then maybe trail them from the clubhouse…
The door opened, Reaper’s stocky frame taking up the entire width but not much of the length in the frame.
“Come in, girl,” he said with a smile.
With a smile. Reaper Holt was not the kind of man who smiled easily and the sight of it stretching his pocked, bulbous features into some semblance of joy sent an echo of unease through the pit of my belly.
I followed him into the room, studying his face for some clue as to what had changed in his life to take him from ruthless curmudgeon to happy bastard when the scent hit me. The cloying sweetness of cheap, sugary perfume scored by the harsh char of cigarette smoke.
Then the laugh came again, sandpaper in the air, rough against my ears.
I knew before I turned to look at Reaper’s desk who would be standing beside it.
My mum.
I hadn’t seen Farrah more than twice in the ten years since the Danner’s took me in and then Dad got out of prison and made us a home again. Once had been when I was sixteen and she’d approached me at school, asking for money, the next and last had been when I ran into her on the street on a trip to Vancouver on my eighteenth birthday. She’d looked right through me.
The intervening years had taken their toll on her once considerable beauty. There were hard brackets around her thinned mouth, folds in her cheeks and beside her eyes that sagged slightly, her skin too loose and slightly waxen from the abuse she’d put her body through over the ages. Her hair was dyed the normal shade of bottle blond, her breasts were still big and fake but drooping in her slack skin, her chest marked with sun spots and moles. She was wearing tight jeans, biker chick boots and a low halter neck crop top that gave evidence to the fact that she may have looked about fifteen years older than her forty years, but her body was still good enough to pull off the trashy look at least relatively well.
It was her eyes though, that got me. They were the same bright tropical ocean blue as my own, the same wide, round shape and curly lashes. Only hers were filled with spite and bitterness that tarnished the edges like aged copper.
“Harleigh baby, Mummy’s home,” she cried dramatically, flinging her arms wide to invite me into her embrace.
I stayed where I was. “Mum, what are you doing here?”
Reaper chuckled with manly satisfaction and went over to wrap a meaty hand around her hip like a proud partner. “Farrah here’s my new old lady.”
“What the fuck happened to Jade?” I asked.
That old bitch wasn’t the warmest woman in the world, but she was Madonna compared to Farrah. She’d also been through a lot sticking by Reaper’s side, dozens of affairs and at least a dozen bastard children besides, I couldn’t see her giving up her position without a fight.
Farrah waved her hand, her bedazzled bangles clinking. “Oh, that old bitch had to go. Don’t worry about her.”
I hadn’t inherited my love of biker babes from my mother. She hated anyone with a vagina, specifically if that vagina was prettier than her or had something she didn’t.
God, looking at her I was reminded that half of my DNA was formed from pure evil and I cut myself some slack for my not infrequent bad behaviour. It was only natural given my origins.
“Why aren’t you greetin’ your mama, girl?” Reaper asked, a frown crashing down over his features and setting me at ease again.
I did as I was told, moving forward to be enveloped in her heavily perfumed arms. “Hey, Mum.”
“Better,” she whispered in my ear before smacking her lips in a loud ear kiss that almost made me deaf on the left side. “I knew you’d be happy to see me. The Maycomb women back together again.
I was no Maycomb. I never had been.
I was a Garro through to the marrow of my fucking bones.
But I’d play this game if she wanted to.
I perched on the edge of a chair, settling in. “So, how’d you two meet?”
“Met her ’fore your fuckin’ dad did, babe,” Reaper told me. It was obvious he hated that, that he had counted the minutes of difference between Zeus meeting her and him doing it, that he blamed the sixteen minutes as the reason they hadn’t been together all these years.
Interesting.
Reaper had a lifelong hard-on for my mum.
Disgusting.
But useful.
I knew by the way Farrah’s smile slithered across her red painted lips like a snake in the grass that she knew this to be useful as well.
“Ran into her at a bike show a few weeks ago. She gave me the runaround, but fuckin’ got her in the end,” he ended on a roar of laughter as he pinched her ass and she playfully slapped at him.
Gag me with a fucking gun.
“How nice,” I said mildly instead.
“It’s good to finally be with the man I should have had all along,” Farrah preened, placing her hand on Reaper’s bloated chest. “Now we can be a family again.”
“And King?”
She made a face. “He chose your father, but then again, he never had your brains, did he?”
She was right, he didn’t, he was much smarter than me.
“What about Honey?” I asked.
Farrah waved her hand again. “The little shit runs off sometimes, ungrateful girl, but she’ll come back. She always does.”
That “ungrateful girl” should’ve been in high school, not getting hooked on drugs and having sex on camera. Fury coursed through my blood so hot I felt like I glowed with it.
“Was tellin’ your mum how proud she’d be to know you been with us for a solid three years, first with Cricket, RI-fucking-P, now with my brother, Wrath.”
He was proud of me for that, his chest puffed out, his cheeks ruddy with the force of his own compliment. In another life, a lesser one, without Dad and Danner and King, I wondered if I would have been weak enough to fall under his spell.
Pride was no equal alternate for love.
“He thinks you’re loyal enough to know our plans for your daddy’s club,” Farrah sing-songed, her fingers walking a path over Reaper’s chest and down. “I’m not so sure.”
I shrugged as if I couldn’t have cared less when really, bile was biting metallic teeth at the back of my tongue. “I don’t need to prove anything to you, Farrah. At this point, Reaper is more my parent than you are.”