“She’s tired, Prez,” Danner tried again.
It was the wrong move.
Reaper’s anger lashed through the air. “Don’t give a fuck, do I, boy? Now get your asses in here and Harleigh Rose go on up to your mother.”
We trudged in dutifully, Wrath letting me go so that they could follow Reaper into the “chapel,” a room in each biker clubhouse designated for just the patched-in members of the club, where they held their meetings.
I went up the stairs to find Farrah.
She was in Reaper’s bedroom, a master suite at the back of the house that was covered in biker girl posters and strewn with dirty clothes.
My mother sat in the middle of the bed wearing black fishnets and lingerie.
“Jesus, do you seriously just hang out like that?” I asked, covering my eyes against the sight.
She laughed. “Word of advice, Harleigh, this is how you keep a man.”
“Don’t need your help with that. Can you please cover up?”
She sighed, but I heard the rustle as she got off the bed. “Yes, I heard you kept a man for four years. Impressive, I guess, if you hadn’t let him beat on you. You never did learn anything I tried to teach you.”
When I was little, and my mother was being wicked or drunk and cruel, I came up with a game to distract myself. I tried to think of a positive memory and match it to a song.
I thought of that morning waking up in Danner’s bed, of his fingers binding me to the cabinets and his mouth on my pussy, his cock in my cunt after so many years of wishing for exactly that.
I came up with a song by one of Cressida’s favourite artists, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis.
The song started playing softly in my head as Farrah, finally covered by a silk black robe, continued her lecture.
“You never should have left me, prettiness, I would have taught you how to be a woman. Instead, you’ve become this rough, biker thing,” she waved her hand, bangles jangling and I thought about how I wanted to rip those cheap bracelets off and choke her with them.
“Oh, I listened to the lessons you taught, Farrah,” I said through gritted teeth. “I listened to the one about not doing drugs that you taught me when you’d overdosed three times by the time I was ten. I listened to the one about being careful not to drive away a good man, the best man by being unfaithful in all the ways that word means. And most of all, I learned that just because you think you’re a good person, it doesn’t mean you are because nothing you’ve ever done has been good or honest, and the fact that you don’t even seem to understand that makes it so much worse.”
Farrah stared at me for a long moment, her cruel face impassive, before she sighed. “You always were dramatic.”
“I’m not dramatic, I’m right,” I hissed.
I didn’t want to be there after the night I’d had, seeing King fall to Wrath’s punch, watching Axe-Man get shot in the gut by a man I despised while I just lay in the dirt doing nothing. I wanted to go home.
Not my apartment, Cricket had taken the home out of that place.
No, I wanted to get on the back of Lion’s bike and ride with him to his little house, open the door to greet a happy Hero, take the punishment Danner was probably at the moment thinking up for me, and then fall exhausted into bed with him.
Instead, Elvis kept crooning in my head and my mother kept running her mouth.
“You don’t get this because you were too young, but your daddy was a beast. He ordered me around like I was his fucking slave and then he took my kids from me!”
“He took us because you were a washed up, abusive, drug abuser,” I told her flatly. “And I don’t see you complaining about Jacob. He took Honey from you too.”
“Yeah, well karma got the bastard. He died of a fucking car crash when Honey was five and I got ’er back.”
“And look at her now! She’s a high school dropout, drug-addicted porn star.”
“It’s just a phase,” Farrah said, arranging herself back on the bed as if she was the queen of fucking Sheba. “You’re clearly going through one now too. Don’t worry, you stick with your Mama and I’ll get you through the other side.”
“Both Zeus and Jacob left you ’cause of your drug addiction, who says Reaper’ll be any different?”
God, I hoped he was. I hoped he kept her and ensnared her in his filthy web so that when he went down, she did too.
“Oh baby, old Reaper and me go way back,” she said with a childish giggle. “He’s been in love with me since I was with your daddy. He’d do anything for me…” she shot me a sloe-eyed look. “Even kill for me.”
Trepidation sliced through me. “Who would you want killed? You owe a dealer or something.”
“Come sit with your mama,” she ordered me softly, patting the bed beside her. “And I’ll tell you.”
Getting close to her was like willingly cuddling up next to a rattlesnake, but there was fear germinating in my gut and my intuition wouldn’t let me dig it up without identifying the source.
I crawled onto the bed then ground my teeth when she patted her lap so I would lay my head there.
I did.
Her hideous perfumed, braceleted hand started to stroke through my hair. “It’s really a shame you didn’t get the same uniform blond from me as your brother did.”
My entire body was clenched in an attempt to be boulder strong against her pike and chisel, but still, they wore away at me.
“Focus, Mum, who do you want dead?”
She hummed softly for a few long minutes, but I didn’t push her again because I’d inherited my wild from her and I knew what happened when you pushed a feral animal too hard into a corner.
“You knew your daddy took a new wife?” she asked sweetly.
I grew tighter, even the blood in my veins calcified.
“What?”
“Your daddy, he got himself a sweet, young new wife. Reaper said you’re not close with ’im. Did you know about her?”
Every instinct in my body screamed at me to lie and do it better than I’d ever done before. “No, mum. I haven’t seen him since I moved back away from Entrance to start a better life.”
“My girl,” she murmured, her voice like sugar, her hand gentle in my hair. “Her mama’s daughter.”
No.
I was my father’s daughter.
Only the spawn of Zeus would think to lie in the face of their mother, to be smart enough to see the poison in her sugar and the potential energy coiled in that gentle hand.
“You haven’t been with Dad in years though,” I ventured carefully.
“Did you know he went to prison for that little bitch? Your daddy’s sick, he’s loved her since she was a kid.”
Wrong, my mind bellowed. Dad had saved Loulou from death that day in the parking lot. He’d chosen to save a little girl’s life and go to jail to enact retribution instead of doing things like a coward. It wasn’t until later, until dozens of letters had been written until dozens of obstacles had been hurdled and ten years had elapsed that they found each other as lovers.
There was absolutely nothing sick about that.
“What are you going to get Reaper to do about it?” I asked softly, as if I was sorry for my mum, as if I didn’t care about dad’s “little bitch.”