“And what, exactly, are you not safe from? What mess are you bringing to our door?”
She paled, and shook her head. “The bad kind. The worst kind you can think of. You don’t stand a chance.” She looked completely desolate in that moment, and I wanted to wrap my damn arms around her and tell her that I would keep her safe from the very hounds of Hell. She took a step toward me, her eyes desperate. “I just need a place to stay until the baby is born. Then I’ll know.”
Cain placed a reassuring hand on her arm, and I wanted to rip it off and beat him with it. “It’s okay. You’re safe here,” my VP said softly. His eyes dared me to disagree.
I scowled at him then looked back at the girl. “Then you’ll know what?”
“Whether the baby is a monster.”
Solomon flinched back like she’d struck him. I wanted to flinch too, instead I felt my hands ball. Solomon stepped away from her like she’d tried to spit on him. “No baby is a monster,” Solomon said on a soft growl.
For the first time, tears gathered in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “You don’t understand and I can’t tell you. But its father was a monster, and I’m not much better.” But as she said it, she curled her hand around the swell of her stomach as if she would love the baby anyway.
It got too much for Cain, and he pulled the woman into his arms. She stood stiffly for a moment, but eventually all the strength that had been holding her upright ebbed away and she curled into him.
“You’d be surprised what we understand. We understand violence and monsters better than most,” I informed her softly. I breathed deeply through my nose and flexed my hands. I detached my mind from the scene in front of me. “You can stay. Cain found you, so he can be your keeper. You fuck up, he gets punished, so don’t fuck up. Stay until the baby is born or after, I don’t give a shit. But you have to follow the Club rules. You got secrets, I don’t give a shit about that either. Keep them. But you lie to us, you’re out. It’s honesty or the highway.” I sat back down behind my desk, dismissing them all.
Cain ushered the woman out of the room, but Solomon stayed behind. He looked totally conflicted, and knowing what I knew about his past, I could see why.
I sighed and scrubbed my hand over my face. “Go on and say it.”
“Goliath is going to shit.”
I shook my head. I knew it. We all dealt with Laura’s death differently. Cain became a fucking mother hen, nurturing the sweet butts and picking up strays like the pound. Solomon turned into a manwhore who refused to commit to anyone for anything more than a night, but he worshipped them in his own way. Goliath got his revenge, we all did, and then he went on to hate women with every ounce of his being. A woman had broken his heart into a million pieces, even if it wasn’t her fault she died. The dude needed some serious therapy. Actually, we probably all did, but a shrink wouldn’t be welcome in the Clubhouse, and I probably couldn’t pay one enough to step across the threshold anyway.
“Goliath can deal. I’m President. I say she stays. Just keep her out of his way if you can.”
Solomon nodded. “She’s still hiding something though. She feels…”
Yeah, I knew exactly what she felt like. She felt off. Wrong. Ever since Laura’s funeral and a visit from, well, Lucifer I guess, we had changed. It had been thirty-five years, and we hadn’t seen him again. It took us a decade to work out what he’d meant by us riding for him when we were needed. He didn’t need an outlaw motorcycle club. He needed harbingers of doom. We were the fucking Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse. How’d I know?
Because the first time I’d shot a man after Laura’s death, I’d seen his soul leave his body. I’ve seen Cain take two best friends and turn them against each other with only a few words. Solomon could ensure a man never got satisfaction from food or a buzz from alcohol ever again. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but I’d seen men go mad from the results. And Goliath…
Goliath got a perverse pleasure out of stomping other Clubs, gangs, government agencies, anything that was a threat to Damnation, into a bloody wreckage beneath his boot.
Death. War. Famine. Conquest.
It took us two decades to figure out we were now immortal. To realize we never aged. We couldn’t be killed. Goliath had been riddled with more bullets than I could count on two hands, and yet he lived to see another day. Over and over again. We’d been damned alright.
As the same cycles of life repeated over and over again, I began to think of people as sheep; they had the same beige feeling about their souls. Like cardboard cutouts of one another. Even the patched Club members, most of them still riding with us since the beginning, and their sons. They knew we were different, but they were ride or die. They feared us as much as they loved us.
But this woman, Serendipity, she felt different. She felt like fireworks. Like a punch to the throat. I didn’t know why, but I was sure of one thing. She wasn’t an average Joe human, and I wanted to know what we’d invited into our Clubhouse.
Solomon was still in his own head, and I cleared my throat, bringing his focus back to me. “Find out what the hell she is, then let me know.”
Solomon grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “She’s certainly hot though. Beautiful even. Pregnant women aren’t really my kink, but you know, I’m willing to make an exception for her,” he winked, giving me a shit eating grin that told me he knew I was attracted to her and wanted to pummel him in the face for his teasing words.
I didn’t give him the satisfaction of biting though. “Do whatever you want, Sol. But if you see Goliath before I do, send him to me before he sees the woman. Someone should give him a heads up or he’ll explode and then Cain will smash him into the concrete.”
“I don’t know, man. My money would be on Goliath.”
A smirk curled the edges of my lips. “As epic as their showdown would be, I’d rather keep the peace. We are Brothers. We are Horsemen. No woman is going to come between us, got that?”
Solomon lifted his hands in the air, giving me that smug grin as he backed out of the door of my office. Sometimes I just wanted to punch him in the face.
I collapsed back down on my chair and rested my forehead against the cool wood of my desk. There was trouble on the horizon, I could all but smell it in the air. This woman was going to change everything, and as the President, I should have kicked her out. Sent her out of our lives before she burned everything we’d created to the ground.
I just couldn’t do it.
3
Serendipity
The room smelled like old sex. Cain bustled around, opening curtains and windows, even if there were bars on the outside. The bars should have freaked me out, but they didn’t. I knew they weren’t trying to keep me here. Cain’s president would probably be over the moon with happiness if I left. His scowl made me feel three inches tall, but I’d battled beings bigger than some biker with an attitude problem.
Cain continued to fuss, dragging the table to the window and tucking the single chair underneath. “I’ll get some of the Prospects and Old Ladies in to clean this shit up. I’ll make them scrub the entire place.” He screwed up his nose at what seemed to be a suspicious substance on the wall. “Just drop your bag there. It’ll be safe, I promise.”