Call me a pussy, but losing my dad for another two years on top of the one he still had to serve before he got the chance at coming home? Yeah, I wasn’t going to let my bitch sister do that to him. To us.
With all that in mind, that was why I was letting Ama at her. Ama was an odd duck, had a strange way of getting things out of people. I just had to be patient. Just had to let her do her thing.
Kenzie sighed. “God, all you do is draw.”
“Is that a statement or is there a question buried within it?” Ama replied.
“It’s a statement of boredom. You always were a freak.”
“Amazing how being abducted does that to a person.”
“You always did think you were so fucking cool for that,” Kenzie grumbled, and I had to shake my head at the crap she was spewing.
The worst thing of all was that she seemed to believe it.
“Fucking cool? Nah, I wouldn’t go that far, Kenzie. I’m sorry you weren’t kidnapped in my stead, but then, you were only the Sergeant-At-Arms’ daughter. Not high enough up the ranking to serve Aaron’s needs.”
My lips twitched at that, then I was hard-pressed not to laugh when Ama decided to bury the hatchet between my sister’s shoulders.
“Unless you still don’t get that my dads are more important than yours?”
“I get it,” Kenzie hissed. “All because your mother was a slut, you—”
“What? Got more of the attention?” Ama snorted. “Some attention. I really wish you’d had to piss yourself for days on end, were blindfolded by a crazy kid, and had to listen to him rattle on about how he was going to kill you all while he starved you and didn’t give you a drop to drink. It really was like staying at Club Med, honey. I think you’d have liked it. Really, I do. Better than a spa treatment.”
Kenzie scoffed, but she did change the subject. “How long are they going to keep me up here anyway?”
“Until they learn what your motives are.”
“Motives? What motives?” Kenzie sniffed, and I could easily imagine her tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I wanted to come home. What’s so devious about that?”
“How about the fact you pretended that your old man, who isn’t your old man, beat you up to get your brother to agree to get me to call my grandfather to persuade him to help you leave…” She sucked in a breath. “Wow, talk about a mouthful. Oh, the webs we weave when we practice to deceive.”
Kenzie snarled, “What do you know about my life? You think you can sum it up in a few words? Hex did beat me. Just not that night. Why would he let me leave with his baby? I needed help. Dammit, Ama, can’t you see that?”
“I’m sure some of that’s true,” Ama replied pleasantly.
“All of it’s true,” Kenzie groused, sounding so miserable that damn, if I didn’t believe her.
“I doubt that. You always were a lying bitch, Kenzie. Two words in ten were always a lie. I just don’t understand why you’d want to come home when home was somewhere you ran from all those years ago.”
“I knew you guys would help me with the baby,” she said on a huff.
“So, you wanted free daycare?” Ama snorted. “Sounds about right.”
“It was more than that. I wanted help knowing what to do with the baby. I’ve never looked after a kid before, and I thought Dorie or your ma would help me out.”
“How did you even get involved with the Knights anyway?” Ama questioned, her pencil making scratching sounds as she spoke.
“I was in El Paso for a little while. They drive up there some weeks. Cause a bit of mayhem. I got caught along with them and returned to their clubhouse… I just never left.”
“You were their sweetbutt?” Ama mocked.
“No,” Kenzie snarled. “I thought Hex loved me.”
“Apparently if you had sex without protection. You’re lucky you’re just having a baby and not an STD.”
“Like you can talk about someone being a slut. How many guys do you have panting around you? Three?”
“Yep, aren’t I lucky?” was the bright and breezy reply.
“I wouldn’t call it lucky. Tied to three men?” Kenzie scoffed. “Being with one is trouble enough.”
“Then you’ve never met the right men,” Ama retorted.
“Listen to you. Jesus. Selling the next American dream, huh? Happily ever after. They’ll do what Hex did to me. Start fucking around when you get too sore. Or God help you if you get morning sickness, then you won’t see them for dust.”
“You know he got arrested, right?”
I couldn’t stop myself from getting to my feet and peering in through the sliver of the open door. Kenzie was tense but settled back into the sofa, while Ama was on an armchair, her feet curled up underneath her with her notepad on her knees. She didn’t look like she was involved in a verbal war on words, but Kenzie’s tension told me she was in full on defensive mode.
“When?” my sister asked, her tone sullen.
“When do you think? On the run that he left on.” Ama peered over her sketchpad. “My granddaddy wasn’t happy to lose so many good men.”
Kenzie gulped.
She fucking gulped.
“Oh?” she said warily.
“Yeah. Oh. He was pissed. Thinks there’s a rat in his nest. Gone back to scour the MC out for the dirty snitch.”
Kenzie’s face morphed from bright pink to white at Ama’s declaration, but when she thought Lucifer had returned to find the rat at the club there? She looked relieved.
A gulp and a few facial expressions weren’t exactly a signed confession, but I knew my fucking sister. Maybe not well, not like some people, but well enough to register fear—I’d seen it on her face when Mama had died.
She cleared her throat when Ama’s attention averted to her pad once more. “Is that what they think I’ve done? That I was the snitch?”
“Don’t think you’d still be sitting here if that were the case, do you?” Ama replied sweetly.
“Even if I was the rat,” she hedged. “They’d never hurt me because I’m pregnant!”
“Momma said she saw your belly so I guess you must be.”
Kenzie’s mouth gaped wide open and pulsed a few times like a goldfish’s. “That’s what that was about? She was checking to see if I was pregnant?”
“Could have just been a mountain of foundation on your belly… you know, like it was on your face.”
Kenzie’s teeth ground down. “I can’t fucking believe this. I came home to—”
“To, what? Seems like you don’t really want to be here. Seems to me like you’ve never wanted to be here, so what’s your game?”
“I haven’t exactly been extended a welcoming hand, have I? Pretty much soon after I arrived I was on house arrest!”
“And now you know why. Especially after we were raided the same day you arrived. Two busts on one day and with you transferring from one clubhouse to the other?” Ama snorted. “You have to admit, it looks suspicious.”
Kenzie surged upright in an explosive movement. I tensed, waiting for her to attack Ama, but she didn’t. They were in a seating area—a sofa with two armchairs, a coffee table, and two end tables on either side of the sofa with a lamp. She headed out of that seating area and began to pace around it.