That had not been a fun conversation.
To this day, I wasn’t sure who’d been more mortified. Her or us. Fuck, yeah, now I thought about it—us. The guys who’d killed at eighteen to get in as prospects had been mumbling about periods and menstruation. Knowing Lucie, she’d probably already Googled that shit and had made us discuss it just to embarrass the fuck out of us.
Now that I thought about it…
Fuck, I bet she had.
Shame I couldn’t call her out on that right this second.
Instead, I just told her, “She supposedly ran off around your fourth birthday. Maybe she never did. Maybe he found out you weren’t his biologically.”
A grunt escaped her. “It would make sense, considering he’d never have let her go without chasing her down, bringing her back here, and making her life fucking miserable.”
I shrugged. “Wasn’t like we could argue when he didn’t go after her. His bitch, his wishes.” I cut Dagger a look and saw his concerned gaze was focused on her. “We all thought it was weird, but we weren’t about to argue. Not with Bomber.” Who put the psycho in psychopath.
Her jaw flexed at my statement, but I wasn’t about to change it. Whether or not she liked being called a bitch was tough shit. She knew how it rolled in this world. Trouble was, Ryan had probably been the softest of us all. Not that he’d been a pansy ass or anything like that, but he’d been raised by non-bikers. People who didn’t understand how things worked.
Though he’d wifed her, he probably hadn’t called her his old lady.
“I wonder who your pop is,” Dagger mused, and I shot him a look.
“Really? That’s where you’re taking this conversation?”
He shrugged. “What else is there to wonder about? I mean, fuck. If he killed his wife, they’re both dead, it’s not like we can get justice for Maria post-mortem.”
“I hate that you’re right,” Lucie whispered, and there was such starkness in her eyes that it hurt me. Literally fucking hurt me. Worse than that time I’d had a bar stool wrapped around my goddamn head.
I blew out a breath as the desire to comfort her hit me just as hard as that stool. Lucie had always called to me in ways no other woman had. Back when she’d been seventeen, that had felt right. After? It had felt like I’d been condemned to a life sentence. Loving a manipulative, lying bitch who’d tossed over the MC for some cash?
A living nightmare.
It was hard, but my free will was snatched from me by this conversation. I’d never anticipated talking to her about this today. I’d wanted to discuss how Amaryllis was ignoring me, but even then, it wouldn’t have been much of a conversation. I knew, in my heart of hearts, Lucie wouldn’t have said shit to turn Amaryllis against me.
A woman who’d introduced her daughter to four men as her ‘daddies’ wouldn’t do that. All along, Lucie had been working up to bringing Amaryllis back, to returning her to the fold.
Trouble was, as Prez, I couldn’t give her what she wanted.
I couldn’t share my old lady. If I did, then that would undermine me to the men. But my brothers deserved her just as much, if not more, than I did.
Pressing a hand to her shoulder, I stepped closer and was stunned when she snapped her arms out, curved them around my waist, and burrowed into my embrace. It was kind of awkward considering she was straddling Dagger like she was about to give him a lap dance, but then, was it really?
We’d gone past awkward a long time ago, hadn’t we?
I mean, hell. I’d seen my brothers’ cocks so many times that I pretty much knew them like I knew my own. Not only because we’d gotten into the habit of fucking Lucie as a group except for the first time she’d seduced us all individually, but because after she’d gone, we’d tried to replace her, to replace those feelings, that euphoria of sharing a bitch, but it hadn’t worked.
No woman could compare to Lucifer Steeler.
I glanced at Dagger and saw his jaw flexing as he studied Lucie. Her distress was hitting us both, but the worse thing was, everything was in the past. There wasn’t a fucking thing we could do to help her. Shit, if Bomber was still alive, we couldn’t do shit either. Bomber was our Prez, which meant he had carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Even if that meant offing his old lady who’d cheated on him and had been lying to him about his daughter for years.
Technically, even the Prez was supposed to get a vote from his council when it came to murder. Mostly because we had to be prepared to deal with any backlash from a murder investigation. Also, we dealt with getting rid of bodies on the regular—that wasn’t something the council handled on their own. Once you had power in the MC, dirtying your hands died a death.
But Bomber always had been a wild card, and it was something we all just dealt with because he was one of the Originals. The founding member who’d herded five other brothers together to form the MC back in the day, before spearheading it into the brotherhood it was today.
Because he was a nutcase, there were some messed up rules that, in my time as Prez, I intended to eradicate. Like the way prospects got in by making a kill for the MC. Sure, after you were tied to the Rebels’ for eternity, I had no issue with getting brothers in on murder-for-hire jobs—it was how we’d made our money all these years. But just to get in as prospect? Nah. That was hardcore, but then, that was how Bomber had always rolled.
I couldn’t stop myself from running my hand over her hair, tangling my fingers in the silken locks that I’d missed seeing mussing up my pillows. Shit, you knew you were smitten over a bitch when you even missed all the fucking hair that got clogged in the goddamn drain, or missed seeing her panties sharing space with your laundry.
Christ, how had I lived without her?
My eyes closed of their own volition as need and want and love for her rammed its way home inside me. Like a punch to the gut, I was reminded of all the crazy that Lucie brought to my world. My days had never been predictable when she was around, had never been boring or bland when she was there to fuck shit up for me.
She was my personal Pandora, except I welcomed the chaos, and there was no point in fighting that. No point at all.
“Lucie, baby,” Dagger rasped, when she just sat there shivering on his lap, her arms around me.
We both knew she was crying, but Lucie just didn’t cry. That wasn’t something that was supposed to be in her repertoire, but it figured that after these past couple of months, this news was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
At that moment, I really wanted Ryan to be here. But he’d gone now, and he’d left Lucie in our care.
Our shitty care.
Fuck, if there was ever a time in my life I’d had to man up, it was now. Today.
I had a kid, and her mother needed me. Even though she gave off the impression she needed no one, Lucie was one of the loneliest people I’d ever known.
Unable to stop myself, I dropped my head and pressed a kiss to her crown.
“Everything will be okay, baby,” I rasped.
“You can’t say that,” she whispered. “My entire life is a lie.”
“No. Not all of it. Just some.” I blew out a breath. “And that doesn’t define you either. You’re Lucifer. Doesn’t matter what your last name is, you were born to raise hell, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”