Beauty & The Biker

Chapter 1

TRISTIAN

“Get in here boy,” my bastard of a father bellows from his chamber. I can hear him hacking and coughing quietly as I draw near his door.

“What do you want old man?”

“Got a payment need you to collect for me. The Perez family, you remember them?”

“What about them?” I ask taking the chair at his bedside. I remember them. The grandmother, Iris, used to be our housekeeper when I was a child. I played with her youngest granddaughter often. How could I ever forget her? Isabella is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She isn’t a girl anyone could easily forget.

“Hector owes me a large sum. If he doesn’t pay up in full you are to collect his youngest child and bring her to me. She should be of age to give me a worthy heir.” He coughs and spits blood into a small trash can by the bed. “She is the rarest beauty I’ve ever seen. She will produce a strapping Vandacamp.”

My father, if you can really call him that, doesn’t see me as a fit heir in his eyes. I was sickly as a child.

When I was ten years old, walking became unbearable. I began walking on my tiptoes at first. It relieved some of the pain. A year and a half later after many tests, the doctors found that I had a mass pressing on my lower spine that was pinching my nerves, causing walking to be severely painful.

The mass was so large they weren’t sure how to proceed. I was taken out of school and placed on homebound. I was wheelchair bound, sick, depressed, and lonely. Iris Perez arranged for her granddaughter Isabella to play with me a few days a week after school, she would bring the girl with her when she would clean.

Isa was younger than I was but we had already become friends, she had come by with her Grandma on many occasions, we had been playmates for years. I would play the piano for her and she would read to me. Her favorite story was about The Pumpkin King. She had said I looked a lot like him, with the pale shade of my skin and the dark circles rimming my tired eyes.

We became inseparable. She gave me a reason to get out of bed when I thought I was going to die. The doctors weren’t sure if I would ever walk again. My mother was crushed. My father had seen me as a stain on his perfect life. My parents fought a lot because of my tumor. My sperm donor would beat my mother if she tried to comfort me or take care of me. Father said if I were his son, I wouldn’t need help. I wouldn’t be sick. I’d be strong as an ox.

But I was weak.

I was sick.

I was dying a slow death from the inside out.

With all that I had going on, I was so dependent on Isa. She loved me and I loved her, even if we didn’t understand what our feelings meant at the time. She was mine and I was hers. She was my princess and I was her Pumpkin King.

Isa was there when my father would do horrible things. My father tried to say I must not be his son. He couldn’t make a sick kid. No Vandacamp man would ever have legs that didn’t work. He said it must be because of my unfaithful mother and her soiled, white woman’s blood. My father said he should have married a purebred Spanish speaking woman, instead of his white whore.

How soon he forgets he is the one who isn’t a true Vandacamp it’s my mother’s family name, it’s my mother’s family money too. She had to marry Angelo to come into her inheritance. The way the inheritance was written up, only a male Vandacamp can inherit, but if a daughter is the only living heir of age then she must marry a man to take her place. Fucking ridiculous. So my dick of a father took the family name and all that came with the title.

I don’t resemble either of my parents. At least not anymore. I’m no longer that sick little boy that could barely hold his head up.

It took some time, but the radiation treatments the physicians gave me were a success in shrinking the tumor enough to attempt removing the growth, and I was going to get my surgery that could save my life, and give me back my legs. The only catch was it meant going away and having to leave Isa, for a long time. But it also meant my mother and I escaping my father. He couldn’t be bothered to come with us. He had more important things to worry about, like his many mistresses.

While I was away my father filed for legal separation from my mother. We stayed away and I remained in my mother’s care until she died in a fatal car accident when I was sixteen. I came home to my estranged father, a miserable man, who hated the very sight of me and a thirteen-year-old Isa, who didn’t remember me.

My father laughed in my face when I told him I wanted to see Isa. He said, “boy, that girl don’t want nothing to do with you. She figured out what a loser you are. A girl as beautiful as her can’t be bothered with a waste like you. Go see her, I guarantee she snubs her nose at you.”

So I did. I went to see her determined to prove him wrong. Isa would be happy to see me. When I said hello to her at the bookstore she scrunched her nose up and said, “who are you?” All the wind was knocked out of me. “Who are you?” Who am I? I was her best friend. I was the boy she said was her

forever.

Sure we were too old for fairytales but I thought we had an unbreakable bond.

Brokenhearted and stunned by her behavior, I returned home for my father to ignore me, like the piece of garbage he swore I was.

Even though I was fully recovered and able to walk, Angelo wouldn’t accept me as his son. Rejected and lost I joined the Depraved Sinners MC, determined to make myself worthy of my old man’s approval. That sick little boy persevered and when all that I loved was lost to me, I turned into a man to be feared. For the past ten years I have suffered his insults and berating daily, waiting for him to die. Waiting for my chance to make him and Isa pay.

Somewhere along the way I lost myself, but my love for Isa has haunted me, choking me in my bed at night, with memories of her, and dreams of what should have been. I’ll be damned if my father takes her for himself. I’ll make Isa remember and I’ll make damned sure she never forgets.

Standing up, I tower over the man, who refused to help my mother raise me, the man who wished I were dead, the man who thought I’d never live past twelve years old and I lean in real close to his face. “Isa will never belong to you. She WAS and ALWAYS will be MINE. The only child she will ever bear will have my blood coursing through his veins.”

Reaching for the pillow his head is resting on I want to smother him.

“You gonna kill me, you ungrateful little bastard. Then get on with it, but if I die so does all of my money. It’s in my Will. If I die before I produce an heir, my money will be given to charity and the mansion will be sold at auction. You didn’t think I’d leave my legacy to you did you?”

His legacy? I want to laugh in his face. That money should have belonged to my mother. “Was just adjusting it so you can sit up father. I know how you like to look out the window in the morning,” I say grinning at him. He thinks he is so fucking smart.

“You never were much to look at and now you’ve gone and made yourself unbearable to tolerate the sight of. Go on and get gone and collect what’s owed. If you want that little cunt then bring her here and if she falls in love with you, and gives you a worthy child before I die, then you will inherit everything for your child. I don’t want to see you pussy footing and romancing her either Tristian. I’ll be watching you. She’ll never have you looking the way you do no how. She only ever felt sorry for you and was glad when you left. She couldn’t wait to be rid of you. You didn’t know what to do with that girl when I gave her to you the first time. Doubt you’ll know now.”

**

“Mr. Perez, my father intends to collect on the loan he gave you years ago. I am here on his behalf. Hector looks exhausted mentally and physically. His business is failing and he is drowning in debt.

“I need more time. I have an appointment with my loan officer at the bank in a few weeks. Just give me until then.” Hector can’t pay the loan, the bank won’t give him any more money, I’ve already made sure of that. I’ve been watching him now for three years. Ever since I found out he owed a debt to my old man, I’ve been planning on how to use it to my gain. Now the opportunity is here and I intend on taking full advantage.

“I can do that, but my father won’t be happy Mr. Perez. Do you have anything to pay to show good faith? I don’t need to remind you of the deal you made with my father,” I warn as his tan face falls ashen.

“I’m well aware. I know the consequences.”

“I’ll be back, one month,” I remind him when he doesn’t say anything else or offer any form of payment. One month should be enough time to accomplish everything I have planned. In a few weeks, I will have Isabella Perez indebted to me.

I nod as he goes back to playing solitaire on his computer and I step out into the alley behind the bookstore that Hector and Rosa Perez opened with my father’s money, and pull out my cell. “Giovanni, you in your office today? Excellent, I’ll be by in a few.”

Giovanni is the brother of an associate to my club. He’s the kind of man who would rather gouge out your eyes for looking at him cross eyed. He also has a lot of connections, connections that I need to bring me into my inheritance.

But first I need to make a huge withdrawal from the bank. Giovanni won’t betray Angelo Vandacamp without heavy persuasion and I also need to make sure Mr. Perez’s appointment with the loan officer goes in my favor.