I clamped my lips shut and nodded, motioning for her to go on.
“I got the call from the social worker, asking about my par
ents. At first, I didn’t know what to think, just figured she was a nosy bitch looking for a story to sell to make a few bucks.” She pushed her hair back from her face, and I noticed she looked exhausted. “But when I started telling her to mind her own business, she turned everything upside down.”
“How?”
“Turns out, I have a sister I never knew about.” She glanced away, her throat working. “Had a sister,” she amended. “She died, about eight years ago.”
I crossed the kitchen, wrapping my arms around her. Without hesitation, she hugged me back. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“She was given up for adoption after her mother gave birth to her. Apparently, she’d been underage when she got pregnant. Barely sixteen.” Her arms tightened around me. “That bastard had sex with an underage teen. A little girl.”
“I’m glad he’s dead,” I whispered.
“Me too,” she agreed.
We were both quiet for a few minutes before she spoke again. “My sister was adopted quickly because she was a baby. She grew up and married a man she met her first year of college. They had a daughter. Delaney.” She stroked her hand over my hair lovingly. “But according to the social worker, my sister and her husband were killed in a gas line explosion while on vacation. Delaney was with them, but she survived. Although she did end up with a debilitating injury from the accident.”
“What do you mean?” I murmured as gory pictures filled my head. Could my cousin have lost a limb or been disfigured?
“This is all according to the social worker, but from what she told me, Delaney lost her hearing completely during the explosion. She’s been totally deaf ever since.”
Sympathy filled me. “But she’s alive,” I tried to reassure my mom.
“Yeah, honey,” Mom agreed, giving me a tight smile that quickly turned into a frown. “The social worker explained that the only living relatives she could find at the time were Delaney’s father’s sister and her husband. They took her in, but the social worker didn’t feel right leaving Delaney there. So, she’s been searching for the past eight years in hopes of finding someone else who could take the girl. It was only recently that she found the connection to me and, in desperation, contacted me.”
I stood there listening as she told me how Delaney’s uncle by marriage was a drug dealer who was suspected to be part of a prostitution ring. The social worker had kept up with Delaney for the past eight years, but she recently had lost contact with her. She was eighteen now, had aged out of the system, but the social worker seemed truly caring and concerned for Delaney.
Mom had met up with the social worker, and the two of them had been trying to find out all they could about the man who was supposed to have been taking care of my cousin all these years.
“Why don’t you just tell Dad about all this?” I asked when she told me she’d found out plenty about the drug dealer who was now peddling pussy too, but nothing about her niece.
“Because Colt’s technique to get people to talk won’t get me the answers I need. He will go in, beat the shit out of a bunch of people, probably put a few bullets in someone, and possibly put Delaney in even more danger than she’s already in.” Mom shook her head. “I couldn’t risk that.”
“So, what are you going to do now?”
“After tonight, it’s obvious the motherfucker doesn’t know anything about Delaney. I think she may have run away.” Her face filled with sadness, but there was determination in her eyes when she lifted them to meet mine. “All I can do now is try to find her and pray she’s okay.”
One
River
Pulling my hair up into a ponytail, I frowned down at the schedule in front of me. Uncle Spider had two appointments, but Maverick had four for the evening. Ever since he’d finished his apprenticeship under both his father and then his brother-in-law, Lyric, he’d gotten popular. I booked more appointments for him than I did his dad, but most of them were from college kids.
And eighty percent of those were female.
I knew Mav would never cheat on me, but that didn’t stop the whores from trying to tempt him. I hated when he had to ink a girl. They took one look at my man and decided the best place for their new tattoo was on their boobs, rib cage, or along the top of their bikini line.
Just the week before, he’d had to do one on the top of some chick’s inner thigh, and I’d had to sit out front and listen to her giggle, telling him he was tickling her.
Afterward, once the stupid skank had left, he’d taken one look at my face and pulled me into the storage room, where he fucked me hard against the wall to show me I was the only one he wanted. But that didn’t stop me from getting jealous.
I told myself that once we could be out in the open about our relationship, and I could tell any slutbunny who walked through the door that Maverick Masterson belonged to me, I would calm down. But I knew deep down that even when everyone was finally clued in to the fact that we were together, I was still going to be jealous of every girl who even looked in Mav’s direction.
“Hey, River,” Uncle Spider greeted as he walked through the front door. He rubbed a hand over his shaved head before combing his fingers through his graying beard. Simply put, the MC enforcer was a silver fox. The man was sexy as hell, and other than the fact that Maverick had his mother’s gray eyes, he looked just like his dad. When I saw Uncle Spider, I could picture his son looking just like him when he was the enforcer’s age. “Can you reschedule my second appointment, honey? I have to leave early this evening to take care of something.”
I gave him a smile, already picking up the phone to do as he requested. “No problem.”