Good Gone Bad (The Fallen Men 3)

“Yeah, brother,” Danner agreed easily then looked over my shoulder. “You cool with that, Prez?”

“Sure the girl’s mum would like to spend more time with ’er. Why don’t you leave her here while we finish up our business? Won’t take long.”

It was formed like a question, but we had no choice.

My heart was lurching in my chest, overtaxed by the amount of excitement I’d had that day.

“She’s tired, Prez,” Danner tried again.

It was the wrong move.

Reaper’s anger lashed through the air. “Don’t give a fuck, do I, boy? Now get your asses in here and Harleigh Rose go on up to your mother.”

We trudged in dutifully, Wrath letting me go so that they could follow Reaper into the “chapel,” a room in each biker clubhouse designated for just the patched-in members of the club, where they held their meetings.

I went up the stairs to find Farrah.

She was in Reaper’s bedroom, a master suite at the back of the house that was covered in biker girl posters and strewn with dirty clothes.

My mother sat in the middle of the bed wearing black fishnets and lingerie.

“Jesus, do you seriously just hang out like that?” I asked, covering my eyes against the sight.

She laughed. “Word of advice, Harleigh, this is how you keep a man.”

“Don’t need your help with that. Can you please cover up?”

She sighed, but I heard the rustle as she got off the bed. “Yes, I heard you kept a man for four years. Impressive, I guess, if you hadn’t let him beat on you. You never did learn anything I tried to teach you.”

When I was little, and my mother was being wicked or drunk and cruel, I came up with a game to distract myself. I tried to think of a positive memory and match it to a song.

I thought of that morning waking up in Danner’s bed, of his fingers binding me to the cabinets and his mouth on my pussy, his cock in my cunt after so many years of wishing for exactly that.

I came up with a song by one of Cressida’s favourite artists, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis.

The song started playing softly in my head as Farrah, finally covered by a silk black robe, continued her lecture.

“You never should have left me, prettiness, I would have taught you how to be a woman. Instead, you’ve become this rough, biker thing,” she waved her hand, bangles jangling and I thought about how I wanted to rip those cheap bracelets off and choke her with them.

“Oh, I listened to the lessons you taught, Farrah,” I said through gritted teeth. “I listened to the one about not doing drugs that you taught me when you’d overdosed three times by the time I was ten. I listened to the one about being careful not to drive away a good man, the best man by being unfaithful in all the ways that word means. And most of all, I learned that just because you think you’re a good person, it doesn’t mean you are because nothing you’ve ever done has been good or honest, and the fact that you don’t even seem to understand that makes it so much worse.”

Farrah stared at me for a long moment, her cruel face impassive, before she sighed. “You always were dramatic.”

“I’m not dramatic, I’m right,” I hissed.

I didn’t want to be there after the night I’d had, seeing King fall to Wrath’s punch, watching Axe-Man get shot in the gut by a man I despised while I just lay in the dirt doing nothing. I wanted to go home.

Not my apartment, Cricket had taken the home out of that place.

No, I wanted to get on the back of Lion’s bike and ride with him to his little house, open the door to greet a happy Hero, take the punishment Danner was probably at the moment thinking up for me, and then fall exhausted into bed with him.

Instead, Elvis kept crooning in my head and my mother kept running her mouth.

“You don’t get this because you were too young, but your daddy was a beast. He ordered me around like I was his fucking slave and then he took my kids from me!”

“He took us because you were a washed up, abusive, drug abuser,” I told her flatly. “And I don’t see you complaining about Jacob. He took Honey from you too.”

“Yeah, well karma got the bastard. He died of a fucking car crash when Honey was five and I got ’er back.”

“And look at her now! She’s a high school dropout, drug-addicted porn star.”

“It’s just a phase,” Farrah said, arranging herself back on the bed as if she was the queen of fucking Sheba. “You’re clearly going through one now too. Don’t worry, you stick with your Mama and I’ll get you through the other side.”