The look on Jet’s face only turned colder. “How long?” His eyes were on Raven but the question was directed entirely at me.
I stroked my hand over Raven’s blonde hair, knowing I wouldn’t get to touch it or her for at least a few weeks. Which was probably how long I was going to be in traction once the Hannigan brothers were done with me. “Since her birthday,” I told my MC president honestly.
My answer had Jet’s eyes finally meeting mine. “That long?” His head turned to the side as if he found me curious. He most likely did. I could have lied and told him that I hadn’t touched Raven yet. That I was waiting until I had his and his brother’s permission. Maybe I should have gone that route, but I hadn’t. I’d taken what I wanted and said fuck the consequences.
Consequences that I was going to have to face like a man now.
I nodded. “Yes. That long.”
“I never would have suspected it of you, Bash. The ever loyal enforcer breaking the one rule that would automatically sign your death certificate.” He turned his neck left and right, cracking it. It was a scare tactic.
But I wasn’t scared. As soon as I could walk after the beating I was about to receive, I would get to call Raven mine once and for all.
Willa
I was sound asleep when the phone rang.
I jerked awake and sat straight up in bed. The last time I had gotten a call in the middle of the night was when my mother had died. She’d hung on for eight months before
the cancer had finally taken her from me. Those eight months hadn’t been pretty. I’d tried to take care of her on my own, but one day my mother had asked her doctor to admit her to a local nursing home. She had died three days later. I knew she had done it so that I wouldn’t have to live with the memory of her dying in our house.
Now I wasn’t sure what to expect. My heart was pounding as I reached for the phone. “Hello?”
I felt the blood leaving my face as I listened to the federal agent. There had been a raid on my father’s compound last night and most of his MC were dead. Including my father and sister. Tears burned my eyes as I nodded my head while the special agent continued on and on. I couldn’t have cared less that Tasha was dead, but my father…
“… I was hoping you would be able to assist me in getting ahold of your niece’s father.”
I was snapped out of my grief stupor by the special agent’s request. I knew that Bash Reid was Lexa’s father. Other than that I hadn’t kept up with my sister’s baby daddy issues. The only reason I even knew my niece’s name and that Bash was her father was because I’d overheard Duke telling Clara shortly before my mother had died.
“Is Lexa okay?” Lexa lived at the compound with Tasha and my dad. If that place had been shot up then there was a chance Lexa had gotten hurt as well.
“Your niece is fine, Miss Blackstone. But if I don’t reach her legal guardian in the next few hours I will have no choice but to turn her over to child services.”
Heart pounding for an entirely different reason, I assured the special agent that I would get ahold of Bash as quickly as possible. A glance at the bedside clock told me that it was earlier than I had originally thought. Just after one. I wondered what Bash was doing right now as I punched in his number. I had changed my number when I had gotten back from Vegas two years ago, but I had kept Raider, Bash, and even Spider’s numbers in my phone. Every now and then I would pull up Spider’s number, type out the anger I wanted to throw at him, but never sending the text message.
The phone rang six times before it went to voice mail. I hung up and immediately dialed again. It rang over and over again and I was about to try again when his voice filled my ear. “What?” He practically snarled at me.
“Bash?” I cleared my throat, which was still clogged with tears from finding out my father was gone. “Bash, it’s Willa Blackstone.”
There was a hesitation before he finally answered me. “What’s up, Willa?”
“Lexa needs you. The Red Dragons’ compound was raided last night. Duke and Tasha…are gone.” I heard his shuddery inhale. “Your daughter is going to be put in foster care if you don’t get her.”
He was so quiet for so long that I thought at first he had hung up on me. Then I heard his groan as if he were in pain. A moment later he cursed and told me he was heading to Vegas now. “I don’t know how to take care of a kid though.”
I don’t know why I offered. Maybe it was because Lexa was all the family I had left now. Perhaps it was because I had been lonely for years now, long before my mother had died. “I’ll get the first flight out to Vegas and meet you there. I’ll help you as much as you need, Bash.”
It took a while to get a flight out to Vegas. By the time I got there Bash was already there. Honestly I didn’t know how he was able to stand. His arm was in a cast, his body black and blue. It was obvious someone had beaten the hell out of him, which only confused me. The man was a beast. A whole army had to have jumped him to have beaten him so badly. He wouldn’t talk to me about it though. Just told me to take Lexa back with me on the next flight back to Seattle and he would meet me there.
Bash Reid became my best friend. We talked about everything but Spider and Vegas. Two subjects that were completely off limits. I never did find out who had beaten him so badly, but I could guess it had something to do with Raven Hannigan.
In the beginning Bash sucked as a dad, but he found his footing and became pretty kickass. We lived in my mother’s old house and he went to work at a local garage during the day. On the weekends he was a bouncer at some club in Seattle and we lived pretty comfortably.
He assured me that he was done with the MC lifestyle but I could tell in his heart he wasn’t. So when he got the call from San Quintin I wasn’t surprised when Bash took the offer of being Angel’s Halo’s new president.
Chapter 8
Willa