Biker Stepbrother - Part Two (2 page)

The phone in Holden’s hand began to buzz, cutting him off mid-sentence and rescuing me from the pathetic excuse for a pistol whip he was about to inflict on me for the umpteenth time.

I watched as his lips curled into a menacing grin. “Huh. Imagine that. It’s my
fiancé
.” He held his phone out so I could see the caller ID.

“Hi, darling,” he said, placing the call on speaker.

“Holden, hi, baby. Is now a good time to talk?” Her voice seemed forcibly calm, but I was certain Holden didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to pick up on something like that.

“Now is a perfect time, my love,” he said, oozing slime with every syllable. He brought his finger to his lips to silence his minions.

“I’m at your place,” she said. “I was hoping to find you here. It’s late and you’re out. Where are you?”

She sounded like a concerned girlfriend, though it was plain as day to me that she was playing him like a fiddle.

“I’m just… taking care of some business,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Come home now,” she begged. “I have a surprise for you. I’m sorry for running out the other night. I want to make it up to you. Please. Come quickly.”

“Give me twenty minutes, love,” he said, ending the call. He sauntered over to me with a smugly victorious grin across his pink lips and rubbed his soft hands together. “Well, there we have it, Gray. Guess she wants me back. What can I say? I guess her tastes have… evolved back in the right direction.”

He lowered his face to mine, bearing his teeth like a Chihuahua who didn’t know how little and weak he truly was.

“You’re nothing but a mongrel. A piece of shit,” he seethed. “You’re never going to be good enough for Eve, and you need to leave now. Get out of town. Don’t call her. Don’t contact her. Stay away from my fiancé. Do we have an understanding?”

My face froze in an expressionless pose. I refused to acknowledge someone when they spoke to me like that.

“I said,” he rose his voice. “Do. We. Have. An. Und-”

And then I socked him. My wrists still bound and taped, I socked him with my two clenched fists. I then brought my arms down like a sledgehammer and applied enough force to rip the tape down the middle. His pals stood back in the corner, cowering like a couple of rich pussies while Holden pulled himself up off the ground. Blood dripped from his nose, and judging by the horrified look on his face, he wanted to kill me.

But I wouldn’t allow it. People had tried their hand at killing me before, but no one had gotten the job done. Not yet.

I slipped my feet out of my boots, freeing myself from the chair and charged at Holden. Grabbing him by the collar, I pulled him up off the ground to meet my eyes.

“Let me tell you something, you pink shirt wearing pencil dick cocksucker,” I growled. “You stay away from Everly. She don’t like you. She ain’t one of you. She never will be.”

I unclenched my fist and let him fall to the ground, crumbling in a heap of tremors. I charged toward his friends and they flinched, each of them, with each step I took.

They weren’t worth it.

“Keys,” I said to the driver. He pulled his keychain from his pocket and threw it at me. “Phones.”

I collected each of their phones and shoved them in my pockets before bolting out of the warehouse. As I drove, I did an internet search on one of the phones for the home of Sterling Chadwick, at least that’s who I remembered Everly saying her stepfather was.

I pulled into a gated driveway, backed up, and then reared the Range Rover through the metal gate, knocking it down before entering a circle drive of a mansion in Brentwood. The whitewashed stucco and red-tiled roofing of the sprawling mansion seemed a far cry from the tinned and dented trailer we grew up in.

I pounded on the front door until a petite Hispanic woman opened it, though that late at night I was lucky if anyone answered.

“I’m here to see Everly - I mean Eve,” I said with a sort of determination that seemed to scare her.

She looked me up and down, probably wondering why some rough and tumble leather and tattoos hooligan like me was doing in their pristine neighborhood.

“Eve is not home,” she said, blocking the door with her body.

“I need to know where she is,” I argued. “It’s very important. Her life may be in danger.”

“Rosa, who’s here this late at night?” a woman’s voice said from around the corner. I’d recognize that voice anywhere.

A woman with a face tight and smooth as glass and blonde hair dyed an expensive shade emerged from behind the Hispanic woman. Her lithe body was wrapped in a satin robe and her face fell the moment she saw me, like she was looking at a ghost.

“Tammy-Dawn,” I said.

“Gray.” Her hand flew to her chest, but she didn’t seem happy to see me. She turned to her employee. “Rosa, it’s okay. Go back to your quarters please.”

To my surprise, she let me in and led me to the kitchen table. She took a seat next to me and cupped her head on her hand as she stared long and hard.

“You look just like your father,” she said. Although her voice was the same, her words were different. She sounded like she came from money and privilege. It was all an act.

“You look nice, Tammy-Dawn,” I said.

“It’s Tamara,” she corrected me. “Tamara Chadwick. I haven’t been Tammy-Dawn since I don’t know when.”

“Since the night you left,” I said.

She placed her hand over mine. “Thank you, Gray. Thank you for telling me what you did, when you did. Who knows where we’d have ended up. What horrible things would’ve happened to my Eve.”

I nodded.

“I try not to think about that life,” she admitted, keeping her voice low as her eyes danced around the room to make sure we were alone. “I get so angry at myself for putting me and my daughter in that situation.”

“Looks like you’ve more than made up for that.”

She smiled as she ran her manicured fingers along the polished wood of the mahogany table. “I’ve worked hard to get us this life.”

Hard on her back.

“I’ll do anything to keep it,” she added, her eyes squaring with mine and her face hardening. “You can’t be around us, Gray. We don’t associate with our former lives.”

Her words cut through my chest like a jagged knife, and my jaw clenched in response.

“Your daughter’s in danger,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose. “How so?”

“That Holden is a psychopath,” I said. “He kidnapped me.”

A boisterous laugh flew from her lips and she slapped her knee. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in my life. Holden’s an angel. A fine young man. That’s why he’s marrying her.”

I didn’t have time to argue with an idiot. “She doesn’t want to marry him.”

“Don’t you think I know that? A mother always knows her daughter’s heart.”

“It’s not your decision to make. It’s hers. Shame on you for guilting her into anything she don’t want to do.”

Tamara rolled her eyes. “You can say all you want. You can lay the guilt on me as thick as you possibly can. It won’t change a damn thing. She’s marrying Holden. That’s all there is to it. Now, if you could kindly leave.”

“It’s been over an hour,” I said to Alfonso. “He said he’d been here in twenty minutes.”

Alfonso peered out the curtains of Holden’s living room windows and looked down toward the street.

“I don’t think he’s coming,” I said.

“Try calling him again.”

I dialed his number. No answer.

“Something’s going on,” I said, fearing the worst. Holden was a very jealous man and I could only imagine the extremes he would go to to secure the thing he wanted the most: me. “I have to get Sterling involved. He’s the only one who can talk some sense into Holden.”

Alfonso and I headed towards the mansion in Brentwood, and my stomach dropped the second I saw Dalton’s gray Range Rover in the driveway.

“He’s here,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and slowly climbing out. I tried asking myself why he’d have run to Sterling before coming to me. Nothing was adding up. Nothing made sense.

Unless Sterling was in on it too…

Alfonso followed me inside, where voices were echoing from the kitchen area.

“Mom?” I called out.

I rounded the corner only to see Gray and Mom in a heated discussion.

“Gray,” I wrapped my arms around him and breathed him in, squeezing him tighter than I’d ever squeezed anyone in my entire life. I pulled away and cupped his strong jaw in my hands. “You’re okay?”

He nodded. “I’m fine. Your mother on the other hand, she’s on a train to crazy town and there’s no way to stop her.”

I glanced at my mom who held her phone in her hand. Judging by the crazy look in her eyes, she was about to call the cops on Gray. He must’ve said something to piss her off, which wasn’t hard. The only thing that truly pissed Tammy-Dawn Conners off was when someone pointed out the ugly truths she tried so hard to bury along with her dirty past.

“What is Alfonso doing here?” Mom’s jaw hung half open.

“What is going on here?” a voice boomed from the hallway. We all peered behind us to see Sterling staggering toward us in his bathrobe, his white hair disheveled every which way.

“Holden kidnapped Gray,” I blurted, giving him the condensed version.

“Who is Gray?” Sterling asked, his eyes adjusting to the light.

I slipped my arm behind Gray’s back. “He’s my... my friend. My…”

I didn’t know what the hell he was to me anymore. All I knew was I loved him more than anyone in the whole world.

“What’s this about Holden?” Sterling asked. Of course Holden would be his main concern. Holden was his fucking golden child.

“I’m sorry, Sterling. Mom. I’m not marrying Holden,” I said. Gray pulled me tight in a supportive move. He had my back. He always did.

Mom’s glare burned holes in my back. I could feel their heat. Sterling raked his fingers through his thinning hair, looking as if someone told him the stock market had just collapsed. He took a seat in a nearby chair at the table.

“You don’t love Holden?” Sterling looked crushed, and in that moment, I realized I cared more about hurting Sterling than my own mom. But it didn’t change anything.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I don’t love him.”

“I thought you two were crazy about each other,” he said, scratching his head and crinkling his nose. “That’s why I made him a junior executive at the company. That’s why I was setting you up for a good life, Eve.”

“You did that for me?” I asked. All along I’d thought he was doing it because Holden’s dad was his best friend.

“I did,” Sterling said. “I figured when I’m long gone, Holden could take over the company, which would be in your name of course, and you’d be set for life.”

It felt as if someone had thrown a bag of bricks at my chest, and my feet wanted to give out from under me. Sterling was a good man. A very good man. My mother didn’t deserve him.

“Can you do me a favor tomorrow morning?” I dared asked.

“Anything, princess.” Sterling’s blue eyes gazed up at me in a fatherly sort of way. A decade of being married to my mom, he always treated me like his biological daughter. Sometimes I regretted never calling him “dad”. He was the closest thing I ever had to one.

“Fire that fucker,” I gritted.

Sterling laughed and everyone seemed to lighten up around us. My mother stayed quiet, as if she were trying to process the entire thing. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at the woman who was ready to obliterate my future all so she could live comfortably well into her golden years.

She deserved to be out on the street.

“Consider it done,” Sterling said, rising up from his seat. He walked toward me and wrapped me in a hug. We didn’t hug much if ever, but it seemed appropriate in that moment. “I’m so sorry I misunderstood what you wanted, sweetheart.”

I clenched my eyes and breathed him in. I’d never told him I loved him before, but it lingered on the tip of my tongue for just a moment until he pulled himself away.

“If you’ll all excuse me, I’m heading back to bed. I’ve got an early conference call in the morning with China,” he said, shuffling off to bed.

“Alfonso, can you give us a lift back to the hotel?” I asked.

“Where are you going?” Mom interjected, her eyes still wild with disbelief at what had just transpired.

“It doesn’t concern you,” I spewed at her, turning back toward the guys. The three of us headed toward the front door, my mom following behind, throwing down remark after remark.

“Don’t do it, Eve,” she begged. “Don’t get messed up in the gang. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Women are second-class citizens. They don’t care about us. Don’t be an idiot and don’t believe a single promise he makes. He’s just like his piece of shit daddy…”

Her word vomit continued long after we left the house and shut the door. Alfonso dropped us off at the hotel, where we gathered the rest of Gray’s things and hopped on his bike.

“You need shoes,” I said. “How did I not see that? And how did that…?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

We pulled into a big box store, where I ran in and got him a pair of size 13 leather boots, and he gratefully slipped them on.

“Was needing a new pair anyway,” he said.

“Do you care if I run over to Skylar’s real quick?” I asked. “Before we leave town? I should probably tell her goodbye.”

“Skylar?”

“My best friend.”

His bike rumbled and groaned across town, the wind blowing in my hair felt like it was peeling off my old layers so the new ones could emerge. Within minutes, he’d parked in Skylar’s parking lot, and I ran up to her door.

“Eve?” Skylar pried the door open. It was late. Maybe eleven. She’d been sleeping.

“I’m so sorry to stop by so late,” I said. “Can I come in for a sec?”

“Um, yeah, okay, sure,” Skylar’s words fumbled as she let me in.

I took a seat on her sofa, the spot on the end was practically worn from all the talks we’d had over the years. I ran my fingers over the soft microfiber.

“Everything okay?” she asked, reaching over and clicking on the lamp on the side table.

“I’m leaving town for a bit,” I said, watching her face for a reaction. “I just wanted to say bye for now.”

Skylar shook her head and scrunched her nose. “What? Wait…”

She lifted her hand to tuck a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and that’s when I saw it. A glimmer of sparkle and shine on her left ring finger reflected off the lamplight and nearly blinded me from across the room.

“Skylar? What’s on your finger…” I stood up to walk closer to her, but she yanked her hand behind her back like a child hiding a stolen toy. I reached for her arm and pulled her hand to my face. There it was. The diamond ring I’d seen in the Cartier box in Holden’s sock drawer. “Huh.”

Skylar’s hand trembled a bit, like a girl who’s biggest secret had suddenly come to light, and I suddenly remembered the fact that she’d bailed out of the proposal dinner on account of having a stomach ache. She loved Holden. She loved him so much she couldn’t bear to watch him propose to me.

“This from Cartier?” I asked. I wondered how long they’d been secretly engaged and what exactly Holden was planning to do about having two fiancés, but then I realized none of it mattered anymore.

Skylar bit her lip, not answering me, and focused on the carpet beneath our feet.

“It’s beautiful, Sky. I mean, really. Beautiful. You and Holden are going to have a lovely life together. Congrats.” I released her hand in haste and gathered my composure, shocked that it didn’t hurt me the way it should have. Had I loved Holden, truly loved him, I’d have been crying. Instead, a smile spread across my lips. It was a simple twist of fate, but a perfect one at that. Those two truly deserved each other.

Good riddance.

I showed myself out and climbed back onto Gray’s bike.

“Everything go okay?” he asked as he started it up. The vibration of the bike rumbled beneath me, and I could feel it inside me as well. Every nerve and cell of my body was alive with a sort of vibrant energy I’d never felt in my life.

“Everything went exactly the way it was supposed to go,” I said, resting my cheek against his back.

Into the night we drove. Hours and hours of black sky and twinkling stars and dust and wind and road. Gray said we were headed east, and I didn’t ask any more questions. I trusted him with my life, and I didn’t care where we were going as long as I was with him.

He was the one person who’d never let me down.