Chapter 21
Kelli
With Colt’s hand firmly on my hip, I watched Hank as he spoke to the bikers. The threat in his voice was subtle, but still cocked and loaded. My skin itched, feeling stretched and tight over muscle and bones. There was no mistaking how nervous this man made me, and Colt and his people needed to take him a hell of a lot more seriously than they currently were.
Hank Badcock was the devil. However bad they might consider Vito Vitucci, they needed to multiply it by ten and maybe—just maybe—they would come close to how dangerous this man was.
I only knew the man for less than a year when I was twelve, but that was all the time I needed to conclude I never wanted to get on his bad side. For one all-too-brief moment, Mom had said goodbye to Calvin, and Hank became a constant in our lives. It wasn’t until later that I realized Mom only hooked up with Hank to piss off Calvin, but during the time they were together, she had seemed genuinely happy.
Hank treated my mom like gold. For the months they were together, I got a taste of what it felt like to have a family. To have a dad. He became Uncle Hank, and for the first time in my life, I had a man care about what happened to me. He took care of me like I was his own, and in my innocence, I even wished he really was my father.
Then I got a glimpse of his world. It was dark and dirty and more disturbing than anything I ever could have imagined.
Yet…
Yet, I’d still wanted to be his daughter.
Then Mom dumped him, and he disappeared from our lives. For months afterward, I looked for him, hoping he would come back. I hadn’t seen him again until now.
I didn’t know whether to be pissed that he’d walked away from Mom and me so easily, without so much as a backward glance, or apologetic for how she broke his heart. I didn’t know what happened between them, but one day Hank lived with us, and the next Calvin was back in Mom’s bed.
My struggle must have been on my face, because his brown eyes softened. “The press will be having a field day by now, looking for the leak to the political story of the decade. You should lie low for a while until this passes, Kelli.”
“That’s my plan,” I assured him.
“Come with me. I’ll take care of you. You know I have the resources to keep anything from touching you.”
His voice was so soothing, so tempting, that I found myself actually taking a step toward him.
Colt’s hand tightened on my hip. The bat in his other hand hit the ground, and he grabbed me with that one too, lifting me off the ground and tossing me over his shoulder. “Fuck that shit,” he snarled as he marched across the street to my car. “You’re not going anywhere, especially with that old motherfucker.”
I landed with a thump in the passenger’s seat just as the door slammed in my face. “What are you doing?” I yelled, opening the door and trying to get out. “I need to talk to him!”
He pushed me back in and thrust his face in close to mine. “For once in your life, keep your goddamn ass in that seat and don’t move.” Stepping back, he slammed the door again, hitting the lock on my key fob every time I tried to open it until he was behind the wheel.
“I’m taking her back to the clubhouse,” Colt called to the others. “Get rid of him.”
I didn’t have time to try to escape as he started the car and left skid marks getting us out of there. I sat in the passenger’s seat, fuming as he drove. “You had no right to take me away from that conversation. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father figure in my life. He would have helped me out. I trust him.”
“Do you really?” he sounded skeptical. And pissed. Very, very pissed. “Because not five minutes ago, you were about to piss your pants when you realized who was in that SUV.”
“He’s fine if you don’t get on his bad side,” I tried to explain.
“So is the devil.” His fingers flexed around the wheel. “Is he really your uncle?”
“No. He hooked up with my mom for a while when I was a kid. He took good care of us. I took it rougher than Mom when they broke up.”
“Why did they break up?”
My lips twisted. “No clue. Mom called it off. Hank left. The next day, Calvin was back.” And I cried myself to sleep for a week. Because with Hank gone and Mom not so much as blinking unless Calvin said it was okay, I was once again left all alone. “My guess is she was paying Calvin back for something. He must have really pissed her off for her to find a new lover for nearly a year.”
“Who the hell is he, Kell?” He reached for my hand, and I didn’t fight him when he brought it to his lips, his voice softening but still thick with hurt as he asked the next question. “And why the fuck would you go with him when you won’t even think about staying with me?”
My heart gave a small, violent jolt at the pain I read in his green eyes. Ever since he said those three words I was sure he couldn’t possibly mean, my heart had started acting stupidly. Like melting. And making me question if maybe staying with him was an option, after all.
No.
I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t let him have that kind of control over me. Just because he said he loved me didn’t mean it was the truth.