“Think again, motherfucker.” He reached into his wallet, withdrew something, and held it up in the slanted beam of light. I squinted and looked close. When I realized what it was, I felt my whole body shrivel and grow cold.
It was a picture of Carmen.
There was no doubt it was the same girl. Those eyes, that skin, that hair—she was unforgettable. She’d been a constant figure in my dreams over the last four months since I’d first laid claim to her. I’d texted her again and again, called her, but she’d never answered. Now I knew why.
She was the daughter of my sworn enemy.
“You used her,” he said. “And now she’s carrying your bastard.”
His words hit me hard. If the realization that Carmen was James’s daughter had knocked me sideways, then the accusation that she was pregnant with my child was the knockout punch. My legs felt weak. I fell to my knees in the dirt, eyes unfocused, trying to process what he’d just said. The knife dropped from my suddenly slack fingers. “My…what?”
“You heard me, Killmore. She’s pregnant. It’s yours.”
It couldn’t be true. No chance. This kind of thing just didn’t happen to me. I’d been reckless plenty of times before, but it had always turned out fine.
This girl, though. This girl was different. Of course things would be different. Of course this would be the one occasion when I couldn’t just walk away from the whole mess. Or could I?
“Okay, James. Let’s say it is mine. That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
“I’m here to tell you that if you don’t marry her, I’m going to crush you and your club. I’ll stake every one of your brothers’ heads out in my front yard as a warning to all the rest of the world that there are some lines that cannot be crossed.”
I was speechless. “Marry her? Are you fucking insane?”
He reached down and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, hauling me to my feet. I grabbed his wrists and peeled them off of me, but our strength was equally matched. We stood there, arms flexed and eyes narrowed in mutual hatred. I wanted to skin the son of a bitch, and I knew without question that he would do the same to me, given the chance.
So why the fuck was he here, demanding that I marry his daughter?
“I won’t have my family name sullied,” he spat. “You’re the lowest scum I know. You’re a thief, a womanizer, a goddamn walking cunt if I’ve ever seen one. But the only thing worse than my daughter being married to you would be for her not to be married at all. I won’t have a whore for a daughter and a bastard for a grandson. Which is why I want you to listen to this threat very carefully, Ben. And make no mistake, it is a threat. If you don’t do as I say, if you don’t marry Carmen, I will make it my life’s work to bleed you dry. Do you hear me? Do you see how serious I am?”
His eyes were the same grey as Carmen’s. But whereas on her they were rich with life and spark, his were flat. Cold. Deadly. He meant every word he was saying. And he could do it, too. He might destroy his own club in the process, but he was capable of following through on his word. At best, it would be a long, violent war of attrition. At worst, he would eradicate the Dark Knights from the face of the earth. And the whole city might burn in the process.
At the same time, how could I say yes to such an unreasonable proposal? I’d just been with Dina and her son. I’d just sworn that I couldn’t do to another woman what Olaf had done to his family. This life was mine and mine alone. It didn’t matter that Carmen had stirred up shit inside me I’d never known or wanted to know was there. I wasn’t enough of a selfish bastard to drag her into my darkness.
I heard voices behind me raising in alarm. “Prez! Ben, what the fuck? Get away from him, you cocksucker!” Footsteps slammed into the turf as Slick and a few others came racing across the yard.
James shook me. “Answer me. Give me your word, right now, you worthless piece of shit.”
My men surrounded us. Two of them pulled out guns and pointed them at James’s head. They were good men, my brothers. They didn’t deserve to fight a bloody, nonsensical war because of something I did. I owed them that much.
“Okay,” I choked. “Okay, you bastard. Let go of me. I’ll do it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carmen
Two Weeks Later
“I can’t do it,” I whispered. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Carmen,” Lori whispered. She carefully reached up a hand and brushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen from the complex bun wound around the back of my head. Smoothing the veil into place, she kept repeating that. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”