Nobody in the club knew that. Becker had never told a soul.
As Eight paused on the street and pushed the button to open the clubhouse parking-lot gate, he studied the little silver-blue Honda CR-V parked on the street in front of the building.
At this hour, late on a Monday morning, the street was mostly empty. The clubhouse was quiet, those neighbors who had cars were probably at work, and the other businesses on this little street either had off-street parking or didn’t do much business at this time of day. In any event, nobody parked in front of the Bulls clubhouse unless they were attached to the club or had business there.
Considering the fuckery of the night just past, that compact SUV had his full attention.
It wouldn’t be Tulsa PD, but it could be Feds. If they still had anybody in the area sniffing around the club a year after the Perros, last night could have given them a big hit of stink. But even undercover Feds didn’t drive little chick SUVs like that.
Unless it was a chick Fed.
Sucking a big breath into his weary lungs, fighting the urge to turn his bike around and just go the fuck home, Eight pulled into the lot and closed the gate. He parked and dismounted, wincing as he forced his bad leg over the bike.
He was almost to the side door when something moved at the corner of his eye. Turning in that direction, he saw somebody had come up from the front of the building and was standing just on the other side of the eight-foot chain link.
Eight probably needed glasses, but he hadn’t given in to that old man shit yet. He squinted and took a couple steps toward the front, his gun hand lifting from pure instinct, getting ready to go for his Walther if he needed it.
He didn’t need it.
Marcella was standing on the other side of the gate, looking at him.
Her dark hair was loose, lifting lightly around her face and shoulders in the chilly fall breeze. He liked it better curly and wild, but straightened like this it looked classy. A pair of sunglasses held it back off her forehead.
Regular denim jeans, not leather, but still tight, covered her long legs and perfect ass. High heeled black shoes, probably boots, made her legs and ass look even better. She wore a black leather jacket, biker style; her arms were crossed over it.
She was such a fucking gorgeous woman.
During the brief weeks when they were doing something that might be called dating, Eight had tried some sexy talk where he’d whispered all the things about her he thought were hot. One of the things he’d said was how her skin looked like caramel candy and tasted just as sweet.
That had very much been a wrong thing to say. Damn, had it ruined the mood, and instead of getting off in that great ass, he’d been treated to a lecture about how demeaning it was to call a Black woman’s skin food.
He hadn’t even thought of her as Black until that night. He still wasn’t sure why what he’d said was such a big deal, and he didn’t know another word to say to describe that beautiful color, which he loved. But he’d never said it again.
Social rules had always bewildered him, even when he tried to get them right. It was so much easier not to give a fuck.
But right now, that was not his biggest problem. What the fuck was Marcella doing at the clubhouse, a place she had never in her life been before?
With another exhausted sigh, he limped down the walk to the small walk-in gate beside the cantilevered one he’d ridden through.
Marcella watched him come. When he was close enough to see her face, the deep frown on it made him sigh again.
Before he could ask what she wanted, or even say hello, she said, “We need to talk, Edgar.”
He could not begin to explain how much he despised that name, how many shitty old monsters clawed through his brain every time he heard it. Only one person in the whole world had permission to call him Edgar, and she only said it when he was especially low and she was pulling him into a hug to tell him he was loved, all the way to his core. When Mo Delaney called him Edgar, she reached back to his earliest days and pushed away all the times that name had been a weapon.
Marcella knew he hated it. She didn’t know why, but she knew he did. She used itbecausehe hated it. Like a weapon.
Holy shit, this was a bad day.
CHAPTER SIX
Marcella couldn’t believe she was here, at the Brazen Bulls clubhouse. She couldn’t believe she was actually considering, even vaguely, letting Eight Ball into her son’s life. What, exactly, had he done to deserve that? It sure as fuck wasn’t leaving his sperm behind, and that was the single fucking fatherly thing he’d done.
He’d done exactly nothing to deserve this.
But she wasn’t here for him. She was here for Ajax, to help him decide if he wanted to know his father—and that, he absolutely deserved to decide for himself.
Eight squinted at her through the chain link. Marcella squinted back.