Loving little puppy?The only person he had ever followed around with complete and utter devotion like a loving fucking puppy was the woman right in front of him. Daisy was his world.
She was everything to him. Since they were kids, he had loved her. There was no one else. It was always Daisy. Always her. No one else.
He grabbed her arm as she went to walk away, but all of a sudden, his name was called.
Anthony saw his dad standing there.
“My office, now.”
He looked toward Daisy, and he hated that she looked relieved at the interruption. Not good. Pressing her up against the wall, he slammed his lips down on hers, kissing her hard and deep, feeling her hands as they moved toward his chest, but she didn’t push him away. He would’ve stopped if she tried. It would have been hard for him to do, but when it came to Daisy, he would do anything.
“This is not about Tabitha. This is about you and me.”
He took a step away, and he couldn’t look back. Walking away from Daisy was not what he did. Not ever.
Lash stood in his office, leaning against his desk, arms folded. “Close the door.”
Anthony did and then stepped a few feet into the room.
“Take a seat.” Lash pointed at the sofa, and Anthony lowered himself to it.
Lash grabbed a couple of items off his desk and then moved toward him. “I don’t want you to say a word. I know you hate conversations, so we’re going to keep this short and sweet. I’ll be the one to do the talking, and you can just listen.”
A small leather cut was placed on his lap. Anthony recognized it as his young boyhood cut. The one they all had gotten as kids as a present. He’d loved the cut. It had made him realize at a young age that he’d wanted to be like his father. A member of The Skulls, earning his patch. Being a fully fledged member. He didn’t care that it meant his life would potentially be in danger or that someone was going to want to kill him all the time. None of that had mattered to him.
None of it had. All he’d cared about was being a Skull.
It had taken him some time to grow out of the leather cut, but it had happened. They had all been given new ones, marking them as one of their own.
Anthony didn’t touch the jacket. On top of it, Lash slid a photograph album across his lap.
“Open it, look at the pictures, and I want you to really see them.”
Anthony didn’t want to do this. He knew exactly what his dad was trying to do, and he wasn’t going to be surprised. The Skulls MC had grown more than just being a club intent on revenge.
He opened the book and stared at the pictures. A lot had been destroyed when an attack had happened on the clubhouse. The few pictures had been saved by sheer miracle.
Some of the people, Anthony had never gotten to know. They had lost people on both sides.
He saw a picture of Murphy before he got his scars. Anthony knew even his own mother, Angel, had gotten scars of her own. She hadn’t come out of any of the attacks unscathed.
Lash didn’t speak, and Anthony turned the pages. It wasn’t an overly large book, but inside, he saw the memories as well as the pain.
By the time he got to the last page, silence filled the room. He waited for his dad to talk. To say something.
Lash took the book, put it on the coffee table, and then gripped the leather cut in his hands. “I remember when you were just a boy and you got this. Your mother could never take it off you. You wore it with your head held high. You were so proud of what it meant. You were my firstborn son. I knew the moment you put this on, you were going to follow in my footsteps.”
“Dad?”
“Shut up,” Lash said. “You listen, I know you’re good at that. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on in your head? That I’m too stupid to see what you want to do?”
Anthony stayed silent. He hadn’t thought his dad was stupid, just busy dealing with everything else. “Do you think that it’s not something I want to do as well?”
Anthony turned to his dad, a little surprised.
Lash was always levelheaded. Always seeing the bigger picture. Putting the club first before his own needs. It was what he did all the time.
“Yeah, I can tell you that from the moment I learned the truth of what happened, all I wanted to do was kill.” Lash held his hands open. “It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’m used to doing.” He pointed at the book. “Back then, I wouldn’t have even hesitated. I would’ve been on my bike, and all of them would have been dead. No questions asked. The whole club would have. They hurt one of our own.”