I looked out the window and saw Enigma and Claudia. They’d both grown up here, though they were a little older than me. They were arguing about something, and Claudia’s hands were flying around as Enigma looked shamed.
Everyone knew Enigma was a bit of a hypochondriac, and having a sister who was a doctor seemed only to enhance his phobias. But when push came to shove, they were both there for each other, no matter what.
“Can I get you two anything else?”
I looked up at Fiona, Granny’s adopted daughter, and George and Frank’s little sister. She’d just turned eighteen and was heading off to college soon. She’d had a rough start in life.
Her parents had been killed when she was a child, and she ended up in foster care, pregnant at fifteen. Frank and Lidi were raising the baby. I didn’t have any ill will toward Fiona. She was a child who knew she couldn’t raise a baby and gave him to someone who could. But I was jealous that she still got to see him every day. Got to hold him in her arms.
Even if Charlie was just her nephew now.
“Nothing for me, Fiona, thank you.”
“Are you ready for school?” my mother asked.
“I’m terrified.” She sighed. “It will be a whole new adventure, but the idea of having to make new friends again is so overwhelming.”
“Where did you decide?” I asked.
“The University of Denver. It feels worlds away, but they have a really great social sciences department.”
“Are you thinking about psychology?”
“I considered it, but I think after everything I’ve been through, I want to be a social worker. I’ve had some really bad ones, but after everything Diana did to help with Charlie and me... I want to give back. There are not enough of the good ones.”
“That’s amazing, Fiona. With your heart, I know you’ll be one of the good ones,” my mother praised.
Bernadette Delany, Benny to her friends, was a natural-born cheerleader. There wasn’t a person she’d met whom she didn’tencourage and uplift. It was hard to be a typical sullen teenager with my mom around. She saw the positive side of everything.
Even my father.
She’d never said a negative word about him. At least not in front of me. She’d always made sure to foster our relationship. My mother should be the poster child for co-parenting and how to do it right.
She never feared calling him when I was sick or hurt. Or if we needed something. My father had always made sure we had plenty, but throughout high school, expenses cropped up, and my mother would make a phone call, sometimes convincing him to hand over extra when a friend needed help.
More than once, my father had helped out the community of Rosewood, Virginia. But they never knew. I didn’t even think King knew.
Not my brother, King. Though I doubt he knew much about the good things our father had done over the years either.
Callum ‘King’ Montclair was the president of the Sons of Hell, the motorcycle club here in town. He was the unofficial mayor of Rosewood.
We’d had a mayor until he was arrested for corruption. No one had run since then, so King became the unofficial mayor, given everything the Sons of Hell had done for the town and its residents throughout the years.
King knew my father. If he hadn’t before, when Freyja was kidnapped and Scribe found out, he and King, together with Frank and Priest, hightailed it up to Boston to confront Duncan and my father.
I don’t know exactly what happened, but they came home and Freyja stayed there. If I had to guess, King was more concerned about pissing off Freyja than he was about pissing off the head of the Irish Mob.
Chapter Three
Chasm
The ride to Little Rock was long and rough. The constant need to be aware of our surroundings as we rode meant this ride wasn’t for leisure.
After a day and a half of hard riding, we finally pulled into the clubhouse in Little Rock. I sat on my bike and looked up at the old warehouse. This place had been my home until it hadn’t.
“You having second thoughts?” Romeo asked beside me.
“And third and fourth.” I sighed, blowing out a breath as I swung my leg over the seat of my bike.