Silas looked over at his grandsons and said, “No weapons. Don’t give them any reason to start anything until we find out what they want.”
“They aren’t going to get Lola.” Creed growled. “I don’t care what they came here for.”
“Son, we don’t know why they came here or how they found us,” Silas told him. “Let’s just parley and find out what they want.” Silas went to the front door and opened it. Face to face with Cobra, he stared at the other man. “Can I help you?”
Both men took a moment to study the other out. Silas was a few inches shorter than the man but he wasn’t giving the other man any ground. Silas was no slouch when confronted either. He stood his ground while blocking the portal until he had more information. After a minute, he asked again, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for my daughter, Lolannie James. Is she here?” he asked.
“No she ain’t here,” Silas said as he pushed the door shut but the huge biker put his foot out and stopped the door from closing. He pushed the door open further and stepped through the doorway.
Thor and Jett were right behind him.
But Silas wasn’t moving either.
Creed, Jack and Harry stepped up to assist Silas when Lola called out, “Stop. Please stop.”
Everyone stopped and snapped their heads around to stare at her.
She stepped out from behind Creed and came to stand directly in front of him.
Creed wrapped his arms around her waist but wouldn’t let her get any closer to the threat they perceived these men to be.
The biker in the lead stopped and stared at her for a moment. He hissed as he reached up and pulled off his sunglasses.
He stared at her for so long that she began to feel uncomfortable. Finally, she broke the silence by admitting, “I’m Lolannie James, but I don’t know you.”
“I’m Cobra and I am your daddy girl,” he stated in a low voice.
Lola shook her head. “I needed a daddy a long time ago. I don’t need or want one now. You’re too late.”
Cobra growled deep in his throat. “I never knew you were real until today.”
One of the other men stepped forward. “Name’s Thor, I’m his VP. He has been searching for a longass time, little girl.”
Lol stared at him for a few seconds then looked over at Cobra.“But you did know I could be out there somewhere, didn’t you?” She asked quizzically. “My mom never told you about me? Ever?”
Cobra exhaled and looked down at his boots for a moment, then he raised his head to stare at her again. “Yeah, she told me about you but that woman never told the truth when a lie would work better.”
Lola narrowed her eyes at him. “Watch it mister that was my mom you’re talking about. At least I had her in my life for a little while. You, I’ve never seen before now. Why should I believe you’re my father now?”
He raised a brow at her. “Not very many people have our coloring that aren’t related to the family, daughter.”
“Like I said, I don’t know you.” Lola dismissed his statement. “You’ve seen me and stated your intention, now I think it’s time for you and your friends to leave. You wanted nothing to do with me for my whole life and I want nothing to do with you now.”
Thor raised an eyebrow at her boldness and turned his head to look at Cobra. This little bitch needed to learn her lesson about how to address his president. Before he could say anything, his Prez held up two fingers and Thor snapped his mouth shut.
“Before you go though, I got one question for you.” Lola stared at the man who claimed to be her father. “Is my mother still alive?”
Cobra didn’t want to answer her question but he knew she needed to hear the truth. “No she isn’t. She died twenty years ago.”
Lola nodded. “So that’s why she never came back for me.” She wiped the water from her eyes and bit her lips as she looked away from the man who called himself her father. Looking back at him she stated, “That’s all I ever wanted to know, why she never came back for me. Well Daddy , now that you’ve met me, you can stop wondering if I’m real or a lie and get on with your life. Just like I’m going to get on with mine.”
“I want the chance to know who you are,” he stated. “I missed your childhood but I’d like to get to know you now.”
Lola just stared at him for a moment before she said, “It’s too late for that old man. I don’t need you now.”
Cobra tightened his lips. “I ain’t going away baby girl. You gotta give me something here.”
“Why?” Lola tipped her head to one side. “Like I said I don’t know you, but you’ve known about me for twenty years. You weren’t interested before, so now that you’ve seen me you can crawl back into my past and stay there. I got some trouble coming down the pike and I don’t want to get anyone else mixed up in it.”
“What kind of trouble girl?” Cobra growled as he glared at her.
“You don’t need to know. It’s my business not yours.” Lola glared at him.
Cobra raised his eyes and stared at the other men in the room, then glanced toward the kitchen where Bear and Kimber, Kalinda and Rosa and Annie were standing.
Annie had the dog’s collar in her hand and she wasn’t letting him go. “Easy Jethro.”
Cobra didn’t say anything for a long time then he looked back at Silas, “Which club you with old timer?”
Silas crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t say anything for a moment. “My son and I started the Lost Sinners a lifetime ago. It’s gone now along with my son, so we aren’t with a club at the moment.”
“Lost Sinner’s huh?” Thor rocked back and forth on his heels. “That’s been gone a long time old man.”
Silas nodded, “Six years. Bandit murdered my son and took over his club. Now they call themselves just Sinners but that’s our business, not anything you have to worry about.”
Cobra glanced over at his daughter and Creed. The other man still had his arms around her and was holding her a little too close for Cobra’s liking. Then Cobra noticed a tat Creed had on his wrist. His eyes narrowed as he understood what the tat meant. “Huntsville huh?”
“That’s none of your business.” Creed glared at him.
“It is if she’s with you,” Cobra stated. “Maybe I don’t want my daughter with an ex con?”
“You got no say over who I hang out with.” Lola snarled. “I’m a grown woman and you got no say in my life, past, present or future.”
Cobra turned his gaze to her and studied her for a moment. “You may have my looks but you got your mama’s fire.” He grinned a bit. “That’s a good thing. You’ll take Hondo by storm with that fire.”
Lola frowned. “Hondo? What the hell is Hondo?”
“Hondo, Texas. That’s where we live,” Thor explained.
Lola snapped her head around to face the other man, then she turned to Cobra. “That’s nice for you, why don’t you go back to this Hondo place and leave me be?”
“When we go back, you’re coming with us,” Cobra stated with very little doubt in his voice.
“No I’m not.” Lola shook her head. “That’s your home not mine.”
“And just where is it you do call home?” Cobra narrowed his eyes at her.
Lola opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his business when Creed spoke for her, “Her home will be wherever I am. She’s my woman now by rights of claiming and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give her up to the likes of you or anyone else.”
“You might not have a choice.” Thor growled as he went on alert for anything that might happen. The tension in the room had escalated, as the stares between the two men grew more intense.
“What none of you dumbasses realize is the fact that no one has the right to tell me what to do.” Lola growled. She too had felt the tensions growing and wanted it all to end. This day had gone from bad to worse and she didn’t think anything could top the hatred she felt from the woman who refused to call herself her grandmother. She glared at Cobra. “Like I said earlier I don’t know you, you ignored me for twenty years. I don’t need you anymore. You can take your men and go right back to your life.” She turned to Creed. “And you, slavery ended a long time ago, so you can’t just claim me and call it good enough. If I stay with you it will be because I want to, not because you think I belong to you. You know the trouble that’s coming and I don’t want that to spill over to you guys.” She paused and shuddered. “I’d rather leave and be alone when they come for me than risk you or your family getting hurt or worse… getting killed. I couldn’t live with that if it happened.”
Cobra frowned as she spoke then looked over at Thor, then he looked back to Lola. “What kind of trouble are you in girl?”
Lola ignored him the best she could as she was looking into Creed’s eyes. She could see the stubbornness there but she was just as stubborn as he was. She lifted her hand to cup his bearded jaw. “I can’t let you take a bullet for me. You are becoming too important to me.”
Cobra watched the exchange with a growing fury. He hated to be ignored and he wasn’t used to being dismissed like this girl was dismissing him. He hadn’t known when Nora told him about her that she was real and over the years, this idea that he might have a daughter out there had been eating at him. Now when he had just found her, she didn’t want him around. Well, that just wouldn’t do, not in his world.
He reached out to grab hold of her, intending to rip her out of the other man’s arms and demand that she listen to him but when he grabbed her arm and jerked her away from Creed, she turned on him, and her foot nailed him in the groin.
With an instinct as old as time, her foot connected with his balls and the pain exploded in his body. Cobra released her arm and dropped to the floor groaning in extreme agony.
Creed pulled her behind him as Jett and Thor reacted by reaching for their weapons.
But they weren’t the only ones to reach for a weapon, the silence was interrupted when Annie cocked a shotgun. Jethro was standing at full alert beside her and it all happened so fast no one knew what to do next.
Silas slowly raised his hands. “I suggest we all just calm down a bit and think about this before we start something we can’t undo. Nobody needs to get hurt here.”
Cobra motioned for his men to stand down. The pain in his balls had eased up some and he wasn’t ready to take a bullet, not yet anyway.
Lola popped out from where Creed had shoved her when the trouble started. She went over to where Cobra was crouching. “I’m sorry I kicked you. When you grabbed me, instinct kicked in. My bad.”
“Yeah, I’ll have to remember that.” Cobra snarled as he got to his feet. “What the fucking hell girl?”
Lola shrugged as she stared back at him. “I learned the hard way how to protect myself. I had to because no one else was there to stand with me.”
Cobra adjusted his sore balls and nodded. Looking over at Silas, he suggested, “Call off your girl holding the shotgun will ya? My men won’t start anything.”
Silas glanced over at Annie and nodded.
She lowered the gun immediately and grabbed Jethro’s collar again.
Lola stared at the man who claimed to be her father for a moment. “Look, you came here to find out if I existed or not and you found me, well good for you. You’re only about twenty years too late for that to make any difference. That’s on you, not on me. You found me, now you can turn around and go home again. I don’t want or need you anymore in my life. And I don’t need any more trouble than I got right now. Look me up in a few weeks and if I’m still around, I’ll say hi. If I’m not, well then it won’t matter anymore will it?” She shrugged. “By the way, happy birthday daddy.” She smiled slightly. “I’ve always wanted to say that and now I have.”
Cobra heart burst in his chest. How the hell did she know it was his birthday? Had Nora told his child about him? “How did you know it was my birthday today?”
Lola felt a single tear run down her cheek. “Mom told me all about you and your MC. She told me we shared more than just our hair color and our eye color, she told me we shared this day too.” She wiped the tear away. “She warned me that I would hear rumors and stories about what you thought she did but she also told me it wasn’t true.” Suddenly her eyes widened and she turned to Creed. “I remember!” she called out. “I finally remember.”
“What do you remember?” Creed frowned.
“I knew the name Wyatt Westerly when you mentioned it yesterday. I just couldn’t remember where I heard it from.” Lola exclaimed. She missed the fact Cobra, Thor and Jett stiffened at the name. “But I remember it now. I also know I saw the man once.”
Cobra growled. “You met that bastard once?”
Lola turned and nodded. Then she noted the look on his face. Looking at his friend’s faces, she began to tremble. She took a step backward toward Creed and she didn’t stop until he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“How the fuck do you know Westerly?” Thor spat out. “He’s been in prison, right where the bastard belongs, for most of your life.”
Lola trembled at the hatred that was pulsing from the three men in front of her. Her hand gripped Creed’s arms hard. “I don’t want to tell you if you’re going to get mad at me,” she whispered.
“No one will get mad at you child.” Silas assured her as he came to stand beside Creed. “But we need to know what you remember.”
Cobra held up his hand. “Excuse me but the rest of my men might need to hear this too. Can they all come in before she tells her story?”
“They can come in as long as they leave their weapons alone,” Harry issued the invite. “We don’t want any more trouble here.”
Cobra nodded and glanced back at Jett.
Jett went to the door and motioned for the brothers to join them inside. The house was crowded as the fourteen bikers joined the rest of them.
Creed moved back against the wall and kept his arms around Lola as they filed in one by one. He felt her trembling and held her close to him. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear, “I got you baby. We got your back.”
Lola nodded as she wet her lips with her tongue.
Cobra walked over to her but didn’t come too close. “Tell us all how you know Wyatt Westerly.” Grumbles from the men behind were heard until Cobra turned his head to glare at his men. He turned back to Lola to explain why his men were so angry. “Westerly once belonged to our MC. Twenty-four years ago some shit went down and we lost someone we were all very close to. That was about the same time your mom left us. When she left, she took something that didn’t belong to her. Which is why we thought she got our brother, my brother killed.” He paused and asked, “Please tell us what you know…”
Lola wet her lips again and looked around the room, the tension was building again and this memory was fuzzy in her mind but she had to share it. Many nights her mom would hold her and just cry, over and over again she would tell her baby girl about what happened between her and the man she named as her father. “She told me that when she left San Antonio, she left a world she’d grown to care about behind her. She would tell me time and time again, I should never go anywhere near there because the past was the past and sometimes the past is hard to forget or forgive. It was my birthday that day and I was three years old. We were on the couch and she was reading me my favorite book when someone pounded on the door. She got real scared because no one ever came to our door. She hustled me into the closet and told me not to come out. That no matter what happened, I couldn’t come out of the closet.”
Everyone in the room could see her eyes glaze over as she remembered her past.
“She went open the door just as a man kicked it in. She flew across the room and landed on the floor. When she looked up at him, she got real scared and whispered his name. It was Wyatt Westerly. She crawled backward but he grabbed her leg and pulled her back to him. He began screaming at her demanding to know where the money was. When she didn’t tell him quick enough he slapped her hard.”
Her voice lowered to barely more than a whisper. “He kept screaming at her about having to kill a man for that money and it belonged to him. She told him he left her in a mess. That everyone thought she killed King. He told her he knew that, he set it up that way.”
Cobra felt a fist smack his heart when she said his name. There was no way she would know his brother’s road name and in that instant he knew she was remembering something that actually happened. When she paused he asked, “What happened ?”
“He grabbed her and shook her so hard I thought he was going to break her neck, then he threw her on the couch. He paced back and forth, as he demanded she give him the money. She tried to tell him she didn’t have the money but he didn’t believe her. He told her he’d give her twenty four hours to find it and if he had to hunt her down again, he would and if that happened he wouldn’t be as nice as he’d been this time. He said something like the Soldiers were looking for both of them and he wasn’t going to let them find him. He needed that money to start a new life somewhere far enough away where no one knew who he was.” She shuddered as the fear inside her began to fade. Looking up into Creed’s eyes, she finished her story, “He left our apartment and mom began packing what little we had. She knew she had to run before Wyatt came back.”
No one said anything for some time as her words sank in.
Cobra broke the silence, “Did your mom ever tell you about what really happened when she left Hondo?”
Lola shrugged. “She did tell me over and over again that something bad happened and that some people think she got a brother killed but she also told me she didn’t do what they said she did. She didn’t tell me who did but after that visit, I knew who killed the brother. She told me that no one would believe her if she told them the truth, he’d seen to that.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “We ran that night and stayed hidden for almost another year. That’s when she took me to my grandmother’s house. She begged her mother to take care of me, she promised she would be back for me as soon as she could. Then she hugged me goodbye and gave me a locket. She told me never to forget her and that she loved me more than life itself. She said she had to face her past and she wanted me to pray for her soul.”
~*~
Cobra watched as the tears ran down her cheeks. He looked over at the brothers with him. He saw confusion on their faces as this story unfolded and they all realized they’d made a mistake twenty years ago when they finally found Nora. It hadn’t been her that betrayed the club and him. It hadn’t been Nora that killed his brother King—it had been Wyatt Westerly all this time. He’d set her up good and tight. All the evidence the club had was all his doing.
He remembered that day as if it was yesterday. She tried to tell him what happened but that didn’t match what he thought the club knew. The brothers had been ready to tear her apart and he felt no compassion for her at all. She betrayed him and that cut him deep. Then she told him about a daughter and again, he didn’t know if he could trust her word or not. They had held a tribunal before they began hunting for her and Westerly had told them all what he saw the night King died. He lied to save his own skin. He put the blame for the robbery and King all on Nora.
“Did your mom ever say anything about the money that went missing the night she ran from Hondo?” one of the brothers asked.
Lola began to tremble harder.
Creed felt it and held her tighter. “What is it baby? What do you know?” he whispered.
“When we ran that night from the apartment, we stopped at a cemetery. She had me watch out for anyone coming and she dug a hole in the ground beside a grave. She put a bag inside the hole and put the dirt over it. She never told me what she buried but I looked at the name of the headstone.” She looked over at Cobra and the brothers. “Gavin Stone? When we left, it wasn’t long until we got to grandmother’s house. The old lady wasn’t happy to see her or me. You know the rest.”
Cobra could see how defeated she looked. He had to ask, “Baby girl, I don’t know what happened next but knowing your grandmother, I know it wasn’t pleasant.”
Silas scoffed. “She paid her mother to take care of Lola until she got back, then the next morning the old lady called social services and threw her away. Told social services she never wanted the girl here and she would be glad to be rid of her.”
Cobra’s hands curled into fists. “She actually told you that? She told you she never wanted you in the fucking first place and that she wouldn’t take care of you now?”
Lola hung her head. She didn’t have to acknowledge the question as Cobra knew in his heart it was true. Cobra locked his eyes with Thor and the other man understood his silent message.
He nodded.
“What happened to you then?” Cobra demanded to know.
“I went into the system,” she whispered.
Creed growled low in his throat.
Lola knew what he was going to say and she quickly raised her hand to cover his mouth. No one else needed to know about the scars she hid from the world.
Creed looked down at her and saw the begging in her eyes. He reached up and moved her hand. “Honey, he needs to know all of it.”
She began shaking her head. “No, this is my shame not his. He doesn’t need to know jack shit. He never cared before and now it’s too late.”
“Lola, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Creed argued with her. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You didn’t do anything wrong here.”
She hung her head. “But I did. I broke the rules in that house.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Cobra growled.
Creed didn’t say a word, instead he lifted the back of her sweatshirt and showed her back.
Everyone gasped at the sight of her scars.
Lola wanted to hide. Her face went red then paled to an ashen color. She pulled down her shirt and tried to step away from him but Creed wouldn’t let her go.
She struggled in his arms but he refused to let her go. “You had no right to do that!” She cried out.
“They needed to see it,” Creed insisted.
She lifted her head and slapped him. “What did they need to see? Everyone has scars you big dummy. They didn’t need to see mine.”
Cobra walked over to her back and lifted her shirt again. When she tried to pull it back down, he wouldn’t let her. He searched her back for the longest time before he let the shirt go down again. Laying his hand on her shoulder he asked in a calm voice, “What the hell happened? When did this occur?”
She peeked over her shoulder at her father. “It was a long time ago. It’s over now and I want to keep it that way.”
“No fucking way am I going to forget that.” Cobra snarled. “If that happened in your past, you were just a kid when you got beat like this. I want to know what happened! What the hell did you do to deserve that?”
She turned around and pushed away from Creed. Facing the other man she lost her fear and let the rage take her, “You want to know what I did to deserve my scars? Well, I’ll tell you, not all the foster homes are the best. Some of them are cruel and being a kid with nowhere else to go, you learn to adjust real quick. One of the places I was put into was the worst I’d even seen. On the surface, they appeared to be the best of the best but that was all for show. In reality, they were a nightmare no child should live through. The rules were simple: no talking back and when you’re given a chore to do, you damn well did it with no backtalk. You keep your room clean and mind your own business. And the number one rule was you don’t tell anyone what goes on inside those walls. They believed in corporal punishment every time you broke their rules. In fact, they loved it when you broke the rules because they liked to see the fear and pain on your face. Yeah, I broke their fucking rules and I don’t regret what I did.”
“Why would you break the rules?” Thor asked. “Rules are there for a reason.”
Lola snapped her head around to snarl at him, “I broke their fucking rules to save a smaller kid from being beaten. Angel was smaller, younger and weaker than I was and everyone in that damn house bullied her. They did it because they got a kick out of making her feel worthless. I stuck up for her and they beat me for it.”
“How long did you get beaten?” Cobra’s hands curled into fists.
“Four months. I lived in that hellhole for four months before they broke that little girl. They made her watch when they delivered her punishments to me and that’s what finally broke her. One night their birth son broke into Angel’s room and he hurt her bad, bad enough they had to take her to the hospital and that’s when the truth finally came out.”
“What happened to the family?” Harry asked.
The mom, dad and granddad went to jail and the kids went to juvey. The foster kids went to a new home.”
“And Angel? What happened to her?” Kalinda finally asked with tears running down her face.
Lola turned her head slowly. “She went to a safe place, a place where no one would hurt her ever again.”
Creed groaned. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry.”
Lola looked up at him. “I’m not. Angel is safe now and no one will ever bully her again. The Coopers are still right where they belong too.”
“How old were you when this went down?” Cobra asked quietly as his face looked like stone.
“I was ten years old. And before you ask, I left the foster system when I was sixteen. I just couldn’t take the bullshit anymore. I lived in hiding for the next two years then when I turned eighteen, I applied for my own identity and have been making my own way for a while now.”
“So where did you end up?” Cobra asked.
“I was in Port Arthur until recently.”
Cobra looked around at the Young family. “And is that where you met these people?”
“Not that it’s any of your business but no, I met them in Beaumont a day or so ago.” She looked around the room and then back to Cobra. “Now that you know I’m real, you can go back to your Hondo and get on with your life. Like I said before, you didn’t want me back when it would have mattered and I don’t need you in my life now.”
Cobra stared hard a t her.
All the men in the room looked uneasy. They all knew this all might get ugly real fast.
It looked like Lola’s day was about to get worse.
