Tyrant (Satan’s Angels MC #1)

Chapter 7

Tyrant

T he sun burns so bright and high in the sky, it coats the entire yard in watery golds. It glistens off Lark’s hair and eyes, illuminating the blue threads shot through the dark strands.

This woman could have been my everything.

Now, she’s nothing.

Worse than nothing, she’s a liar .

She shakes her head, refusing to meet my gaze. Her lips purse in denial. She has next to no makeup on and is covered in dirt. Her shorts have a wet, dirty mark on the bottom like she’s been sitting in the flowerbeds she’s been tackling. There are weeds strewn all over the grass and sidewalk. Her fingers are stained green and brown, dirt caked under the nails. A dirt smudge stands out stark against her pale skin. Her lashes are still impossibly long. She’s so tiny, her clothes flowing over her slight frame. I remember every single detail of her glorious figure. Motherhood hasn’t leant a new roundness to her body.

She looks almost exactly the way I remember. Still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Rage at my stupid bleeding insides festers and spills over. I can hardly breathe past the pain searing through my chest, writhing like a serpent coiled around my vital organs. A wolf ravages my belly, eating at me from the inside out. I was supposed to feel nothing after Lark left. It would be easier if I did. Numbness is far easier to live with.

I blink quickly before the heartache shows in my eyes. I can’t think of anything that would be more humiliating.

“What the fuck, what?” she hisses, hands curling defensively. “What are you even doing here?”

The roaring in my ears comes rushing back. I’m very aware that there is a little girl just through that screen door. A sweet little thing with a literal cherub’s face who looks so much like her mother that it slayed me the second I laid eyes on her.

It doesn’t end there. She’s not entirely her mother.

Her strange eyes are one hundred percent exactly the same shade as mine .

I point and take one menacing step closer. Lark doesn’t back down, but fear shimmers over her face like a startled bird darting off the surface of a pond. I don’t lower my hand, even when it nearly grazes her arm. I whisper, but there is nothing soft about my voice. “She’s mine.”

“No,” she whimpers, tossing her head back and forth, eyes huge, frothing like a whipped horse. “She’s not yours, Gray. Not yours at all.”

I’ve always listened to my gut. My instinct is telling me now that she’s lying. “You know that I own this town. It’s property of Satan’s Angels now. I ask the right person, pay what they want, and they confirm she’s mine, whether she is or isn’t.”

That provokes the fury of a baited and threatened mother bear. “Your arrogance is unbelievable! You just walk in and start making threats, insinuating that you’d take my daughter from me because five years ago, I decided that I wanted a different life for myself?”

“I get it now. It finally makes sense. She’s why you chose to leave. That text, a few weeks after we… and then you moved. Straight up ran. You covered your tracks, but not well enough.” I step closer, until our panted breaths mingle. “She’s mine. If you never wanted me to find out, then you never should have come back here.”

“She’s not yours. And I didn’t have a choice. My mother is dying.” She indicates the choked flower gardens. “This is the one thing my mom wants before she passes and I’m going to give it to her. You’re wasting time I don’t have. Please leave.”

I treat her to a hideous smile, a sneer of my scarred lips that makes her flinch. She takes one step back, spins around, and grabs a hand trowel off the step, brandishing at me. I laugh in her face, a guttural, mean sound.

Her face falls and she clenches onto that garden tool. There is no violence in her now. It bleeds away to be replaced with sadness so acute I can almost taste the salt of it. “You’re not the same,” she chokes. “The old Gray was sweet and smart and kind.”

“Yeah? Well, the girl I knew wouldn’t have gone and passed off my kid as some tush doctor’s.”

She storms past me and heads to the closet flowerbed. The whole front yard used to be a riot of flowers. It sends a pang through me to realize how it’s gone to straight shit with no one to tend it. How metaphorical.

“I’ve never tried to pass her off as anyone’s. I was dating a doctor recently. Whatever you heard from Raiden, you’re mistaken.”

She leans in, her hands scrabbling through the dirt, her back to me. It’s a clear piss off, I’m finished with you , but I’m not going to listen. Not this time. Not so she can grab my daughter and run away with her again.

I could be wrong, but I know I’m not. My head spins. It’s just as well that Lark isn’t looking at me because I’m reeling here. I’m a mess but I cover it like always.

“You’re a narrow-minded little coward,” I spit at her, hoping she’ll turn back around and gift me with some of her fire again.

Not now. She’s scared and defensive. There’s a difference.

And what are you, you fucking nimbus? Rawing her like there could be no consequences. You were like a horny sixteen-year-old that night, only thinking about your damn hard-on.

She twists and hurls a handful of weeds at me. The green leaves arc up and come down in a shower all over the sidewalk and my boots. “You’ve turned into a mean, dumb asshole.”

“Mean yes, but not dumb. Not at all. The only stupid thing I ever did was allow myself to be taken in by soft words and fake promises.” I have my pride and it was stomped all over. My anger and smart mouth mask the pain that is still as real and raw as ground meat. “You told me that I was your whole world and I believed you.”

“We both decided it was what we wanted. It was… a dream. A dream that couldn’t be. One of us had to be responsible.”

Neither of us were, and look what happened.

“Oh no. No, you are not getting off that easy. You made the life you thought you needed to make, but you’re going to admit that you were wrong. You decided it was best to take my kid away from me. To not even tell me you were pregnant. You made all the decisions alone.”

“You wouldn’t have—”

“Don’t tell me how I would have acted and reacted,” I thunder, before I remember to moderate my voice. “You never gave me a chance. You were the one who didn’t play fair.”

“My brother almost died!” she yelps, forgetting all about decorum now. The neighbors up and down the block probably heard that.

“Raiden had nothing to do with your decision. Tell me, darlin’, did you just want a walk on the wild side? To dip your toes in with the big bad biker? To do something taboo so you could brag to all your friends? Was I just a trophy for you? Were you stupid enough to think that you couldn’t get knocked up as a virgin? Believing in old wives’ tales, or did your parents never tell you where babies come from in all those years they kept you in your golden cage?”

“Stop it! Who are you? Are you even hearing yourself?” She’s done with the weeds and straight up charges at me. She might be fully pissed off and out of her mind with it, but when she shoves me with all her might, I barely rock back an inch. She rebounds off me as if she can’t bear to touch me, breathing raggedly, gesturing wildly, so close to completely losing it. “Get out of here! I want you to leave right now.” She blinks back tears that I tell myself don’t affect me. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, but that doesn’t give us the right to hurt anyone else. Not my brother, not your club. You’re all parts of one heart.”

She’s right. This isn’t me. This isn’t who I ever wanted to be. My pride and the rest of me might be smarting and this moment might have been coming for five years, but I have no right to act like this.

“She’s mine,” she repeats, widening her stance and staring me down like a ball of wildfire.

To get through her, I’d have to incinerate myself. I’m a dumb fucker because every atom of my being wants to try.

“The things I’ve heard, tell me that I was right to leave here.” Her nostrils flare and it takes everything I have not to curl my hands into fists. “You killed your own father . I know it’s true. He might have been a threat to the club, but you couldn’t just buy him a condo somewhere and force him into retirement? You had to kill him? Even if you think you’re above the law, even if you own it now, that still makes you a murderer. Nothing is sacred to you. Why would I ever have wanted to be a part of that? To try to love a man who could—”

She can’t do it, so I finish for her. “Prejudice and ignorance, I’d call it.” I want to defend myself against her accusations. It stings like acid thrown onto my bare skin that I can’t. “Beaten into you by parents who disowned you the second you weren’t going to follow their rules, just like they turned their backs on your brother.”

“Don’t bring my parents into this. Don’t bring anyone into this. We’re done and you’re leaving.”

“I’m not leaving. I’m waiting for Raiden.”

Her lips curl into a fiercer snarl. Seeing her owning her own power and going head-to-head with me, is the spark to my dry tinder.

“I’m sorry your mom is sick.” I back off. This conversation isn’t finished, but I need to get the hell out of here and gather my fucking self and come at the situation with a new approach. “I’m sorry that she’s in pain and dying a horrible death. I’m fucking sorry about all of that, but I will never stop speaking the truth. You’re too afraid to hear it after all this time.”

The tenderness in my voice hits her hard. I watch her mentally stumble. “I loved you,” she breathes after a long pause, the crystal wetness filling her eyes gutting me. “I did. It wasn’t a mistake, it was just the wrong time. All of it was wrong. That’s all there is. Please don’t make something out of it that it isn’t. I’m focused now on my mom, not on you. Never on you again. Please accept that or it’s going to make this unbearable for our family and that includes my brother.”

“Don’t use your—”

“I can and I will because Raiden is the only thing between us anymore.”

Lucky for her, the growl of a bike in the distance announces Raiden. There’s no victory in Lark’s eyes. She looks sad and defeated and fuck me if that doesn’t make me want to find a tall building and launch myself off of it. What was I even thinking, accosting her like this at a time when she’s more vulnerable than she’s ever been? It took so much courage to come back here, more goodness than I can even fathom to forgive her parents. She’s back to watch her mother die, now a mother herself. That must be like tearing out her own insides, and here I am, another complication.

Raiden’s bike thunders up.

“I’m going in now. Please stay out.” Her eyes plead with me. “My mom and dad won’t like it that you’re here, and right now, what they want matters more than anything.” It’s not just them. She doesn’t want Raiden to witness us having heated words. It occurs to me for the first time that as much as we tried to protect Lark, she’s always been protective of her older brother in equal measure.

She cuts me out of her life as she turns her back again, but this time, I’m not going to stand here and ignore all my instincts. I won’t let her leave again.